Opening Day, or Who's An April Fool?

To celebrate the opening day of fishing season here is a piece by our local Troutmeister Mike O'Neil -

Whan that Aprille, Piscator

In his definitive work Catskill Rivers, Mac Francis writes of the Catskill angling “mystique”, convincingly making the point that (a) there is such a thing in the first place and that (b) “lying in the heart of the mystique are the emotions of the angler, none of them stronger than his anticipation of spring.” Poets, natural philosophers, anglers and fools have always been drawn out by the approach of April. It wasn’'t by chance that Geoff Chaucer started his pilgrims on their Canterbury jaunt “whan that Aprille,” for the longing to be up and about stirs in us then. Izaak Walton, the sainted seventeenth century de n of fishing, that “compleat” angler, would hardly have you fish for trout until April approached, “till which time a man should not in honesty catch a trout.” Our own bard of the Catskill’s, John Burroughs wrote at length about the month, part of which I am compelled to quote, for how often do you see the word “hibernaculum” these days? Old Uncle whitebeard Burroughs wrote, “ "In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out of your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time is ripe, and if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.”"
New York State’'s trout fishing season begins on April first, to be precise. Even the vaguely astute observer will recognize that it is also April Fool’s Day. If there is a connection, it is lost to antiquity. In point of fact, when measured against its neighbors’ opening dates, New York'’s is particularly early. Pennsylvania, for instance does not allow the hoards to descend until the first Saturday after April 11th.
In Connecticut, anglers must wait even longer to assault river, stream, pond and lake--the opener is the third Saturday of April. Wayne Elliot, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s District 3 manager (the territory covering the Catskills, as well as more southerly counties to include Westchester) points out that this was not always the case. In the mid forties, at least, New York’s season began the third Saturday in April. A careful reading of Ed Van Put’s recently published, magnificent book on the Beaverkill, titled--aptly--The Beaverkill , shows that from the early 1870’s until the 1920’s there was a relatively short season on Catskill waters that began May first and lasted only 106 days. Ed also dug out this tantalizing quote from Dr. E.A. Bates, from the Sullivan County Democrat, circa June 14, 1933 commenting on the season employed by native Americans long before the white man fished in the Catskills: "In the olden moons, at such a time, the boys of the village cut a long pole of sinewy willow, and at the end of a tough line made of the inner bark of the elm, they tied the sharp pointed fish hook made of bone. With a juicy piece of bear fat, they fooled the trout. Then one trout-fishing moon came when few trout were caught. The next spring this happened again. Finally a wise old fisherman opened one of the trout with his sharp stone knife and found it was full of eggs.& amp; nbsp; So the council drew from the wisdom of old fishermen, and a careful watch was made, and then it was found that the trout always swam over their spawning beds just before the wild apple bloomed. From that moon on, and even today, the redman stays far from the home of the trout until the apple trees are in full bloom, for he dreams of a trout-fishing moon for his grandchildren."
To an extent, the DEC’s trout stocking schedule is dictated by actual stream conditions, much as the Indians of prehistory paid attention to nature. On average the water in the Catskills is too cold to stock in March. Trout are not put into Catskill streams and rivers until after opening day--until the water reaches at least a temperature of 45 degrees F. It is axiomatic--the colder the water, the less active the trout. And while they never actually stop feeding, when it’s colder they eat less often. Heresy though it may be, I have to state the obvious--for all the hoopla and frenetic anticipation that surrounds it, Opening Day is not, usually, a very good time to fish for trout in the Catskills.
Fishing clubs and church groups climb over themselves in putting on opening day dinners, raffles, and monumental opening morning pancake feeds--all of which are fun in their own way. Others fortify themselves the way the early American angling author Thaddeus Norris described when he and friends prepared to fish the Willowemoc and Beaverkill rivers a century ago:

"There were three of us: baggage as follows:
Item: one bottle of gin, two shirts: Item: one bottle of schnapps, two pair stockings: Item, one bottle Schiedam, one pair fishing pants:
Item, one bottle genuine aromatic, by Udolpho Wolfe, name on the wrapper, without which the article is fictitious, one pair extra boots:
Item, one bottle extract of juniper-berry; one bottle brandy, long and wide, prescribed by scientific skill for medicinal purposes.
Also, rods, flies, tackle in abundance, and a supply of gin; in addition, each of us had a quart-flask in our pockets, containing gin. We also had some gin inside when we started."

This is not to say that no trout are caught on April 1. My friend Ed Ostapczuk of Shokan, a licensed New York State fishing guide and perhaps the most skilled Catskill fly fisherman I know, described an incredible opening day he and his son had on the Rondout, catching scores of wonderful native brookies on deftly sinkered nymphs. Karen Graham from Rosendale and her business partner Bert Darrow (she an escapee from the world of high fashion modeling, he a former NYNEX exec) fish so often and so well, as they instruct novices in the arcane art of angling (their business is called “Fly Fishing with Bert and Karen”), that I have no doubt they will catch trout, nice trout, if they choose to go out for the opener. But most of us will not do as well April 1 (in France,by the way, an April Fool’s Day hoax or mishap is known as a poisson d’avril--an April Fish!). Perhaps we are April Fools as we eagerly anticipate Opening Day in Ulster, or Sullivan, or Greene County. I think at the bottom of it all, having flailed away on one or another Catskill stream for over forty years, I subscribe to Sparse Grey Hackle’s fishing philosophy (aka Arthur Miller). While he preferred catching them to not catching them (one is not completely mad, after all), Sparse Grey had this to say, ... he who is content to no t-catch fish in the most skillful and refined manner, utilizing the best equipment and technique, will have his time and attention free for the accumulation of a thousand experiences, the memory of which will remain for his enjoyment long after any recollection of fish would have faded.”

- Mike O’Neil