First Day of Trout

Today was opening day of trout and I celebrated accordingly. I woke up and ran to the bank and to Dick's to get my license, $32 for a license is a bit excessive. But it's all in good fun I guess. From there i went up to the high school for baseball. Only pitchers had a workout but OD and I decided we wanted to get some swings in so we set up the machine and took some swings.

After I got some swings in Trev and I headed out for our day on the stream. We stopped at his house and got rods and bait before eating lunch at Subway. Trout fishing in western Pennsylvania brings out a huge crowd and the places left to fish are very minimal. Our select spot was down by The Brothers Grimm. the adventure started with us walking upstream, rods in hand, in search of a spot to set up. We saw a lot of fish, dead fish that is. You'd have thought people were slaying the fish not trying to catch them. After catching only two creek chubs we decided to walk back down to a spot where we saw a dozen men fishing.

At this point Grebs had arrived and was joining us. Us three headed to the spot with all the other men and we saw why they were all crowded around such a small area, there were tons of fish! We waded across the creek without waders and set up next to what looked like a seasoned vet. We fished for a while before Jon and Trevor decided to go to Gander Mountain and get new bait. They left me with both rods so I cast them both out and waited. (I forgot to mention that one of these rods did not have a reel so you had to reel it in by spinning the spool by hand. Quite a hassle really.) Anyway, I was sitting there with the good rod in my hand and the bad one between my legs. Suddenly the bad one jerked and i knew I had a legitimate bite. I set the line and hooked the fish...then I spent five minutes reeling him in by spinning the spool. (Everyone around me thought this was pretty damn amusing.)

That ended up being the only fish we caught today, but it only takes one to brighten your day.

From the creek we went back to Trevor's to "gut" the fish. Don't think less of us, the poor bastard was already dead. We just tore apart his remains using a pocket knife. We came to the conclusion that the three of us could live on our own in the woods based on the fact we caught a fish and knew how to cut it into fillets.

I had a chill day, no pun intending, standing in that creek in my running shoes. By the time I got home I felt like hypothermia had set in in my lower leg and foot but that's okay. Fishing is always a good way to clear your mind and it did just that for me today.

NP: Fish- Craig Campbell