Thinking about spring fishing

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist

Last year at this time my goal was just to keep my road plowed and the house warm; this year my thoughts have been drifting to fishing — open water fishing that is. Three weeks from tomorrow is the official opening day of trout season, and in nine out of the last 10 years, this was a date meaningful only to those who like scanning the NYS Fishing Regulations Guide.

In most years, in the interior, snowshoes were needed to get to a river or stream on April 1, and the only open water was at rapids or at the foot of a falls.

This year will be the exception, unless we get a mini-ice age in late March. With so little snow pack in the mountains, the spring runoff will be light and recede quickly, a condition not good in the long run for fish. If more snow doesn’t come in March, we can only hope for spring rains to replenish river flows.

But, all that is out of our control; not even the most precise computer can make it rain or snow. So those of us who enjoy river fishing may have to make the most of it early on. In doing so, we as anglers continue to be a part of one of America’s fastest growing outdoor pursuits.

In the last survey done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 46.7 million Americans seven years or older fish, almost one-third (31.5 percent) of them being women. Fishing ranks fifth in participation according to a National Sporting Goods Association 1999 National Survey. Only walking, swimming, camping and exercising with equipment had more participants. Billions of dollars are spent on fishing-related gear and trips.

My better half is convinced that each year I spend half those billion on lures, tackle and gadgets. It’s all part of the early spring ritual that also includes oiling reels, checking hooks and charging the battery for the electric motor.

My 16-foot Mad River Canoe, my only real fishing boat, is still hanging under the shed that has six inches of crusty snow on its roof, but that really doesn’t matter. In a month (or so), I keep telling myself, I will be sitting in it, floating on an Adirondack pond, trolling a Lake Clear Wabbler.