Opening Day Fever

APRIL 11, 2004
By GREG RUMMO

     DID YOU FEEL it on Saturday around 8:00 a.m.? There was a disturbance in the force that propagated through the region. Most men, some boys and even a few brave women were suddenly overcome with the irresistible urge to don rubber boots and stand waist deep in raging, ice cold streams.

That’s right—it was Opening Day of the trout season here in New Jersey.

Anglers emerged from their cozy winter lairs and in a lemming-like frenzy, ran to their favorite fishing holes, stacking up elbow-to-elbow like cordwood, in the hopes of catching a trout. I grew up in New York State where the planners in the Department of Fish and Game had the incredible foresight to establish April 1 as Opening Day. None of this second Saturday of the month stuff. Perhaps it had something to do with April Fools falling on the same day. Usually the weather was such that only the foolish would venture out into the wild and risk stepping on an algae-slicked rock, taking a spill into the frigid currents.

Ah, but fools we all are.

As a member of the angling fraternity with a Ph.D. in fly-fishing, having graduated at the young age of 13, I can attest to the lunacy which accompanies Opening Day fever.

It’s a release, a metamorphosis, no—perhaps mutation better describes this transition from a raging case of Cabin Fever that afflicts so many of us through the winter. We’ve spent the last four months ignoring the neighbors, hunkered down in our warm hideouts, glued to Tommy Sanders on ESPN Outdoors every Saturday morning, imagining we were the ones fly-fishing in Belize in January for tarpon or bonefish.

But to no avail.

By April we are all stark raving mad—even the extreme lunatic fringe among us who dared brave something as masochistic as ice fishing during January. We’re ready to get out of the house and throw anything—a fly, a spinner, salmon eggs, even a worm—at a trout just to fulfill that inner urge that speaks to us in a still soft voice, “I fish therefore I am.” Like the salmon that are unexplainably drawn to the rivers of their birth, resistance is futile.

If you looked closely into the eyes of any one of the myriad of anglers that emerged on Saturday you would have noted an expression of extreme concentration. You could mistake it for a blank stare but don’t be fooled. For even if it were possible to throw a cow into the water beside him, it is doubtful you could distract him from his prey.

The reason for the apparent catatonic trance cannot be adequately explained in any medical journal. Like the rush on the first hill of a roller coaster, it can only be experienced. However, having been overcome with Opening Day fever so many times myself, I will attempt it here in this space, feeble as words may be to do it justice.  

Suddenly, after hours of standing in the bone-chilling cold, making one cast after the other until his fingers are numb, the fishing line moves in a way it hasn’t moved yet that morning or perhaps there’s a flash from under the dark currents or some other indeterminate signal—almost like an otherworldly telepathic transmission between trout and angler.

And just like that, a fish is on and his line tightens and his pulse quickens and he forgets that for the last four months he’s been a prisoner in his own home and even though it’s 35-degrees and spitting flurries, and he can’t feel his fingers or his toes, it doesn’t matter because there’s a trout connected to him by a thin, gossamer thread.

For the moment, time stops. The cares of this world dissipate. And all is well. n

Greg Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at  GregoryJRummo@aol.com