The University of North Carolina Press


The following essay is from the book Dogs That Point, Fish That Bite: Outdoor Essays by Jim Dean. Copyright 1995 The University of North Carolina Press. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without the express permission of the Press.


Just Once a Year

There aren't many certainties in life, but I think I can come close with one prediction. Although I may not know where I'm going to eat lunch tomorrow, I've got a pretty good idea where I'll be the first Saturday of each April for the rest of my life. In case you haven't already figured it out, that's the traditional opening day of the trout season in North Carolina.

For me, the anticipation of opening day begins in early January when I am swept westward into the high Appalachians on a tide of fishing tackle catalogs to a primitive cabin that overlooks a stream flush with wild trout. I will make these mental scouting trips for three long, dreaming months. Then one gray day like all the others, when I have not been paying close enough attention to separate veri- from -similitude, I will find that I am actually bouncing along in my four-wheel-drive truck. Rod tubes are rattling against fly boxes, nets, and other gear in the back, and I am passing bright splashes of forsythia as I drive out of another winter.

A. J. Johnson and his son Alvin and I like to arrive early to freshen the mouse poison and open the curtains to let in the slanting, dust-flecked shafts of pale sun. Friends begin to arrive in late afternoon, and the traditional oyster stew will be cooked on the woodstove in a kitchen as hot as a nursing home. A. J. will add a bit of crumbled red pepper to the stew, invariably a bit more than would have been prudent. Well, why not? It's his cabin and his stew.

After months of following a rigid schedule, there will suddenly be time for whimsy, time to walk out on the porch with a steaming cup of coffee or wander up the dirt road beside the stream. The stream will be high with runoff, and the rush of water full of promise. I suspect every angler mentally fishes such water, picking out likely spots where a trout might be holding in the icy current. It may be the best fishing of the weekend, and you savor it in a twilight welcomed by the ancient chorus of spring peepers.

Of course, opening day is largely a ritualistic celebration, and trout seldom play a major role. The streams are often crowded, the trout recalcitrant, and the weather raw. I have more often fished in a cold drizzle than in bright sun, and at least two opening days were accompanied by snow flurries. But there was also the spring of 1978, which followed one of the most bitter winters in recent North Carolina memory. The early afternoon temperature that opening day climbed to an incredible 88 degrees. In stretches of the stream that had not been disturbed by earlier anglers, wild browns and rainbows leaped at our dry flies and chased nymphs halfway across the gold and emerald pools.

There was also a cool, overcast day that bathed the leafless mountains in silver fog, and every twig and pine needle was tipped with a diamond droplet. That morning, a dark shape appeared behind the dry fly as it floated on the current. The fly began to drag, and then it sank, yet the dark shape still drifted beneath it. No trout would eat such a clumsy offering, but there was an improbable flash of white--a mouth opening--and the fly was gone. Moments later, nineteen inches of quivering brown trout lay in the net. Released, it swam slowly back into the shadows--a wild fish almost too large to believe in such a small public stream. A ghost, perhaps, or a dream? Surely no one would believe it that evening, and I was not certain I would even risk sharing it. But, of course, I did.

Such moments are so rare on opening day that I have learned to approach this time of renewal with no expectations. Indeed, one year, we decided not to fish. The day dawned in torrents of rain, and the roads were filled with torrents of trucks and cars full of wet, grim-faced fishermen.

"We'll just sit beside the fire today," we said. "Drink coffee, eat a huge breakfast. Tie a few flies and shoot the bull. Let the mobs pound the water and freeze. We'll go tomorrow after they've all got pneumonia."

Late that afternoon, the rain slackened, and we decided to drive up to a local trout pond and watch the circus. You've seen the photos of opening-day fishermen standing elbow to elbow, fully encircling a pond that contains a tight knot of thoroughly spooked trout. Add a cold rain to that scene, and you have a fair representation of what we found when we arrived.

We sat in the car, toasty and comfortable, observing the hordes. They looked miserable. It cheered us immensely. After a few minutes, someone caught a small trout. We fell silent.

"What do you think?" someone asked tentatively.

"We've got our gear," came an answer. "Wouldn't hurt to try it a few minutes."

There was little conversation on the way back to the cabin two hours later. The car heater that had seemed so warm earlier poured out a steady rush of Arctic air. We were wet from head to foot from leaky rain jackets and waders. Our gear lay in a sodden mass in the trunk. No one had caught a trout.

"We almost m-m-made it," someone finally said.


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