The "spring" trout season opens tomorrow! Tomorrow!!!

This really is my favorite time of the fishing year. The conditions are challenging, but the fishing is absolutely prime all through March and April. The fish tend to hold in the deep pools, and then move out into the riffles during the warmest part of the day.

Every fishing day in March makes me feel like I won the lottery. So many things can conspire to grind the fishing to a dead halt. There can be too much snow on the ground, it can be too cold such that it's not practical to fish, it can be too warm so that the melt-water hits the rivers and blows them out, and so on. With all the things that can stop the fishing it just feels like even more of a privilege to be out there fishing.

Everything seems to be lining up nicely for tomorrow, the forecast is for a rather unpleasant "winter mix" of rain and/or snow, but the silver lining in that is that the high temp is forecast to be just above 0 C, so the temp won't trigger a lot of snow melt and blow out the rivers. Hopefully that will also mean snow instead of rain, but what comes will come.

Part of the fun of all this is the evening spent coordinating the final attack plan from the library at Grouse Park. One of the guys is taking off early to do a recon sweep of the rivers to see what looks like the best bet. Tomorrow morning we'll be on the trail before first light.

My prediction is an average opening day because it's going to be overcast, but you have to go to know. A couple of years ago we had similar conditions and the fishing was **** until someone tried a glass midge pattern and below average turned into unbelievable in about 5 minutes. Goes to show you never can tell, we went from a couple of fish an hour to about two hours of fish impaling themselves on those glass midges. You just never know, the best way to catch fish never seems to change--just keep fishing.

God, I love trout fishing. I can't imagine a world where the first weekend in March was just like every other.

Good luck to everyone who's going out tomorrow.

Grouse

I can really sense your excitement... I hope you have a great day tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Grafham doesn't open until the 14th.

Graham

Thanks WF. We'll see if I'm still excited tomorrow when I finally drag my sorry out-of-shape butt back to the truck after walking a few miles through the snow.

It'll be hard to top last year as far as an eventful opening day. We started at -15 C and trudged through 24 inches of snow for 2 miles due to a bit of a recon failure. Then a wind came up, blowing up the gorge at 10 gusting to 15. Burrrrrr, that made it a little chilly. I'd climb out of the water and you could just watch the waders freeze stiff within a few seconds.

But it warmed all the way up to +3 by 2 PM and then it sank like a rock again as the sun went back down. So on the way back we were walking on an ice shelf and I heard this "woomph" behind me. I spun around and looked back to see a hole where Kendall had been standing. It's funny to say this now, but there was his hat was floating on the surface in the hole where he just fell in. Holy freaking ####!

So I hit the deck and belly crawled over and just as I got half way to him, he came popping back up. Gawd, talk about shitting yourself, it can freaking happen, believe me. So we dragged him up on the ice and he was hardly even wet. His wading belt had prevented all but a couple of pints of water from getting into his waders, he had a wool sweater on that didn't absorb any water, and other than dumping the water out of his gore-tex pockets and shaking his vest dry, he was fine.

He did mention there was a little shrinkage factor involved in getting dumped in water that cold and I can believe it. There was more than a little pucker factor in watching him go in, I can tell you.

Here's to a boring, uneventful day where we just catch a lot of fish.

Grouse

Get stuck in TFG , Have a good one

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[SIZE="4"]BRITISH BY BIRTH , SCOTTISH BY THE GRACE OF GOD..[/SIZE]

spring!........where!!

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i once went flyfishing and caught a 7 pound bluebottle

Grouse
Have you been on the sauce again?
Before you know it you will be harping on about the old country, voting SNP, eating potato scones and listening to the Corries at full pelt.
Do you want me to send over some Iron Bru for the morning?

Thanks, Buzz. But make sure the Iron Bru gets here before I go to bed at 8:00, would you?

Grouse

Iron bru? You foreigners and your funny drinks. Gimme good old proper Irn Bru any day of the week

Have a great day tomorrow TFG!

Im sure by the time youve pulled the line off your reel, made your first cast itll be like youve never been away from it. Unlike going back to work after a holiday, this will be a most pleasant experience!

[QUOTE=Ping Ping;375931]Gimme good old proper Irn Bru any day of the week

QUOTE]

Sorry it the immigrant in me

Grouse have a belter of a day, can i request some photos of the event? We have a week to wait

Buzz, I was only teasing mate, but you knew that!

ps Do you call Irn Bru 32, Iron Bru 33?

lol