Trout season in Michigan opened Saturday, April 28 in the UP, and I was there.
In my 50 years of opening trout seasons, only one other matched this one. All four of us caught our limits.
All four of us included Tim Davidson, Bob Offer and son Jim, remained modest, un-boastful, humble, and, er, ah? yeah, right.
We toasted our success repeatedly. Texting (not by me), e-mails (not by me) and phone calls (again not by me) reported our achievements (no luck involved here) to multiple friends and relatives who didn’t really care.
We are all spin-casting fishermen, not fly fishermen. We did not communicate our lure brand, technique or even stay within sight of each other the first several hours.
From the headline in this Jottings you learned the topic. And now, if you’re still with me, you are alerted that fishing comments will continue.
We fished stocked ponds on Hiawatha Sportmans Club near Engadine, 50 miles west of the bridge. Elsewhere, on one pond was as 10-year-old boy fishing with nightcrawlers, who was about as successful as we experienced fishermen (with lures that caught our eyes in the stores and not necessarily a fish’s eye).
Frankly, I haven’t bought a new lure in years. No need to. There’s no more space in my four-drawer, 22-pound tackle box which has four spinning reels.
I stayed with my experienced lures, those that have failed me year after year. Some are stone-scarred, some rusty and bent, and some, like glistening Flat Fish, have remained unused for years.
Hate Flat Fish, they wobble a lot, but I don’t believe they lure.
My favorite trout lures are Dare Devils, Little Cleos, Rapalas, Mepps and Johnson Silver Minnows. I don’t think any of them ever caught a fish, but Little Cleo has a Hawaiian hula dancer logo.
I use her a lot. It’s stimulating.
So, with our limit achieved in the morning, I took my fold-up chair to the banks of one of the ponds in the afternoon.
Two casts with a Dare Devil and I landed a nice trout. So, I changed lures to a colorful spoon. Same thing, two cast and another trout.
I did that three more times with another colorful spoon, a Mepps, a Rooster Tail and Little Cleo. Same experience proved to myself again, it ain’t the lure, it’s the inexperienced, well-fed trout that haven’t been exposed to shoreline killers.
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It’s the first time I’ve experienced a catch and release program, and the law made me do it. (That and three guys who would rat on Apostles if they were in a fishing contest.)
Is there a lot more coverage of potential vice presidential offerings this year than ever before?
Who cares at this point who the vice presidential candidate is for the Republicans? Seeing the vice president we have now with more baggage than a cross-country passenger train, why even mention a GOP choice?
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Okay, a little more about our trout fishing and I’m through. I mentioned my lucky lure being Little Cleo, Bob’s was the Five of Diamonds, a yellow spoon with five red diamonds.
Both Tim and Jim caught most on yellow and red spoons, but they couldn’t remember the names. That’s typical and expected from people who fish. They have memory gaps when asked to name their lures, but can always remember it’s not their time to buy.