Traditions Never Die

Though several months removed, the trip is still seared in memory and the smell of wood smoke clings to my gear. While a recap from our annual Opening Day celebration is long overdue, sifting through photos from that weekend brought me right back and had me itching for more.

Traditions never die, but they do evolve. Our trip is a hell of a lot less about fishing now than when it started decades ago. It's pretty evident that we spend way more time swapping stories and eating good food around the fire than we do making drifts for trout. I'm not bothered by that. I still love fly fishing and the Farmington River, but when the third weekend of April rolls around, and I get a little time off from work and dad duties, I'm taking it slow and soaking it all in. 

This evolution doesn't change the fact that, come hell or high water, we'll be back celebrating each spring for as long as we're physically able to. It's my favorite weekend of the year by far and something I look forward to introducing my own kids to when the time is right. If they love it half as much as we do, the future of this tradition is bright.

Opening Daze: A celebration of trout & tradition

Anyone who knows me well knows that the days surrounding the third Saturday in April are some of my favorite of the year. For more than 20 years now, I've spent that long weekend with my uncle and a seasoned crew of friends on the banks of the Farmington River camping, cooking and fishing. It's a tradition-heavy weekend filled with unparalleled food and camaraderie. This year, instead of a typical recap post, I put together a highlight reel of footage I've filmed over the last few Opening Day trips. I hope it gives you a good idea of why we look forward to this weekend all year long.

Link to video on YouTube

Third Saturday In April

So much about our Opening Day tradition has changed since I first joined my uncle more than 20 years ago. The location, the duration, the crew, even the fishing regulations—they all evolved over time. In the early years we stayed on a state-owned property along the river with dozens of others for one wild night before the third Saturday of April. With that site long since shut down, we now stay on a private piece of land miles from the river with a small and seasoned group for three memorable nights. We have added on days, lost a crucial participant, and gained others. Virtually the entire river is now open to fishing before Opening Day. The State even moved trout season up a week, yet there was no question within our group about whether or not to stick with the traditional weekend.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. The gathering of friends. The reunion around the camp fire. The celebration of spring. The serenade of peeper frogs. The patter of rain on the tent. The smell of wood smoke. The morning dew on the rain fly. The hum of the Northstar lanterns. The swilling of whiskey in camp chairs. The fire-cooked steaks. The waders drying on Russian Olives. The rigging of fly rods on tailgates. The whittling of walking sticks. The cigars on the riverbank. The prepping of cheese spreads with grandfather’s KA-BAR. The crackling of the late night fire. The chill when you step away from it. The rehashing of stories I’ve heard for years. I’m thankful those things haven’t changed.

When I first started going on this trip, the weekend was something I circled on the calendar months in advance. When that Friday morning finally came, I’d wait by the front door for my uncle’s red Mitsubishi Mighty Max pickup to pull in the driveway. My pile of gear was pathetic—pretty much everything I used was loaned to me from fishing rods to sleeping bags. As we drove north on Route 8, we may as well have been on a logging road in the Moosehead region. We were so unplugged from the real world. It was so different than what my friends were doing back home. For better or worse, those trips exposed me to food, language, behavior, and fishing techniques that a Connecticut kid in the 90’s would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

Now with over two decades of Opening Day weekends in the books, inside I’m still that excited kid making mental notes of the trip months in advance. While the world got a lot smaller since those first years, in a way it still feels like I’m cut off from the rest of civilization when I’m in the woods for those three nights. A temporary reprieve from responsibilities at home and in the office. And we’ll keep going that third weekend in April so long as we are physically able to do so. Carrying that Opening Day torch and passing it on to our children and their children along the way. It’s tradition after all. 

Opening Day Revisited

I realize mayfly hatches and cooking around a campfire are not things most people think about this time of year, but somehow I got a bit sidetracked this past spring and never put up our annual post from Opening Day (see the past few years here: 2013, 2012 & 2011). Well, we sure as hell didn't skip it! We had a another kick ass weekend in the woods, heavy on eating and drinking and light on fishing. One cool thing about waiting until December to put this up is that just a few months of ice fishing separate us from this wonderful spring tradition again. For those that hate winter, perhaps the photos below will help pass the time a little easier.

Opening Daze 2011

As the smell of campfire smoke still lingers on my gear, I'm trying to acclimate back to reality.  My favorite weekend of the year has come and gone once again.  I had a hell of a time along the Farmington River for three nights and four days with good friends.  The underlying reason we go on this annual excursion is for the traditional opening of Connecticut's trout season, yet fishing usually takes a backseat to camping, relaxing and eating like kings - and that's just fine by us.  I sometimes joke with my wife that when we have kids someday, she should pray that they don't enter this world on the third weekend in April, for I'll have a tough decision to make.  For me, the tradition stretches almost 20 years now.  For my uncle who started it for us, it's almost double that.  The group is close-knit band of anglers that, come hell or high water, get together every year on this weekend.



Photo credit: Aaron Swanson

 

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson

Thursday was spent stacking fire wood, making camp, catching up, relaxing, and shopping for food and any last-minute fishing supplies.  The weekend meals started strong and never looked back.  That night we had a great codfish, rice and asparagus dinner and told lies around a well-stoked fire.  We had a hearty breakfast in the morning, rigged our rods and were on the water by noon.  Fishing was restricted to a catch and release area on Friday, but at least we knew there were quality fish in every run we hit.  Without consisent surface activity, it all nymphing all the time.  Action wasn't on fire by any means.  My uncle lost a beast of a brown after a long fight and the group scored a handful of stockers.  Aaron salvaged the afternoon by nymphing up two nice holdover brown trout from fast water.

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson

Back around the fire that night, the Guinness and single malt flowed generously as we rehatched the day and planned the next.  The annual cheese and cracker spread and fresh top neck clams from Long Island Sound were tough acts to follow.  However, the showcase dinner of the trip was next and consisted of fire-grilled steaks, steamed brocoli, and baked potatoes that were buried in hot coals for an hour.  Rightly so, good food and drink are such an integral part of the weekend.

On Saturday morning at 6 AM, I was woken by the official siren announcing the start of the season.  We wouldn't be on the water for a few more hours; there were bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches to make and a camp that needed tightening up before the forecasted monsoon coming our way.  The river was still where we had left it and we weren't bound by a catch and release area anymore.  To our surprise, there wasn't a soul at the familiar run we visit every year on this day.  The fishing remained spotty, but a handful of feisty rainbow trout fell to a smattering of nymph patterns like golden stones, pheasant tails, princes, and green caddis larvae. 

We soon changed locations and found a pod of fish that sealed the deal for an epic weekend.  One small pool produced five trout in a relatively short time, and three of those hadn't seen a stocking truck in a while.  Aaron was up first and got a stocker rainbow out of the way on his first drift and lamented that he wasted his turn on it - he was right.  I was up next and stuck a holdover brown on my second drift using a size #16 pheasant tail, mimicking the hendrickson nymphs found in our seine samples.  It turned out to be my best fish of the weekend and I was more than happy.  Derrick's turn produced a rainbow trout unlike any other we caught over the weekend; it was in top notch condition.  My uncle then plucked another stocker before the next few anglers lost rigs to structure.  When it was my uncle's turn again, he hooked what he briefly thought was a log until it started to move.  The fight that ensued was a heavy weight battle that lasted for a couple long minutes.  Derrick eventually netted the beast that was dubbed 'Tollbooth Willy'.  It was a phenomenal brown trout that had a great story to go with it.  It was not only the best fish of the trip, but of the last several opening days.  It was an awesome moment to have the whole group experience the catch and release of a specimen like that with no one else around. 

 

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson



  

Rain started to fall and everyone knew it wouldn't stop until morning.  We pressed on to yet another pool void of anglers and Derrick came tight to a fish that had been in the river for a while.  It was a beautiful brown trout that ended the fishing portion of the weekend on a high note.  The weather however, soon took a real turn for the worse.  The thermometer fell into the 30's, the wind started to howl, and the rain came down in buckets.  I won't mention names, but it was gnarly enough out there to make two of the group leave camp, and then there were three.  Natural casing hotdogs cooked over a 40-year-old Coleman grill was the last dinner of the weekend.  We kept the fire roaring and hunkered under a pop-up tent that was worth its weight in gold.  The last of the scotch gave us false warmth and a little after midnight, we crawled into our tents and hoped they would be up to the task.  By morning, it had rained over two inches and rendered the river unfishable, even though that really wasn't on the docket anyway.  Some water infiltrated the tents, but we were in good shape considering.  Drying our gear, slowly breaking down camp and eating the rest of the food filled our last day of the trip.  Each of us spends a good amount of time fishing throughout the year, yet not nearly enough camping.  There will be plenty of all-day benders on the river over the weeks to come, but it will be another year before we have a weekend like that again.  That's why we savor camp life.  

 

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson