Opening days and opening dreams

Opening days don't quite have the same significance in Oregon as they did back home in Michigan.

In Michigan, with the exception of a few select rivers, trout fishing was strictly closed in the winter. The opener is celebrated like New Year's Day: feasting, toasts, and general optimism. Yellowstone Park has a similar hard deadline. Are we lined up like shoppers at a WalMart, for fishing's Black Friday? No. But it's a real moment, something I daydream (and night-dream) about. Something to anticipate. And, everything's better in the anticipation. My casting is right on the money. There's always a nice fish where I expect it. I'm younger, fitter, and better looking, and nothing occupies my mind but fishing.

Oregon's west side, basically a third of the state, opened on May 22. There are enough year-round rivers here that you don't ever have to stop trout fishing. But what's legal now are the small streams, the unnamed stretches, the places only an explorer would look. That's what's available.

I went up with a buddy over the long weekend. We covered a lot of ground, some old, some new and caught two species across three rivers in the same drainage. We planned out a half-dozen different trips to water we'd fished before, and water we'd only heard about.

New year's resolutions rarely work. But what about setting some new season's intentions? My new season's intention: explore more, share more, here, with you. What's yours?