Rituals.

Rituals differ from family to family, person to person.  What some deem important, others have never heard of.  Nowadays, rituals tend to suffer the same ADD fate as may other things that we used to do.  Sunday dinners with family, going to church regularly, visits to grandmas house.  But for us, one of the constants has been the Opening Day of Trout season.

Rhode Island is far from the trout capital of the world.  Truth be told, most of the population is "put and take". Farm fish. Put there for the average joe to go out, put some power bait on a hook, and go home with a fish dinner.  Everyone feels like a fisherman.  If you can't catch fish on opening day, somethings up.

Some of my earliest memories, and some of my most memorable ones, have been on Opening day.  As a child, I was marched out on the second Saturday of April,  bundled up with layer upon layer, and armed with an old green Stanley thermos full of hot chocolate in search of some fish.  More often than not, the day was about 30 minutes of fishing, and then exploring the area, drinking my hot chocolate, and dealing with varying levels of cold from repeated near catastrophic falls into the water.

Almost without exception, the second saturday is a cold, clear, still morning.  Many years the water has been so cold that ice has clogged the eyes of the rod; sometimes freezing the line in place.

But, cold or not, the fish, and the fisherman return.  The small mill pond that we have frequented for the last 25 years or so sees the same visitors year after year.  Most people I don't know, other than for the one morning a year that we stand in close proximity, trading a polite hello, and chatting about fish.  There is always a guy who trips on the same rock as we wade into the water; another who always tangles his line in the tree overhead.  The people vary, but the rock and tree claim their yearly victims.  Howie Ogert, a local, has been fishing there every year since I have; and every year we chat briefly about the fishing, and about his deteriorating health, which has left him blind in one eye; and limited to fishing from the shore.  Tom Hopkins, of the Hopkinses for which the pond is named; comes by, but doesn't fish.  I often wonder if he comes by to see if people are having a good time in the pond his family worked for generations.  Even my father, acquiescing to time's constant march, has taken to using a walking stick; although we give him endless grief about it.

Opening day also gives me a chance to knock the dust off my old fly rod.  A 5 weight Sage rod, I have had the same rod for the past 15 years or so.  It has a small nick in the cork handle, but other than that, it is in the same shape since I received it as a birthday gift.  Rods, fly rods especially, tend to grow on you, and become increasingly more "comfortable" as time goes on.  I can't imagine not using this rod, and I don't quite know what I will do if or when the time comes to replace it.  The line is not quite that old, but certainly shouldn't be trusted past its yearly duties.  

The fishing itself is a pretty normal affair.  We always keep track of who caught how many and the most.  Is there any other way??  When the fishing slows down, our patience wear thin, and we start swapping out flies until we get another hit.

Truth be told, if we just kept fishing, I doubt our catch numbers would change much, but such is the nature of fishing.  There are practical jokes, usually perpetrated by yours truly, constant ribbing, and plenty of laughs.

The years pass, things change, and we all get older; but opening day will always be there.  As will I and my family.