Wildside - Trout Fishing Opening Day 2009-2010

Wildside - Young & Hungry

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Young & Hungry, Nelson Mail, 10 October 2009
 

The opening of the fishing season is a great day for renewing friendships and reminiscing.

❞ We all had a blast. I enjoyed spending time with my boys, explaining all manner of things as we quietly stalked upriver.

Unforgettable: Ike and Jake Mirfin with a brown trout caught on opening day 2009.
Photo: ZANE MIRFIN

OPENING day of the trout fishing season has always been one of the highlights of the outdoor calendar. Every year on October 1, thousands of hopeful anglers venture forth, rain or shine, in the hope of catching an easy trout or two.

Part of the attraction is to get out after a long winter cooped up inside, fantasising about clear rivers and new equipment to test. It’s also a great time to celebrate the arrival of spring with the onset of warm, sunny days, green grass, spring lambs and budding willow trees dotting the sinuous curves of the waterways.

Then there are the trout, lean and hungry after a tough winter of spawning and cold waters. Most anglers get excited about visiting favourite locations to see what populations of trout are in residence for the coming season and to target fish that haven’t encountered anglers for at least five months. Opening day can be the worst day of the year to go fishing if you like solitude, but it draws anglers back again and again with a siren call that non-anglers will never understand.

This year, we ventured forth on a family effort with family friend Steve Burns and his son, Tate, aged 4 1⁄2. My two boys, Jake, nine, and Ike, seven, were keen to go on their first opening day, too, and were wide awake at the first blast of the alarm clock at 5.15am.

The Burns and Mirfin families have been friends as long as I can remember. Our fathers, Neville and Stuart, were hunting buddies long before we ever did family stuff together, and the three Burns boys and two Mirfin lads have great memories of many days over many decades of fishing and hunting together.

This year, opening day was even more special because Neville had died last Christmas.  Neville was a fantastic man, the epitome of enthusiasm, and he had a wonderful sense of humour. He was a great friend, mentor and role model to many young men, including the Mirfins.

Last year, on the eve of opening day for 2008, Neville phoned me to fine-tune the details about taking his grandson,
Tate, and my boy, Ike, fishing, but I had bad news for him. The weather forecast was abysmal – snow, rain and
freezing polar blasts. ‘‘We’ll go,’’ said Neville enthusiastically.  ‘‘It’ll be good.’’

I talked Neville out of going that day – too far to go in bad weather. The kids would get wet and cold. Fishing would be
a waste of time, etc.

All sensible comments, but I was really stupid and I have kicked myself ever since that Neville and I never got to fish
together again. I had broken my golden rule that if you get asked on a hunting and fishing trip, you should go. So opening day 2009, Steve and I were going to go fishing with our boys, come hell or high water.

We went early, and to our delight, Neville’s favourite opening-day fishing location was all ours. We decided to split up, with Steve and Tate heading for one branch of the river and the Mirfins fishing another, agreeing to meet up at lunchtime by the vehicle.

We all had a blast. I enjoyed spending time with my boys, explaining all manner of things as we quietly stalked upriver.

We had to navigate fences, inflowing creeks, prickly bushes and mud puddles. The fishing was slow, but I was able
to keep the boys interested as they learnt outdoor lessons along the way and I kept my eyes on the water.

We saw a few fish, but they weren’t doing much. The moon phase was poor and the water very cold. Close to lunchtime, we retreated to the car fishless, my tail between my legs.

Steve and Tate had not returned, so the boys practised casting with their spinning rod. I was impressed at how much
the boys had improved from earlier attempts – and out of the corner of my eye, upstream in a pool we had fished earlier, I finally spied a feeding trout, swinging from side to side in the current. This was more like it, and my cast furled out, straight and true like a lover’s kiss. The fly sank home, the rod bent and bucked, and that magic feeling that makes trout fishing so addictive signalled that the fishing season had finally begun.

Ike took over the rod and fought the fish with sore arms until he finally had it flapping in the shallows, while Jake managed to net the fish on his third attempt. The boys were jubilant, but when I suggested releasing the 2kg jack, both were close to tears as they insisted we take it home. ‘‘OK,’’ I said, ‘‘but you’ll have to kill and gut it.’’ So we had a lesson on how to clean a fish and ended up looking at all the various bugs in the gullet that the fish had been eating. Ike even pulled out a freshly eaten mouse from inside the trout.

Soon, Steve and Tate were back with a tale of woe about a lost fish, but not much else. It didn’t matter. The three boys had a great time together, playing on the edge of the river while Steve cooked sausages on a gas cooker for lunch.

It was just like the old days, a generation before, as boys with the names Burns and Mirfin soaked up outdoor memories and experiences that would stand them in good stead for life in the years ahead.

In my experience, opening day has never been a good time to catch a lot of fish, but it is always a great day to renew friendships, revisit favourite places and remember old friends. I can’t wait until next year to do it all again.

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