Trout Season Is So Much More Than Just the Catch

April often features the year’s most demented weather patterns as Old Man winter finally and reluctantly releases his grip on Pennsylvania’s valleys, mountains and streams. It can be 75 degrees one day and 38 and rainy the next. Or worse yet, that last snowfall arrives.

April also means the official opening of trout season in Pennsylvania. The first day of trout season may take a backseat to the first day of deer season, and for good reason. There are few fishing tales that can rival legendary deer camp lore.

Living in State College, great fishing is all around us. After sporadic fishing as a kid, I’d always intended to start fishing again as an adult. But time has a way of playing tricks on intentions. Days become years and years turn into decades.

Finally, in the spring of 2012, dealing with life changes and the loss of my father, my friend Mark Battaglia convinced me to try fly-fishing. His passion for the sport was convincing. Often the right person at the right time with the right push gets us to turn intention into action.

That beginning was an event for ClearWater Conservancy. You may not know the work they do, but when you pass a stream, run or creek in our community, chances are ClearWater has made an impact on keeping that water clean and silt-free.

What became evident that day was that passion for fishing runs deeper than just the thrill of the catch. It’s the understanding of our connection to the basic elements of our place in the earth’s ecosystem.

Vance McCullough, now gone but not forgotten, taught us to understand where trout feed and how they avoid predatory threats from the air. They really are amazing creatures. Greg Hoover taught us about insects that form the base component of aquatic life and can signal a stream’s health or its decline. Who knew it was so varied and so important?

Joe Humphreys, ever the showman and artist, demonstrated casting and the fundamentals that build every successful cast on a stream. Mark Belden stood alongside while I landed a beautiful first fish on a fly line. If he hadn’t reminded me to set the hook and keep my line elevated, God knows I’d never have landed that fish or any after that.

That was five years ago. In that time fishing has brought friends together, all of them better at this than I am. But we go and we spend time together. My understanding of wooly buggers, blue wing olives, sulphurs or green drakes is still lacking. Most of the time the trout win; often pitching a shutout.

But fishing is beyond sport. It is therapy, a lesson on life’s balance. In the stream’s ceaseless current the ages can quietly thunder down upon us, reminding us we are but part of a nature’s continuum of the past, present and future. This spring-fed limestone stream flowed through this land before us and shall remain long after our time here has passed.

In those quiet moments, hoping that a fish will rise to the fly, there is the sound of water rushing over rocks, the call of songbirds, a shrill cry from a hawk or an eagle and the rustle in the leaves of a squirrel scurrying past. In that solitude the simplicity of nature’s symphony bring us back to basics, of a smile on your child’s face, the sun’s rays on the water and thoughts of friends or family now gone.

The ridges rise above us and in April the trees’ buds are just starting to push leaves back onto the branches. Birds circle overhead, riding the updrafts. Springs release life-giving waters fueled by rainfall and winter’s melted snow. A hatch of rising flies becomes food for the trout who may become food for birds of prey.

In April we realize that we are so lucky to live in Centre County amid some of this nation’s great trout streams. Go a few miles in any direction and you hit Spring, Spruce, Bald Eagle, Penn’s, Pine, Elk, and Fishing creeks, and one known simply as “The Little J.”

April means the earth wakes up from winter’s slumber to, once again, explode with the life. Today we will be on the stream for an event benefitting the Humphreys Endowment at Penn State. Once again we’ll be reminded of the vital role these waters play in the health of the land where we live.

As spring emerges we’re reminded of life’s rebirth and our place in nature’s eternal show. God’s canvas is ever-changing. It may never be more evident to us that we, too, are a part of that canvas than when we stand in a stream hoping to connect with the electricity that comes when that trout strikes the line.