Opening Day tomorrow

On the drive to work this morning, it was snowing pretty hard.  Last year, the day before trout season opened, the roads were slick with ice and we saw numerous accidents on the way to work.  Two years ago, I remember having ice in my rod guides on opening morning.  Three years ago, we had freezing rain the night before the season opened, and I had just had my snow tires removed.  What should have been a 45 minute drive home (my son and I had just seen the International Fly Fishing Film Tour in Middlebury) took almost 2 hours, going way out of our way to find clear roads.

So, it's April in VT, and once again, our season will open before the fish are really active.  But, like always, I'll be out there.  And for the fourth year in a row, I'll be fishing in an opening weekend fly fishing tournament - The Otter Creek Classic.  It remains a goal of mine to catch just one fish in this tournament, one of these years.  I've been skunked every previous time I've participated.

I'm not expecting much different this year.  We had some pretty heavy rain last night, and one of the places I was hoping to fish is likely going to be very tough to wade.  Plus, I had some real issues with my wading boots last night.  I use Patagonia's Foot Tractors and it was time to replace the aluminum bars on the bottom of the boots.  I ordered the replacement kit, but really struggled to get the old bars off the boots.  The screws are rusty, the allen head wrench that Patagonia sent to me is cheap, and both the wrench and the screws were getting stripped last night.  I only managed to replace one of the 10 bars on my boots.  I'm going to try it again tonight with a power drill and see if I have better luck.  I'll use a hacksaw to turn the wrench into a "bit" and then hopefully the drill can generate the pressure and torque to remove the old screws.  When I've gotten the old screws out, the new ones have installed easily.

I rigged both of my rods last night.  My nymphing rod is set up with a small woolly bugger, a San Juan worm and a Prince nymph, on a Rio Euro Nymphing leader.  My 4 weight is set up similarly, but with a sinking leader to try to get more depth.

My 5 weight that I would normally use for streamers is currently at Sage, being repaired, so I'll use my backup 5 weight if I need to strip streamers.

Because I spend the winter having chemo and then had some pretty invasive abdominal surgery just 4 weeks ago, I will not fish all day both days of the tournament.  I simply don't have the endurance to do that safely right now.  With the rain we had yesterday, I'm guessing the water will be high and off color.  So, wading will be a bit more treacherous than later in the year, but probably better than opening day last year, when I had to walk across ice shelves to reach the water in a few locations.

I have to say that I wish I was a bit healthier and up to fishing all day.  I've been dealing with illness, finally diagnosed as liposarcoma, for close to a year now.  After this latest surgery, my body should be cancer-free, at least for now.  Liposarcoma is a tough disease though, and it recurs frequently.  If I'm lucky, I'll be able to fish a lot this year and not spend any days in hospitals.  Since last Thanksgiving, I've spent close to 4 weeks as an inpatient, I'm ready to get back to living my life normally, which includes lots of fly fishing.