New York State Opener 2012

This being the first blog entry in a very, very long time; I figure it to be relatively suiting that this is a story about my first day on the water this season for the New York trout opener. My buddy Shawn and I planned to fish a stretch that we had figured to be about a six hour float. Most people don't float this stretch of river, and it proved to be a wise move as every inch of river that could be accessed by foot, was. From the state line to our put-in there were throngs of fisherman lining the banks every place you could see the river from the road. We heard later that some buddies had to head significantly further downstream than planned to find open water. So, we decided to start relatively early (meet at 8:30 to be on the water at 9:30). This timing would put us home early to happy wives. This being April Fool's day and all,

we ended up being late in the evening despite our early departure.
First, we had some obligatory early season trailer diagnostics...

Once we had that (mostly) sorted, it was off to the empire state.

So, we hit the water at about 11...it was a very overcast day, yet warmer than I had anticipated. This particular spot often times is discolored quite significantly and hard to read, especially hard to spot fish. Relatively speaking, it was pretty clear. We didn't have to go far to find some good water that Shawn says holds big fish. The spot looked super-fishy; it looked like "big fish water" as Shawn said several times throughout the day. Anyway, we pounded the entire stretch...went through every possible spot with every streamer in the box...different tips, different depth, speed, every possible variable was changed over and over.

No fish.

We moved down river, scratching our heads. We quickly found another great stretch...great run into a big pool with a nice tail out with good cover structure at the end. We started hitting them at the top of the tail out...

(they like the chartreuse cone head)

Shawn with a very nice brown.

Texting while driving.

We got into quite a few fish over the next several hours. All good fish, all browns from 15-21". All wild fish.
I have to thank Shawn for the superman-style rowing over the last 40 minutes of the trip...we got distracted by fish near the top of the float and by the time we realized that we were late, we had to hump outta there. All in all, opening day 2012 was the most productive opening day showing I have ever had in the northeast.
Even if we hadn't had the luck of the trout gods, it was a great opening day with great company out on the water.
Afterward, what do you have to drink when in upstate NY on opening day of trout season? Why a Genny, of course.

See you next time.
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