Rememorable Opening Days

skeeter

skeeter

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Sep 11, 2006
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Hey all,

This is just a continuation from the "Helping with Stocking" thread that has kinda turned into a discussion about the beauty of what we call opening day! I figured we all can remember the good, the bad and the ugly from opening day. My intentions aren't to bash opening day or those that take part in it, in whatever form they fish it, and rather it is too merely share our experiences. So add your opening day stories:

I will be fishing French Creek in SE PA Saturday morning with my father (bait caster- gotta have Velveeta Cheese). This will be our 9th year at "the spot" and our 16th year fishing French Creek together. I look forward to it every year. We get there at 4 am to secure "our spot" and talk and discuss the finer things of life-“woman and fishing”-more the latter, and recall all our fishing stories which there is one for every year. Most years are great, fish or no fish; it's me, my pops, and sometimes his old buddies who show up with beer and roast beef sandwiches to eat at 6 am. We drink and get merry and it's social, catch up with each other and laugh about the past years.

Anyways, there are a couple of years which still haunt me and I am sure others can relate. In 1992, I was 12 years old and my father and I were in the hunt for the spot for opening day. Well, like any stream on opening day the "circus" was in full effect when we started walking the stream looking for a spot. We got to this one hole and no one was around, so we figured this was it. We sat down on a tarp, start looking over our gear, when a guy in a flannel coat and armed with a beer can approached us. He asked "what are you guys doin?. Well my father ended up replying brashly and the guy pulled a hand-gun from his waist, pointed it at my father, and started talking to us about how it's disrespectful to take other people's spots. He indicated he had marked the area by placing a white bucket over there which was 15' away. So my father and I swiftly left the area and headed to another section of the French.

In the 80's, I was younger and can't quite remember the year, we fished a spot near this bridge. Just before 8 am upstream of this bridge, on the same bank we where on, a group of guys about 5 of them were drinking and racially cussing at these Asian guys across from them on the other bank. Well one thing turned into another and a brawl broke out. One of the a**'s jumped into to the water to swim across and another guy took the bridge and came down the other side of the bridge with a 2x4 and knocked one of the Asian men out cold, he ended up in the water face down floating towards us. My dad ended up getting wet and pulling this guy out. Fists were flying, guys were rolling around in the water, it was insane. Well, eventually the cops showed up and hauled everyone way. After that, I thought I wasn't cut out for fishing, cause I am not much of a fighter.

There are a couple more stories here and there about the "circus", over the years. There has been good times and bad times, but all memorable for one reason or another, and I would never miss it for the world.

If you do go out on opening day, I wish you and yours memories other than fish stories.

~Pat
 
Wow, I have nothing that compares to yours skeeter, but I have some that stick out in my mind.

Good: My sophomore year of college I had my cousin join me for my annual tradition on the Jig. I honestly can't remember how many fish we caught, but all I know is it was just one of those days sharing memories and enjoying the day. The highlight of the day was walking through these ridiiculously high turbulent waters, but man was it worth it. We found a spot where probably 50+ fish got washed down to.

Bad/Ugly: Freshmen year of high school, once again fishing the Jig. This time with a good buddy of mine. We decided to fish one of the more popular areas, because the other areas didn't get stocked very well based upon our day before scouting. Well we got to our spots at like 6:30, with almost no one around. I was sitting at the juncture of two streams on a sandbar. Well at 7:55 here come two idiots walking right into the stream about 10 yards below me. At the "bell" everyone starts and I think I caught 3 straight on my 3 first casts and apparently these guys saw enough and stepped right in front me and into the middle of the pool. I yelled some stuff I wouldn't repeat to very many people and they just looked at me and said "tough ___". I had a pretty bad temper in those days and I was now the one that had enough so I tied on a treble hook and a split shot, no bait. I casted it right out in front of them and as I brought it past them I set the hook about as hard as I could. The guy starts screaming, turns out I put it right above his hip boot and into his leg. So now this guy is madddddd and he starts telling me he's gonna kick my rear. Ok now I'm 12 years old and he's like 35+. The dude starts chasing me up the stream bank and out of nowhere some guy comes and lays this guy out. Apparently the guy above me saw the whole thing and knew the situation so he came and helped me out. I knew right there it was time to get my friend and get the heck out of there. The rest of the day was so much more peaceful and my friend and I still laugh about it to this day.

Clearly I've learned my lesson and haven't done anything like that to this day, but something just snapped in me that day.
 
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