Back Cast

It’s lost on a generation and then some that North Dakota once had a fishing opener, an anticipated event the first Saturday in May that crowded anglers within a short cast of one another along the banks of waters that held stocked trout, native pike and other fish.

Nostalgia aside, it’s unlikely anglers are pining for the past as they were gifted more than three decades ago the opportunity to fish year-round. Today, you renew your fishing license on April 1 and it’s good until March 31 of the following year.

I think the expectation; the hope of a coming season opener is good for the soul. While we don’t get that with fishing in North Dakota anymore, we get our fix with the promised openings for upland birds, deer and other wild game.

I know this is a tired, overused example — nonetheless true because it holds water — but I can walk into a room today full purpose, on mission, and just as quickly forget what I’m doing there. Yet I can still remember opening day of fishing season 50-plus years ago as a wet-behind-the-ears angler who had lost nights of sleep in anticipation of wet-wading into the creek in high top sneakers to dap a worm next to a sunken log I couldn’t reach from the bank.

I remember the fishing rod I used for years before graduating to a hand-me-down rod from Dad that was the color of a shiny UPS truck. My multi-pocketed, canvas fishing creel was green, stained and smelled like old fish, worms and dead grass, and was never allowed in the house. In any of the pockets I could find bare hooks, lead split shot, a jar of orange fish eggs, pocketknife, pliers and a snakebit kit I didn’t know how to use but thought it was cool to carry around.

A black, 12-inch ruler was also stenciled on the front of the creel to measure what I caught. Seldom did fish tape out at a foot long from that small creek that was too wide to jump across in most spots, but not by much.

These seminal memories stuck with me because they were important and shaped me at the time without even knowing it. Adventures from the outdoors, no matter how grand, have had a way of doing that.

While I know for a fact that I walked across a gymnasium stage 50 miles from that little creek years later to shake someone’s hand to receive my high school diploma, I don’t remember it.

What stuck was Dad and I deciding at breakfast around a campfire at fish camp who would go upstream and who would go down, followed by him telling me to catch some fish, not to fall in and drown, and to remember our deal about not telling Mom when we got home that he never let me out of his sight.

Honestly, I remember living up to all of those.