Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 10, 1994                   TAG: 9410140015
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL CALHOUN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SHOULD WE KEEP OPENING DAY?

If approved, the year-round season will encourage a giant step forward in fishing ethics and aesthetics by putting an end to the travesty of opening day. This annual event masquerades as trout fishing; it could be more accurately described as a stream-going carnival.

No, these are not the words of some radical elitist, for I had a decidedly nonelitist introduction to trout fishing.

Back when I was a kid just learning about fishing, I counted the weeks to opening day. In those days, as I recall, fishing started at noon on the first Saturday in April. My father would negotiate a half-day off from work, load the gear into our battered, green '52 Chevy, and drive us to the Roanoke River.

There we would stand shoulder to shoulder with droves of fishermen, casting corn, chunks of cheese and other unnatural baits into the swirling waters at what we called the "low-water dam," just across the railroad tracks from Salem.

Yes, it was fun. And yes, I caught trout.

Of course, you had to be seriously incompetent not to catch those trout. Typical of opening day trout, they had been snatched away from their hatchery feedings only days earlier and had learned little about stream survival. They were probably hungry enough to bite at anything that floated past.

At the time, I felt quite the angler. In retrospect, I was learning nothing about fishing. Nothing about patience, the joys of solitude, the workings of the natural world and how they relate to the skills needed to lure a wary, stream-wise trout to its natural prey or an artificial imitation.

To me, that is one of the many negative aspects of opening day, and a major reason I will be happy to see it go.

Trout fishing has the potential to be an enriching, educational experience. Teach a son or daughter about the natural foods trout feed on, and the child begins to learn about the importance of water quality and how it affects the mayflies, caddis flies, dace and other small organisms that are part of the stream ecosystem.

What does a child learn from catching freshly stocked trout on canned corn or pink marshmallows? From being praised for taking a limit as quickly as possible? From watching grown men curse and threaten each other over the possession of a 10-inch trout tangled in both their lines? There are exceptions, but for the most part that is what opening day represents - the epitome of the "whack 'em and stack 'em" mentality that cheapens too many outdoors sporting pursuits.

Unfortunately, I don't have the space to even begin to tackle a number of other related subjects:

nThe litter left by opening day crowds.

nThe law-breakers who sneak to the streams and catch as many trout as possible before the season opens.

nThe basic unfairness of ever-increasing license fees that apply to all trout fishermen, even those of us don't pursue stocked fish. (Many of us fish exclusively for wild trout, which we catch and release unharmed, yet we pay the same license fees as people who catch and keep as many hatchery-reared fish as they can.)

While I fervently support outdoors activities, I also believe it is essential to consider the realities of modern day economics.

There are a number of privately owned, pay-to-fish facilities in the region that cater to people who want to catch as many trout as possible, as quickly as possible, and keep them all. The rest of us, however, shouldn't have to subsidize such practices by sacrificing quality time on public waters and being forced - through escalating license fees - to help pay the bill for that type of fishing.

Paul Calhoun is a writer-photographer who lives in Salem.