Trout Season on Prince Edward Island

Many years have past since I actually went out on a cold spring morning to observe this rite of spring. In fact, I cannot remember the last time. Year after year I had planned this event with my son in Pennsylvania. I think we last came close in the spring of 2007 at Clark's Creek just before my ever-predictable return to this island.

I attended a friends funeral here on the Tuesday before our fishing season started. My friend Lloyd from our local legion was 74, and a well know local fiddler. We would sit and chat about mostly religion among the artifacts of war drinking draft Canadian beer. While Mary and I were in church on maundy Thursday, Lloyds wife Shirley waited and Lloyd never came to church where she was to meet him. She found him dead on the living room sofa, after returning home concerned. Lloyd was never late for mass at St. Paul's.

The funeral was the Catholic rite of internment and a high mass. It was nice to attend the sacraments again, but I will miss my friend. The tears welled with memories of past losses of all kinds, and thoughts of the future losses to come. Now I feel part of the town. I had been to such events before, but not for someone that I knew well. The funeral included fiddling and I felt close to home, somewhere west of Harrisburg, in a mountain halla or maybe at the Oriental Hotel in Juniata county.

Those events set the stage for trout season here. The dark calm morning was icy cold with some snow on the ground and calm winds. I left at 5 AM as the season begins at 6:00. The selected spot a few miles East of Summerside on the upper Wilmot River, near an place called Marshbank's pond. The Wilmont empties into the sea about 4 miles below my spot and is straight and wild as it mixes into the salt of Summerside harbour. I could barely see, but parked by a bridge and walked down to the small stream. It was clear with a brownish bottom and some debris. The spot reminds me of the Yellow Breeches near New Cumberland. It isn't all that wild at that point, there are summer cabins and trailers, reminiscent of the rest of Appalachia.

A few cold bodies waited nearby as the crescent moon dropped lower opposite the planet Mercury in a bright frigid azure sky, Mercury shining as the morning star afore the rising sun. The folks spoke in muffled tones of how good the river is, and how they had caught big sea-run trout here over the years. We all cast (all 4 of us) at 6 AM and waited as the sun stubbornly climbed and our toes numbed. The young fellow with his brother and grandma across from me caught a small trout about 6:15. Ice formed on my rod tippet as the line was retrieved. I cast and drifted bait for 2 hours and with no fish, then sat in the Blazer and recorded in my audio diary.

The water is simply too cold, and most trout arrive here later in the spring. Later, I fished the nearby pond with no results. I don't feel too bad-that one trout was the only one caught that I witnessed.

One thing I found odd was that the island has no "non-resident" fishing licence. We all pay 30 bucks, unless we want to fish for salmon and pay an extra fee. All salmon fishing here is catch and release.

I also realized in my hasty departure from Pennsylvania, I left my small lure box in my son's car. I also have his rod and vest. So I will probably move from bait fishing to fly-rod as the weather warms, unless I get a few spinning lures here.

This day after the season opener is cold and breezy and bright. The air will remain cool another month or longer until the surrounding icy sea warms from the strengthening spring sunshine. I have many other streams here and ponds to explore. But it just isn't home nor the same without my boy along. I just have to pretend that I am that teenager that I was with my first car, before my first girl was in my life-driving around with my rod looking for meaning in a stream or on the rural roads.

I admit to being a bit homesick at this time of year. But I will probably remain on the island a
while this time. Life is easier to deal with here for me. But I miss my family and the pain remains vivid of yet another futile attempt to be with family and haunts. So as the lonely roving fisherman of the Pennsylvania back-roads found in the 1970's, I will find here places that can fill the void, maybe catch a fish and kiss a girl-attend the mass, and try to make sense of the issues of the day, both mine and the desperate pursuits that drive the people in the real world-far from this place. Far from my island. The rite of spring, a rite of life.