I mentioned going fishing this weekend. “No,” he quickly replied. “Next weekend is opening day.”

He was right,  from a certain point of view. Opening day for trout ponds is next weekend. But in this state the  vast majority of water had been open since New Year’s  Day, after a  brief hiatus for the fall spawn. Fly fishers had been on rivers and streams for months. With a little creativity, there is a chance to pursue fish 365 days a year.

So yes, there is an opening day. It is nothing like the opening day: what was opening day for generations, what opening day entailed, what opening day meant. If old habits die hard, old beloved traditions hang on for dear life.  For many sportsmen, the plug has been pulled on  the annual anticipation and tradition of opening day.

A lot of the change has come down to the resource and how it is managed. Ducks and deer reproduce at a certain time of the year. Hunters harvest these animals, too. Little is done (as little needs to be done) to augment their populations by state agencies. So there is an opening day for ducks, an opening day for deer, and opening days for virtually all species that are taken on land.

As a consequence, hunters retain a lot of the old ways. There are ten months of wait followed by two months of intense action. Ten months of expectation, and a lot of that is for camp, friends, and an early alarm as much as it is for pulling the trigger.

Without getting too deep in the weeds, the present reality of fisheries management allows anglers to be out doing something twelve months out of the year. In most states, that includes trout fishing. Catch and release on rivers with self-sustaining populations of wild fish might seem like the polar opposite of put-and-take ponds. Yet they both facilitate and entail year-round action. Opening day is unnecessary.

But sometimes unnecessary things can be quite special.

On Pennsylvania’s Letort Spring Run, devoted fly fishers began gathering for an annual “last supper’ on the banks of the fabled creek halfway through the 20th century. Prior to the waters closing for the season, they joined up for food, drink, and an appreciation of another year of wily brown trout caught and missed. Once the commonwealth changed the regulations to allow for fall and winter fishing, the supper lost some of it’s significance. But since the real value was celebrating a special place with special people the tradition  continued.

So while the calendar significance of opening day may have passed into obscurity, there is still value in tradition. A weekend away. A prized bottle of bourbon. An uncomfortable cot and bad coffee. A company of irregular regulars. Pulling all of these elements together with the promise of fishing thrown in for good measure is an idea worth considering. The anticipation for trout may no longer be in the equation, but in fly fishing there is much more to look forward to than a few fish.