15 ~ Homage to opening day
Last Saturday morning I was in the car at 4 am, heading west, deeper into the Driftless Area. I love driving through the Wisconsin countryside at this hour - nearly alone on the quiet roads, watching the night lift as the day world slowly comes alive. By 5:30, I was pulling on waders in the soft early light near a favorite stream, for opening day of the Wisconsin trout season.
My hope was to take home a trout or two. I’m not much of a catch-and-release guy. I don’t have a feel for the point (and neither do many biologists – studies show that sport fishing has only a minor impact on trout populations, far less than water quality, weather events and the sum of other predators such as herons and kingfishers). I prefer to immerse myself more deeply in the circle of life. In some religious traditions the body of the Son of God is consumed, and so eating a trout seems acceptably small by comparison.
That said, I’m committed to a ritual of returning to the water the first trout of the season. A sort of celebratory pardon. It’s also an acknowledgement and reminder that this circle of life is not just about taking, taking from the Earth, and that it needs to be an exchange.
Late in the morning my rod tip finally bent and vibrated from an intensity of life at the other end of the line, and a nice brook trout was soon flapping in my net. It wasn’t a trophy by any normal standard, but it was nonetheless the biggest brookie of my comparatively brief career in trout.
If there is a more beautiful thing in this world than a brook trout, I don’t know it. Luminescent yellow spots stretch along its dark green flanks, above a deep orange belly - like the night sky meeting a sunrise. Imitation or interpretation by art can enhance many things (think Monet’s haystacks), but it would be a stretch to imagine art adding anything to the masterpiece that is a brook trout. Catching a brookie is like pulling a constellation from the water. And it carries a similar sense of sacrilege; if you don’t feel both grief and gratitude at killing a brook trout, then some soul work might be in order.
I also find allure in both the wildness and delicate refinement of a brook trout. Brookies are the original native, wild trout of Wisconsin and the Driftless Area (browns and rainbows being later imports). They are also the smallest trout here, and the one most adapted to and reliant on very clear, clean, ‘wild’ water. They avoid manhandled, sluggish streams (a brook trout’s scientific species name, fontinalis, comes from the Latin for "of a spring or fountain"). The Audrey Hepburn of fish.
As promised, I released that beautiful first brookie back to its pool – a worthy down payment on the season ahead. And, as it turned out, on the day. Seven more trout followed to my net, of which I kept my legal limit of five - three browns and two more brookies. I am sorry I don’t have a photo to share. At streamside I didn’t take any in time. A brook trout’s beauty is as fleeting as it is intense, and fading starts within minutes out of the water. As life leaves a brook trout, its brilliance quickly follows.
Back home, I took Communion. After putting the two largest fish, both browns, in the freezer, I dusted the two brook trout and the last brown with flour and a pinch of salt. Another of the brookie’s many attributes is its reputation as among the best tasting trout, so keeping it simple was in order here: the floured trout into a pan of hot oil with a bit of butter, and finished with a drizzle of browned butter with fresh chives. I paired them with another first of the season, the first asparagus from my garden, steamed for just moments.
It was a good day of life in the Driftless, and my first harvest feast of this magic season of renewal. And through my participation, I am renewed.
With food now coming out of the garden and more from the wild, it feels like the corner on the lean time has been turned. Perhaps next up, morels… One can hope, as always.