Opener 2008

Date: May 3, 2008
Location: EPB&G spot and below the mighty DAMN
Air temp: 60s
Water temp: ?
Hatches: ?
Fish landed: 2 (browns)

Present members of the Fly Anglers Guild :|: Upper Midwest Chapter, for this outing were:

QuickDraw
Xan
Gutmang

Well it's damn tradition, WI opener! Traditionally the crappiest day of fishing all year due to the thick stench of mouth breath, mixed with the smell of stale crawlerz. This year was no exception, although the conditions were far from ideal, we thought we'd harden up and brave the weather for tradition's sake. Hell it's opener forchristsake!

opener started out a few days earlier this year with me ridiculing anyone who was not "hard enough" to fish the opener, I finally convinced Xan to go, I will never question his hardocity again. Friday night at the poker game we convinced Gutmang to go with us. it had been raining for the better part of the night, but before leaving the Kremlin we checked the gauges and all looked grand, the river was at about 3.53' and holding steady( a little over the average of 3' but not bad).

we headed out to the river at about 9 after making a trip to McD's for some breakfast and a McD. when we got to the river it looked like a carnival had come into town, there were some ol' ratty tents pitched and spincasters in lawnchairs lined up on the bank. the river didn't initially look too bad, so we decided to hit it. I got settled in my first spot and discovered that the water was rollin' high, fast, and dirty dirty. Soon after I started fishing I hooked into my first fish a 10" brown, I hooked him in the slow water on a Hot Pink Squirrel he hit super lightly. 2 minutes later I had 2 anglers set up about 20' up river of me, uh, yea, thanks guys. 2 minutes later I caught my second brownie, looked exactly like the first. I took a few more casts and decided to head down to Xan and Gutmang.

When I got down there not much was going on, we fished for a little while and decided to move on to the next river below the Great Damn. we figured that we had a better chance at fishing calmer waters.

when we got there we decided to check out the Dam and to our surprise there were about 6-7 guys fishing with bobbers about a foot away from the dam. the view was great, lots of water spilling over the edge.

We headed down river and fished to slightly calmer waters, but no fish would bite.

we ended up going to Dick's bar where they had 4" of sand covering the floor for their "beach party" uh yea, great. anyways that was opener '08 in a nutshell