I looked at Schnoz and knew right away we were in trouble. I had made a foolish commitment to join him on opening day like real trout bums instead of the inept pretenders we were, and I’d spent the week before looking for tapered leaders, “general” or “attractor” flies to use (pretenders’ code for “I don’t know what the hell they might eat today”) and tippet spools with enough line on them to allow me to re-learn how to tie an improved clinch without a nine-inch wasted tag.  Early season trout fishing is like puberty, all gangly awkwardness, stumbling, and tailing loop knots.  If women were as wary as trout, even early in the season, I never would have caught one.

We had just put on our waders, struggled creakily into boots, strung up rods and turned to the snow-covered stubble off the side of the road.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What?”

“Where’s the stream?”

We looked out over the expanse of beautifully sculped snow, occasional bristles of corn stalks showing through like they were on on some giant’s face who had just been on a three-month binge, and saw nothing but white.

“This can’t be,” Schnoz said.  “A trout stream is moving water. It has to be right over there.”  He pointed a few dozen yards off the road where there ought to have been a ribbon of black water. We walked, actually stumbled over furrows, crusty ridges, and hidden holes until – sure enough – we found the stream, or at least a one-foot wide noodle of it in between ice shelves that had somehow cantilevered themselves over our favorite stretch of Rinty Creek that was usually at least a dozen feet wide, even in August.

“You can go first,” I said.

Schnoz positioned himself near a bend where we knew a little run fell below a fine riffle that always produced trout.  Schnoz stretched his line and leader like he knew what he was doing, and false casted a dozen times or so to be sure his leader was good and knotted before anything hit the water. I’ve seen lots of bass fishermen who can tie magnificent crow’s nests in a bait casting reel, but I’ve never seen anyone do it in mid-air like Schnoz can do. This time, he false cast enough times to tie his specialty, a double Bimini frizzled eagle’s aerie, and then let ‘er fly.  I watched as his off-season caddis sailed past his ear and landed … on the ice shelf.  He tried to back cast again, but the fly had snagged.

“That’s not a good sign,” I said.  “I didn’t even know anyone could get snagged on ice.”

“Crosswind,” Schnoz grunted. “If you think it’s so easy, you try.”

“Maybe it was the dynamics of your fly,” I said.  “Why don’t you try a grasshopper? Trout probaby remember what they were like from last September, or maybe a trout might take it out of disbelief.  Or pity,” I added.

“What do you have on?”

“I’m starting with something that’s a cross between a midge, a scud, and a pupa.”

“It looks like a dust bunny or a wad of lint,” Schnoz snorted.  “Are you kidding?”

“That’s the point, Schnoz.  If a trout thinks it’s a scud, then it is.  If he’s looking for a midge, then it could be midge-nuff.”

“Cast,” he said.  “I’m getting cold.”

I pulled out my line, made only a few false casts to be sure I had nothing more than a single granny in my line, compensated for the imaginary crosswind that had fouled Schnoz’s fly, and let ‘er go.  The crosswind really was imaginary and my fly lodged on the ice exactly opposite Schnoz’s caddis.

“It’s an honest casting mistake if it happens to the first guy,” Schnoz said, “but the fool who sees what happens and does the same thing is an idiot.”

“Yeah, well you know it’s bad luck for the whole season if you lose your fly on your first cast,” I said, knowing that Schnoz is more superstitious than a pitcher on the third pitch in the third inning in the third game of a World Series. Schnoz could only grunt, because he knew I was right.  He sidled his way up the uneven bank, flicked the tip of his rod several times, which lodged his fly deeper in the ice, and then stepped tentatively out on the ice ledge.

“It’s fine,” he said, “solid as a rock,” and then bounced a little to show me how safe he was.  I edged over to the other side of the stream and inched my way out onto the ice.  I could almost bend over and reach my dust bunny. At that point, I heard an explosion as the ice shelf below Schnoz’s ample girth gave way, and down he went in a cannonade of ice, spray, fearful curses, and backwash. I barely had time to laugh one “Ha” before my own ice gave way and I joined Schnoz in the stream.  Luckily the snow melt had not begun and we found ourselves foundering betwen ice blocks and melting snow only knee deep in water. A few more feet toward the middle and we both would have been in more than waist-deep danger.

We looked at each other like shellshocked survivors and then began to laugh.  Somehow, we had created an actual pool that could be fished.  We managed to crawl out and decided to rest our pool while we tied on bead heads, blew on our purple fingers, and took a sip of the schnapps we used as antifreeze. The pool was lovely, dark and deep, with room enough for both to cast.

A hundred casts into our freezing, Schnoz hooked a small brown, easily sliding the poor thing into his hand.

“Lunch is on you,” Schnoz said.

A few casts later, I caught its twin, or maybe the same fish.

“Dessert and coffee are on you,” I said.

After another hundred casts I noticed that Schnoz was trying to tie on another fly but had developed a sudden case of the shakes and would not have been able to tie his tippet onto a keyring.

“Are we a little c-c-cold?” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster, but my frozen mouth gave me away.

“Naw,” he said, “b-b-but I am h-hungry… for the chili and beer you owe me.”

Our legs had become stilts, so we had to shuffle back to the car, help each other get out of boots that had set with the same flex as concrete, and put our rods back in their cases.

“Do you n-n-need to pee before we go?” I asked innocently.

“Um, I can’t t-t-t-tell, and it doesn’t matter because even if I d-d-d-did, I don’t think I could find the necessary apparatus.”

“You should t-t-t-t-tie on a wool string in the winter. That way, if it falls off, you can find it. D-d-d-doctors can do amazing things with re-attaching ears and stuff these days.”

“Listen, Grumpy, just p-p-put the key in the ignition and let’s go. All I care about is that we didn’t get skunked.”

It took three drops and three more tries, but I managed to fit the key in the ignition. Luckily Officer Bardall, the new, young hot-shot on the force, met us at Juliana’s Diner instead of at the edge of town with his radar gun.

“How’d you coots do?” he asked.

“We killed ’em,” Schnoz said.  “It was unbelievable. It’s like they hadn’t eaten all winter.”

“How many’d you catch?”

“Hell, I lost count,” Schnoz said. “You remember?” he said to me.

“Naw.  I wasn’t counting. It coulda’ been two dozen.  They were small, though.”

“Yeah?” Officer Bardall said.  “Damn, I wish I’d a been out there instead of on duty.”

We looked at the large coffee and blueberry pie in front of him, and then at each other.  Neither one of us said what obviously needed to be said because of our great respect for the law and the eventual certainly that he would catch one or both of us doing something that violated the letter of the law, if not its spirit.

“You want to go out again tomorrow?” I said to Schnoz.

“Naw, it’ll take me a day to untangle and re-rig my leader and thaw out my … um, my reel.”

“I hear warm water with a bit of isopropyl works best,” Officer Bardall said.

“Warm water and… excuse me,” Schnoz said, and ran to the men’s room.  I caught him at the door and pushed past him when he snagged his loose belt on the knob, and I got in first.  It was a good day, the kind of opening day that ends with one saying, “Ahhhhhhh……”