Trout season begins this week. Saturday specifically. In my state. I’ve never fished for trout. I’ve fished for walleye, I’ve fished for bass, I’ve fished for compliments. But I’ve never fished for trout. And that’s unusual for around here because there is a lot of trout around here. Of course, to catch trout around here you have to fish around here and I’ve never done that either.

Around here is huge on fishing. The county I live in issues more fishing licenses than anywhere else in the state, odd for an urban area but the numbers don’t lie. Even though the county sports only 10 percent of the state’s population it has ranked number 1 in fish licenses since 1919. Probably before that but that’s as far back as I could find records. For most of those years there were more fishing licenses issued in this one county than in the rest of the state combined.

I’m not a real fisherman – or fisherperson as the TV reporter reminded the viewing public of the start of trout season put it. I fish, or fished, once or twice a year and at what could at best be called sporadically over 40 years or so.

My first fishing memory was of my father taking me up into the mountains for an overnight trip with two friends of his and their sons. I didn’t catch anything. I’m not sure that anybody caught anything. I remember cooking something outside for dinner but it was probably hamburgers. After dark we piled into someone’s station wagon and went deer spotting and that night slept in someone else’s hunting cabin. That was the first fishing memory I have. It is also the first memory I have of doing something special with my father.

My second fishing memory came 20 years later and 20 states away. Floating in the middle of some lake in the middle of Texas were me and an Army friend in a rented bass boat. It had all that was required for fishing for bass. We had the trolling motor attached to the bow, the big Merc mounted on the stern, the electronic fish finder, the funny chairs that looked like bar stools. We got just far enough out to finish our to-go coffees and were when his pager went off. Return to base. His unit was being mobilized. In less time to write about it we were back at the dock, secured the boat, gotten to the car, and were two-thirds of the 15 minute drive to base. That’s when my pager went off.  Later that day we found ourselves as parts of one of the largest training exercises our base had mounted in years. We ate in the field that night but it wasn’t fish.

Another 20 years and in the middle of another lake, this one called Erie, I was one of a group of five pulling in our 30th, and last, walleye. After years of doing so, my friend had the planning down pat for this trip. We left the day before for the drive north, now mostly highway making it a relatively quick trip. Quick enough that we got there hours before anyone else. We picked up our licenses, checked into the hotel, and asked for wake up calls for 4 the next morning. That gave us twelve hours to meet the rest of the gang, have a few beers, have dinner, retell our lies from previous years’ trips, make our ways back to the hotel, and turn in for the night. What was much more than but felt much less than a couple of hours later we were back in the lobby with our coffees and headed for the dock. Our hired captain and his boat were waiting in the dark and we clambered in for the ride to where the fish waited in the dark. The lines weren’t all in yet when the first walleye struck. As he was being brought in another line was hit. The first fish was landed, pictured, and chucked into the well when number three hooked on. And so it went. Nobody remembered a year when the fish came so willingly to us. We had reached our limit and turned back to the docks before some other boats had begun their day. The picture of us with our racks straining under the morning take was on the captain’s charter company’s website the following day. A copy of it is still on one of my walls. A week later we reassembled in my friend’s back yard to fry fish and tell lies. That was the last fishing memory I’ve had. Three weeks later I was in the hospital where a surgeon took longer than we did to fish for his limit.

Trout season starts this Saturday. I’ve never fished for trout.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?