Brother John with a rainbow trout from Bad Medicine a few years back. |
As I sit and look at my white lawn and watch the wind
blowing snow off the tree branches, it’s hard to imagine fishing in open water
in three weeks. Just this morning I cleared several inches of snow off my
driveway. And where I go for the opener, there’s a hell of a lot more snow than
that on top of the ice.
As has become our custom, we fish rainbow trout on the
walleye opener. The season for both species opens the same day in Minnesota,
and there’s just something about trolling haphazardly around Bad Medicine Lake,
pulling Rapalas and catching trout. (I don’t care what all you elitist fly
fishermen out there think.) It’s a good time –and a mindless good time, at that
– on one of the clearest and most beautiful lakes in the state.
The thing about Bad Medicine on the opener is that it’s not
always great fishing. Last year, the spring was warm, so the water was warm on
the opener. That drives the rainbows down deeper, and we have neither the
equipment (downriggers), nor the desire to work that hard for them.
On the
other hand, there have been years when a cold spring meant cold water on the
opener, and the fish were near the surface and smashing our skinny Rapalas.
But count me stunned if we wind up on Bad Medicine on the
opener this year. I just don’t see how all that ice will be gone in just more
than 21 days. Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but I just don’t see
it. So the question is whether we’ll find an open lake somewhere and fish for
walleyes (highly unlikely), or grab our ice gear and fish the lake on which the
deer shack is located. Frankly, neither sounds all that appealing. Given my
lack of success at shooting a deer last fall, maybe I’ll spend the weekend in
the woods and try to find a new spot for my stand.