Apr 4, 2015 3 min read

Usually this time of year seems like an overload.

John Dino calls and asks if I want to fish for crappie at Cross Creek Lake or go to Canonsburg Lake to feed trout worms or Powerbait?

For months, we sit in our houses staring out and cursing the cold. We just want to go fishing. Now, we can get out and can’t make up our minds where to fish.

The trout are in higher numbers right now as they are stocked by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

They also get bigger. On the other hand, crappie are better to eat.

On this day, I am not at home and I look out at overcast skies and hope April 14 finds me along the shore of either water.

Because of crowded conditions along trout waters, I used to spend the opening of trout season at Pymatuming Lake. My theory was I was fishing but not fighting the crowds.

After all, trout season lasts a while and it’s easier to go later when the crowds thin out.

While the first day of deer season is also the time of year when the weather is deteriorating, trout season brings with it sunny spring days and beautiful new growth. It is a time of hope.

Just the other day, I was hit with a question: Is a level of testosterone necessary to be a competent angler?

Many men look down on women along the stream. Yet, some women outfish those men every day of the week.

There is no doubt my wife, Eileen, could fish well, and so could my daughter, Kathy.

That makes me think of a trip to Sugar Creek in Venango County where Kathy outfished everyone.

This despite an infant weighing her down while riding in a backpack on her back.

Her husband pouted with each trout she brought to creel. He wasn’t as patient as her and stomped off up the creek.

After baiting, she watched the stream flow ignoring the weight on her back. She did this many times before and carefully laid her bait upstream from her goal.

Her mother and I watched her set the hook and play out a 17-inch brown trout. She played it in to her feet and bent over excitedly to retrieve it.

Poor baby Doug came out of his backpack at exactly that moment. She had her trout while her son clenched with both hands onto the end of the pole. He dangled for a moment before she realized and grabbed him up.

Neither of them uttered a sound because it was so quick. Just think, my grandson was almost baptized in one of our favorite trout waters, Sugar Creek.

Her mother and I used to laugh every time we thought of that beautiful spring day when our first grandson and our daughter went fishing.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.