Fishing straight ahead
Appears the catch was bountiful, limitless in earlier angling seasons
The lowland-lake fishing season, Washington state’s most popular trout-catching time, will open the last Saturday in April.
A good close to an often troubled month.
By the end of March, Inland Northwest people generally have had it with winter. The ski slopes thin of snow. Hiking trails are muddy to the boot. We are so ready for better weather, for spring.
April, with its legendary showers and its “cruelest month” reputation from the famous T.S. Eliot poem, does not often deliver what we need. So it becomes a month of waiting.
For sun. For short-sleeve weather. For lake fishing.
Notice in driveways and open garages around the Inland Northwest, the families polishing and fixing up their fishing boats. Go to sporting goods stores and linger in the fishing aisles. People kill some of April’s cruel time in those aisles, dreaming and hoping.
This yearning for the outdoors, for fishing and all that it offers – fresh air, cool water, old-shoe-comfortable boats – is not a modern phenomenon, not a reaction to the technology that sometimes traps us indoors.
The Spokesman-Review’s King Collection – photos and memorabilia from the King family who thrived in Spokane in the early 20th century – brims with fishing photos. Dozens of plump fish strung across a line. Smiling family members on lake shores, showing off their catch.
They look so happy.
So as you wait, you fishermen, fisherwomen, fisherchildren, consider these sort of ultrasound photos, outlining the future. The picture is clear. April will proceed to its natural conclusion and on its last Saturday, your passion can be reborn.