Ward Lawyer of Howes Cave has never missed an opening day of trout season and Friday was no exception, snow be damned.
“I guess I’m just out here to say I did it,” Mr. Lawyer said, bundled against the cold as his sister, Rosemary Lawyer, kept him company at the Village of Cobleskill’s Holding Pond.
“It’s really not that bad…it’s nice and peaceful and maybe I’ll even catch something.”
The weatherman had forecast as much as 24 inches.
He wasn’t even close but as snow drifted down on the still mostly-frozen Holding Pond, it wasn’t anyone’s fantasy opening day.
A few feet away, Skip Rivenburgh, who lives outside Schoharie, had pretty much echoed Mr. Lawyer’s words.
“I could be inside or I could be out here,” he said, and as a scattering of geese touched down on the ice, “Look at that.”
“Most of the time I catch and release. I’ll give it a couple of hours and come back Sunday, my next day off.”
Thursday, Joe Redmond of the Village Water Plant said they’d already been fielding calls from anxious fishermen.
“Everyone wanted to know if there’s any open water,” he said. “They’re diehards. Even if they end up fishing shoulder to shoulder, they’ll be there.”
That wasn’t the case Friday; just a handful of fishermen turned out to cast their lines.
“Would I have been here if we’d gotten the 24 inches on snow the weatherman predicted?” Mr. Lawyer asked rhetorically.
“Absolutely.”

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According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, the winter’s heavy snows and resultant high, cold stream conditions are anything but friendly to early season trout anglers.
“After a long, cold and snowy winter, we know that anglers are anxious to hit the waters,” said Commissioner Joe Martens.
“Unfortunately, as of Friday, a good portion of the state remained covered with snow, restricting access to streams and causing very high stream flows, making early season angling difficult.”
DEC plans to stock more than 2.3 million catchable-size brook, brown, and rainbow trout in more than 300 lakes and ponds and roughly 3,000 miles of streams across the state.
For a list of waters that will be stocked as well as information on where to fish, go to the DEC website, dec.ny.gov.
In an effort to further refine its stream trout management program, the 2011 angling season will kick off a new study being conducted jointly by DEDC and Cornell University to examine the fate of stocked fish in stocked waters.
Creel surveys and trout population assessments are planned for seven stocked trout streams across the state as part of the three-year research project.