A beautiful opening to the season

"I've never seen an opening day like this," said Fred Adams as he struggled to get into his chest waders. Adams has fished at Bennett Spring for more than 20 years, but has never had an opening day that was more summer-like than this March 1.

At Wednesday's opening of Missouri's four trout parks fishermen saw a larger than usual turnout for a weekday start of the season. More than 7,000 anglers gathered at the parks for the traditional kickoff of the season. Roaring River had 2,111 anglers on opening day followed by Bennett Spring with 2,103. Montauk had 1,994, while Meramec had 1,450.

The largest fish of the day honors went to Mike Jeffries, Lee's Summit, who hauled in a brown trout that weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces. The big brown attracted hordes of photographers who snapped photos of the lunker at the official scales. Jeffries said, "I saw the big fish before it hit my lure as did other anglers around me. I was lucky enough to land it and I plan on putting it on the wall."

This year's opening of fishing season started with Russ Pickup, Steelville, as the honorary whistle blower at Bennett. Pickup has fished Bennett ever since he was a teenager back in 1948. His aunt and uncle owned the old Bennett Spring Hotel.

Douglas Elken, director of state parks, fired the gun to start the season at Roaring River where Tom Nelson, Cassville, had two fish on his stringer before the first five minutes of the season had passed. Nelson said, "I had to work Wednesday so I caught my limit of four fish in a few minutes and headed for home."

As usual, catching fish was but a small part of the day. The circus atmosphere, seeing old friends and just enjoying the unusual weather were reasons to be streamside for many anglers.

At Bennett, the traffic was bumper to bumper before 8 a.m. at the roads around the park. Successful anglers had cleaned their fish and headed for breakfast while the banks from the spring to the Niangua River were lined with anglers hoping to hook a lunker on such a nice day.

Some of the opening day anglers including Russ Pickup's sons, who had fished the stream during the catch and release winter season. Robin Pickup, Russ Pickup's son who sent a letter to the hatchery manager, Mike Mitchell, that requested his father be the opening day whistle blower, said, I love to fish Bennett during the winter when the stream is nearly void of anglers. I don't mind releasing the fish because I usually don't keep them anyway. I just enjoy fishing for trout with a flyrod." Robin has a 7-pound rainbow trout mounted in his living room wall. He caught the lunker on opening day back in 1998.

Jim Kennedy, Sedalia, has attended the traditional trout opening for more than 50 years and said, "I didn't fish today, but I really enjoyed being here on such a nice day and watch all the action. In years past I have endured zero temperatures, rain, snow and to have an opening day like this is something special whether you fish or not. I really enjoyed today, it's not very often that you can fish Bennett on opening day in just short sleeves."

An Independence angler, Mark Moss, ties his own flies and uses them when fishing at Bennett. "I didn't get to go opening day, but I'll get my share of trout later," he said. Moss said he would rather catch a lot of small fish than one big one. "I usually mash the barbs down on the hooks because I usually release any fish I catch. It's the thrill of the strike and the fun of playing them that keeps me coming back," he said.

The trout season that opened March 1, runs through Oct. 31. The restocking of trout at the parks are at a rate of 2.5 fish per trout tag sold the previous day.