The author, Ron Davis, trout fishing. (Submitted photo)

To the uninitiated, “trout fishing” probably conjures up idyllic images: an angler chest deep in a rushing stream, gently sweeping a wispy fly rod back and forth, rolling out line tipped with a feathery fly as trout fairly leap out of the water in anticipation.

Few probably envision a 60-year-old guy squatting in the dark over a dim puddle of light thrown by his failing flashlight, cursing the icy rainwater trickling down the back of his neck as he grimly searches for a few night crawlers. But that has been the way Wisconsin’s trout opener has begun for me for probably the last 50 years or so. 

Any vibration or bright light can make them vanish in an instant, leaving you with a handful of grass, mud, and worm castings.

I think I was 13 the first time I picked night crawlers. My friend Doug’s older brother had his driver’s license and told us he’d take us out to the Ditch Four or maybe the upper reaches of the Ten Mile for our first trout opener if we got the bait. He had shown us how to hood our flashlights with red cellophane, apparently less alarming to crawlers, and pointed us at his favorite spots.

The elusive night crawler, a.k.a. Lumbricus terrestris. (Photo by Bruce Hallman/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Like many of the mysteries of trout fishing to be clumsily unraveled, we found it wasn’t that easy. Night crawlers don’t come out until, well, night – late night usually, when they can safely search for a mate, and the wetter, the better. So, as a light rain fell and sheets of fog began to drift in, Doug and I spent a few hours on our hands and knees in the soggy lawn of the First English Lutheran Church trying to grab crawlers before they zipped back down their holes. See, unless you wait until really late, the worms are usually just emerging, almost like they’re not quite sure they want to leave the safety of the warming May earth. Any vibration or bright light can make them vanish in an instant, leaving you with a handful of grass, mud, and worm castings. Through trial and error, we found the trick was to stealthily swoop a hand in to pinch them – not too hard – and wait for them to relax, then slowly strip them from their burrows. Contrary to popular belief, worms rarely survive being broken in half. Sometimes though, if you’re lucky, the worms are all the way out, groggy in the slimy afterglow of night crawler love.

But back to the old guy stumbling around in the dark. Sure, I could just buy a Styrofoam box of Canadian crawlers at the nearest convenience store, but somehow, opening day traditions die hard. And together, all those little rituals usually lead to the four or five Brown Trout I steal from tiny Peterson Creek each year to be rolled in flour, fried in bacon grease, possibly served with fresh watercress and a few sautéed morels. The remainder of the season I yield to the pressure of my son, the purist, gamely doing my often hilarious impression of a fly fisherman, and live by the credo of “catch and release.” Opening day: one of life’s anchors in an unrelenting current of change.

Ron Davis is the author of two books, Shiny Side Up and Rubber Side Down, both available at The Local Store (205 N Dewey St., Eau Claire) and from any online bookseller, and he is a frequent contributor to WPR’s “Wisconsin Life.”