Because I grew up in Massachusetts, I didn’t even know opening day of trout season was still ‘a thing,’ until I took over the Connecticut report from Tim Coleman back around 2008. Even then, I remember thinking, “they still do that!?”
If you’ve followed my writing at all, then you know I am all for traditions and I believe that honoring the history of many of the great New England fishing traditions is important. However, I think the idea of a closed freshwater season and a corresponding ‘opening day,’ when everyone is allowed to fish again, is a bit old fashioned and really doesn’t fit with the times we’re living in now.
At the start of the COVID pandemic, you may remember the buzzword of the year, ‘social distancing’ and you may remember the whole ‘get outside’ movement. These things worked together to detonate an explosion of interest in outdoor activities like biking, golfing and fishing. I was working in a very popular tackle shop at the time and the online orders coming in were so frequent and numerous that we often had boxes stacked ceiling to floor and a mailman who wished he could just call in sick for the entirety of the pandemic… every day he’d walk into the shadow of the towers of boxes, close his eyes, shake his head, sigh and begin scanning. We found out pretty quick, that it was best to leave him to his business.
During that time, Connecticut lifted their March/April closure on trout fishing and ramped up stocking efforts in an attempt to give people a reason to get outside and take advantage of the whole world being – effectively – closed. This small change set off an incredible reaction at the bait and tackle shops that were still open. A sudden surge in the need for licenses, tackle, rods, reels and bait. And this wasn’t just a few people, it quickly grew into a constant flow, as more and more locked-down residents discovered how much fun fishing was. The season remained open for all of 2020 and, when the usual March 1 closure drew near in 2021, the state announced that the season would not close, and the tackle shops saw an even bigger surge. What Connecticut did was inadvertently discover an untapped revenue stream for its tackle shops, and I believe this is a sign of the times.
We can argue about the pros and cons of social media and its effects on fishing until we’re blue in the face, but one thing social media has definitely done is create a lot more multi-species anglers, through the simple principle of what I call ‘keeping up with the digital Joneses’. Thumb twiddlers saw their social media heroes catching fish in January, February and March and realized that they were missing something. And while not everyone has it in them to grind it out for one big largemouth bass in February, they might be more inclined to chase some stocked trout for the hero shot on Instagram. Social media has created more year-round anglers than we’ve ever seen and this is why a closed trout season in Rhode Island is antiquated: it no longer jibes with the common angler!
In 2022, Connecticut refined its new trout season, creating a ‘catch and release only’ period from March 1 to the traditional opening day (second Saturday in April). They also upped their social media game, making regular springtime posts listing all the lakes, ponds and rivers that were stocked on a given day. This has maintained that springtime spike in sales at tackle shops all over the Nutmeg State, and shop owners tell me, all the time, that when DEEP makes one of those posts and a few of the stocked ponds are within striking distance of their store, the influx of customers is almost instantaneous.
Tackle shops are some of the realest small businesses we have left in this country, big box stores and conglomerates try, but the atmosphere of familiarity and hyper-local expertise just can’t be replicated. I have worked in Rhode Island tackle shops during the offseason and I have seen how desolate those days can be. It’s time for Rhode Island to stand up, shake off the cobwebs of tradition and meet the needs of the new age angler. In the process, they would – without any doubt – be creating a niche economy for tackle shops across the nation’s smallest state. And what’s more important, small businesses that stand at the core of Rhode Island’s fishing heritage or making sure no one fishes for trout until an arbitrarily chosen date passes? The choice is clear.
Your move, Rhode Island.
