Another Surreal Opening Day

I’ve had the misfortune of reading dozens of opening day fishing articles in U.S. newspapers this month. But there are so many surreal moments in Stan Grossfield’s coverage of opening day on Connecticut’s Farmington River that I feel like I was there. Which — I think — is the way the good reporting is supposed to work and used to work before newspapers tried to become printed Web pages. From trout-shaped pancakes to “butt whuppins from the wife” to the desire to mount fish that just arrived from the hatchery, the scene at Riverton is oddly touching and hilarious at the same time. “Across the banks, a man with no sense of etiquette is casting into everything but fish. After several tangled lines, Szmajlo talks politely to him through clenched teeth, before being forced to move on. ‘People who can’t fish shouldn’t be using lures,’ he says. ‘He snagged me once in the boot and my buddy once in the neck.'” In the Boston Globe.