The telephone rang early in the morning as a friend called to let me know that the PA Fish & Boat Commission decided to make an unusual move and open the statewide trout season earlier than the anticipated date of April 18.

I put a few calls into WCO Jon Kay and found that the decision was made to have a soft opening for the usually busy First Day of Trout so that the crowds wouldn’t gather, which would put them in harm’s way with the social distancing order of the governor to help guard against the COVID-19 pandemic.

To do this end-around plan, the PFBC decided a low-key opener in mid-week was the way to go. It may have worked on the first day, but the local waterways got busy as the word got out and plenty of anglers got out of the house to go fishing.

There will still be some in-season stocking going on, but in the old-style secret date’s mode. With the early opening day, some of the stockings couldn’t take place before the original April 18 date was bumped up. With all the rainfall, many of the streams have been unfishable and anglers have to play it day by day to determine if they can fish the waters successfully.

I went out to the North Branch of the Slippery Rock Creek to try my luck on this new opener. The North Branch is a small tributary to the Slippery Rock Creek and is generally a brushy and undercut bank kind of stream. Live bait is the ticket for this waterway as a spinner or fly would be lost in no time. In fact, even with using a hook and split shot, you are going to be lucky if you can get through the day without a few change ups of your gear.

I stopped at the Forestville Beer and Tackle Shop on Route 8 North to see my old buddy Doug Auvil. He carries a nice assortment of bait and tackle for fishermen heading north. I rounded up meal worms, red worms and maggots as the live bait that I thought would be most effective with the local streams.

Just for good measure, I had Doug throw in a jar of Power Bait nuggets in my favorite color of yellow. With this offering in my bag, I headed out to the stream.

Surprisingly, there were a few other anglers out on the waterways taking advantage of the opening date being moved up. No one was really zipping through the trout in an exceptional way as the water was a bit high, but not really muddy or murky for this time of year.

I thought that this water was fishable and that with a little luck, I might land a few trout. I personally don’t care for trout, but I do have some friends that ask me for some trout each spring as they really do enjoy it.

I decided to pick out some deeper holes on the creek and fish them with my single split shot, a #8 hook and a double meal worm. I cross the meal worms on the hook and they end up spinning like a small propeller on the bottom part of the creek bed.

I give the split shot some 10-12 inches from the bait and it rises off the bottom nicely. When fishing small creeks, you will run into Creek Chubs that will taunt you by nibbling on your bait offering. I cast off to the side of the main channel along the brushy overhangs and while slowly retrieving my line was greeted with the flash of a nice trout that followed the meal worms into the edge below me.

I made a note of my presentation and the location of my first cast and tried to duplicate it. Bang, a nice tug on the line let me know that I had my first hit of the season. I reeled the trout toward my side of the creek and then I realized that I was going to have to bring the trout up a 4-5-foot bank without losing him.

Too tight a line or too much slack would be a problem and the trout would shake off. It had to be just right to work on this landing … somehow all the stars lined up and I made a good landing. An added bonus was that I still had my meal worm offering for the next cast!

My second cast brought a surprise fish to my bait, it was a nice rainbow trout, something that you usually don’t see on these waters. Now I had a Brook Trout and a Rainbow Trout in the bucket for a nice start. Three more catches were made that morning and I ended up with a Brown Trout and two more Brook Trout for a really nice mixed bag of fish for my friend.

I haven’t fished a small stream on the opening day for many years, but this experience was about the best that I could expect and guess what … I kept safe with the statewide social distancing policy.

Until we meet again, keep safe and keep healthy and give your friends and neighbors plenty of space!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.