Fishermen in Hibernation: You Can Come Out Now

Twenty-four thousand mealworms, 5,000 night crawlers, 2,000 dilly worms and 6,000 shiners – that’s what you’ll find crawling and swimming about today, the opening day of trout season.  

“All this stuff will be gone by Sunday night,” says the owner of the Wallingford shop, Charlie Szadaj. “Three days and it’s all history.”

Last night, Szadaj and his son, Brandon, pulled an all-nighter at the shop, a nine-year opening day eve tradition to make ready for the chaos of the next morning.

“Opening day is our Christmas,” says Szadaj. “That’s when it all starts.”

That’s right, anglers. Come out from hibernation. The season begins today.

“Fishermen are suffering from cabin fever,” says Lee Letourneau, owner of in Branford. “One good thing about this year,” Letourneau says, “is even with the economy and people tightening their belts, there’s been no cutbacks on stocking programs.”

‘A Million Trout’

Before the starting pistol is fired on opening day, the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) spring trout stocking program will have already released 387,000 trout into Connecticut’s rivers, streams, lakes and ponds, according to Bill Foreman, an environmental analyst with the department.

“We stock about 100 lakes and ponds and 200 rivers and streams prior to opening day,” says Foreman.

The department’s spring trout stocking effort began in early March and runs to the end of May.

“Over the course of a year, we stock a million trout,” says Foreman. Click here to find out where.

One of the best places to fish on opening day – and where you are more likely to get a nibble at the end of your line – is at one of the state’s 11 trout parks.

“The parks are stocked more frequently than other water bodies and most have comfortable shoreline access,” says Foreman. And for an added bonus, eight of the 11 trout parks are stocked again on opening day, including Wharton Brook State Park in Wallingford (a mile down the road from Uncle B’s) at 8:30 a.m. and Chatfield Hollow State Park in Killingworth at 10 a.m.

Foreman says both parks will receive an additional 450 trout today.

“Kids can carry the buckets and stock themselves,” says Foreman of the opening day stockings. “We enjoy watching the kids. Everyone has a good time, which is what we want.”

Connecticut’s nine other designated trout parks (bold=stocked on opening day):

Black Rock State Park (Watertown)                        stocking time: 10 a.m.

Day Pond State Park (Colchester)

Mohegan Park Pond (Norwich)                                                       8:30 a.m.

Kent Falls State Park (Kent)

Natchaug River (Eastford)

Southford Falls State Park (Oxford)                                               8:30 a.m.

(Simsbury)                                            8:30 a.m.

Valley Falls (Vernon)                                                                           11 a.m.

(Monroe)                                        10 a.m.    

Teaching the Next Generation

Opening day is a golden time to get your child’s feet wet in the sport of fishing, says Letourneau.

“It’s all about introducing the next generation,” he says. “I would rather see someone come in [to Fisherman’s Paradise] with a couple of kids than have someone come in who is trying to chase a trophy fish. Every kid that gets hooked on fishing is one less kid that will be hooked on something else.”

Letourneau cast his first line when he was 8 years old. Now the 40-year-old angler has an 8-year-old son of his own, who he plans to take fishing after hours at the same spot on Housatonic River that his grandfather took him 32 years ago.

For first-time fisherkids, Letourneau recommends spending opening day at , which, in addition to trout, carries large mouth bass and sunfish, he says.

“It’s not a pond that requires every lure known to man; a bobber and a worm will work,” Letourneau says. “You won’t catch a record-setting weight but you’ll catch something.”

Great Bait and Some Opening Weekend Advice

“Every year the tackle is changing but the fish stay the same,” says Letourneau. He says a popular saying among bait-seeking fishermen is “match the hatch,” which means find bait that mimics the scent and taste of what the fish were fed in the hatcheries before the DEP released them into the wild.   

A popular match-the-hatch, artificial bait that Letourneau sells is called Berkley Gulp!

Other fishermen go the more traditional route when it comes to selecting bait: worms.

While Uncle B’s in Wallingford stocks more than 3,000 of the slimy creepers for opening day, Branford’s Fisherman’s Paradise carries extra-large mealworms called superworms, which do not require refrigeration and come from California, says Judy Tupy, Letourneau’s mother and co-owner of the shop.

“They fly out of here on opening day,” says Tupy, who also suggests using minnows and night crawlers for catching freshwater fish.

“People have a favorite bait they always use on opening day,” says Foreman.

However, there is one universal and deep-rooted quality of fishing that every angler must abide by.

“They say patience is a virtue; it definitely is with fishing," says Uncle B’s Szadaj.

Another necessity is a fishing license. An all water fishing license for Connecticut residents is $28 and can be purchased online, as well as at Fisherman’s Paradise. 

Check out a Google map of the some of the area's best Opening Day Fishing Spots. 

On short supply? Here's a list of Connecticut bait and tackle shops from the DEP.