Looks like we made it! (cue Barry Manilow)

Today is the day that all Wisconsin trout fishermen have been waiting for. The early season opener. Weeks have been spent preparing. Cleaning out fly boxes. Tying new patterns (and even more of the proven favorites). And digging the waders out from the basement where they've been sitting for months, and making that wrinkled-up nose look when you realize you forgot to wash them before packing them away.

For weeks it seemed that the calendar was stuck on February 2nd. And it doesn't help when your dry, brown winter suddenly turns into the ANWAR drilling site in Alaska two weeks before the season kicks off. But the blizzard and temperature drop into single digits at least made you aware that the days were slipping by. Suddenly quicker than you liked.

And then it happens. You woke up and the day is just like any other. Cold and windy. But at least it's sunny. It would be a perfect day for fishing, if the temperature were only 20 degrees warmer, and the white ground was green, instead. But that will happen soon enough. At least you can throw a nymph out into the water and legally catch a winter-starved trout.

Congratulations. You've survived another off-season!