Return of the Sierra Standard?
Boy did last spring suck in the Eastern Sierra. Might even say early summer sucked, too. Sure the long-term effects of that winter of all winter are great, but throwing trout anglers that out of whack wasn’t cool. There were plenty of pipe dreams leading up to the Opener (“I think Crowley’s going to thaw out in the next five days,” etc.) but when game time arrived, there was barely anywhere to fish. Thank God the word got out and most of the crowd sat that one out, but anglers – and more to the point, local businesses – want to get back the Sierra standard operating procedure in 2024. Even with these recent storms, Sierra snowpack is still way less than normal, and while we love putting all that water into the savings account, it does point to full-speed opener (April 27) with plenty of room for the crowd to spread out and fill stringers.
Show Season shake-up
The two Bart Hall Shows shifting to winter gave an early start to show season which still has the Pacific Coast Sportfishing Show (March 7-10), Day at the Docks (April 7) and the West Coast Outdoors and Sportfishing Expo (May 3-5) still on the radar. I dug having winter shows, although for those of us in the industry, it means there is a ton to do and not enough time to do it between coming back from the holidays and getting into show mode. In the past, the Long Beach show would be looked at as the kickoff event of the spring fishing season, in fact, there were some that used it has the target date for when to start hunting white seabass. Now with a show per month from January through May, that’s going to seriously shorten the winter lull and really have the spring fishing season sneak up on us. A steady stream of shows between January and the Eastern Sierra Opener (for example). What a time to be alive.
 of a bad situation. I get a kick out of seeing a sportboat’s schedule hit the water running with an overnighter that leaves the dock the night before rockfish are back on the menu. Catching a sack of rockfish isn’t hard in general, but it’s cool thinking of all those fish sitting on some rockpile after months of being left alone only to have 25 torpedo sinkers depth charging them all at once. Another thing that is very detectable from my desk at <em>WON</em> headquarters, is you guys are getting better at fishing <em>AROUND</em> the closure with each passing year. We get peppered with more photos of monster halibut (check out last week’s cover with the 40 pounder, and the other biggies on the whopper list) and winter calico bass than we could possibly use. Closures suck, but anglers will always adjust and evolve.</p>
<figure id=)
