I'm in favor of getting rid of opening day. No question, it's better for the fishery.

The point that nobody's made so far is that every lake stocked with trout (even if it's only a couple hundred fish) is closed for a month and a half every year. That really stinks!

In years that we have good ice, you have to stop ice fishing the last day in Febuary. Even if you're not targeting trout through the ice. Most places, you could probably get on the ice till mid March. The kicker is that those same places don't actually get stocked with trout until a week or two before opening day.

In years where the ice melts very early, you bass fisherman out there can't fish any of these places. Come to think of it, if your a bass fisherman, you really can't fish a trout lake until May. It's closed in March and half of April. Then the second half of April you're competing with all the trout guys, so it's probably more trouble than it's worth?