This is spring?

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Two Aprils ago, a good friend and I enjoyed wetting our lines in Ship Creek before we headed to the Great Alaska Sportsman Show. The creek was open, and even in the early morning that year, we got by with just our waders and a fleece vest. We didn't catch anything, but that wasn't the point -- we were getting a jump on the spring. Heck, we had already been down to the Kenai River once already at that point.

This April, however, greeted us with much different conditions -- on April 1, the Valley awoke to temperatures around 5-below zero, open water was simply a dream and the Great Alaska Sportsman Show seemed more like the Alaska Mid-Winter Show. That's one heck of an April Fool's Day joke Mother Nature played on us.

You don't think the last few winters have spoiled us? Consider that last year the first king salmon was reportedly caught on the Little Susitna River on May 1 -- which is just 27 days from now, and 30 days from last Thursday, when the temperature was below zero. It's enough to make a grown man cry, which is exactly what I did when it started snowing last week, on the same day I dusted off my fly rods and took inventory of my fly vest, anticipating that I'd be using it soon.

April is the weirdest month on the calendar for Alaskans. Those winter projects are all wrapped up (except for a half-finished king salmon baitcaster fishing rod that is sitting in my garage) and it's hard to get excited about spring and summer projects when you are freezing your derriere off. Putting in a lawn doesn't seem quite so imminent when you have to plug your truck in at night. Those fancy boats and rafts at the sportsman's show seem like far-flung dreams when you have to scrape your windows in the parking lot before driving home.

Gardeners, golfers, anglers, boaters -- everybody is feeling the itch to get outside this spring. For the first time in several years, spring fever is being felt in the middle of April rather than the middle of December.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He has a new tent and is dying to use it.