The people you meet on a trout stream are unique.

The opening of trout season draws a crowd of eternal optimists—as diverse in how they fish as how they act.

Over the years I have been a “fly on the wall,” observing and listening to anglers drawn to trout season. This year, this “fly” finally saw and heard what may be the ultimate fish story in years. It occurred on the main stream of the Au Sable, and had I not taken a picture, some might not believe it.

Sitting on a riverside dock bench at our lodge, I shot photos of anglers wading by, or the occasional riverboat-with-guide-and client quietly gliding the current past me.

As I watched, an angler came wading down, casting quite well to those places where a trout might likely hold. (On this day few rising trout were seen, thanks to the abundance of food that recent rains washed into the river, including rolling balls of earth worms that filled trout tummies so easily that rising up to feed on flies would seem a bother.)

As the angler passed, I was jolted by an unexpected sound. This was hardly the place to expect a cell phone to ring, but that’s what happened. The angler reached into his fishing jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone—one he kept glued to one ear for the next 10 minutes as he continued to cast one-handed while standing in the same place. His voice was plainly heard conducting business or legal matters, asking questions and giving instructions.

Good grief, I thought, is there no place safe or sacred enough to be free of a rattling cell phone ring—even on opening day on the “Holy Waters”?

I wondered just what decision he might have had to make if he suddenly found himself hooked fast to a big trout of trophy size. Would he have dropped the phone to handle the fish, or stayed ear-locked to the infernal interrupter?

When I join my fishing club members, I enjoy sharing the stream and their tales, new and old. But each season I also meet new anglers, finding a kinship with them forged by the waters and fish we seek. This year, along the North Branch at Lovells, I ran into a fellow I’d call “the ultimate happy angler.” An array of fishing gadgets hung from his fishing vest and a sheepskin band festooned with dozens of flies rimmed his wide hat. The biggest, happiest grin ever lit up his face.

“I have to admit it,” said Birch Run angler Bill Adams, “I was a dyed-in-the-wool worm and bait fishermen all my life until 1982. That’s when I took a fly-fishing course sponsored by Trout Unlimited—and life has never been the same when fishing time comes.”

Then there’s court magistrate Mike Van Epps from Muskegon. “Fishing with friends is what it is all about,” he said.

Van Epps said that after dealing with people charged with all sorts of misdemeanor and criminal acts, he spends all the time he can fishing. “Fish, at least, are more honest than some of the people that come before me,” he said. And a heck of a lot more fun.

Some moments stand out. Fishing the early steelhead opener on the Little Manistee River with an old Norwegian friend, we stood shoulder to shoulder with a throng of anglers fishing with everything from fly rods to spinning tackle to hurl hooks and hardware in a weave of lines.

A small salmon egg hook somehow ended up in the ample Viking nose of my friend; the angler at the other end, thinking he’d snagged a bush or tree, kept yanking it until my friend yelled some Norwegian cuss words and yanked back. The angler realized he’d erred, came over, took a look and went a bit chalk-faced. He cut the line off, said he’d get some help and walked off—never reappearing.

My friend fished on, but was getting cross-eyed looking at the bit of leader still hanging from the hook.” Okay, Doctor Don—time for some surgery,” he said.

Numbing his nose in a capful of some 100-proof snakebite medicine from his flask, he said, “get it done.” I pushed the hook on through past the barb and clipped it off, removing the hook.

Heading home, my friend finished off the contents of his flash. By the time he reached home, nobody could have been happier about opening a season.

And the “fly” had another story to tell.