Inside UW

Thanks, Mom

We celebrated Mother’s Day this past Sunday– how did your mother help you in your career and in reaching UW-Madison? Share your thoughts.

Susan Lampert Smith: On fathers and fishing season

UW Health science writer Susan Lampert Smith reminisces about her late father John Lampert (pictured, at left) and a 65 year tradition for the opening of fishing season.

Every May since 1947, they’ve gathered on a stream in Waushara County to celebrate the beginning of the trout fishing season.

When “Trout Opener” began, they were young men fresh out of World War II. One summer during college, they thought they’d get rich raising cucumbers in the sandy soil. Instead, they took to drinking and fishing and telling stories. And a tradition was born – one that’s lasted more than 6 decades.

My dad was one of the original founders. From that callow young pickle farmer, he grew up to be a lawyer and a judge in his everyday life. But on that one weekend of May he became “the chief,” a grizzled teller of stories and baker of potent beans with bacon. Over the years, the Trout Opener ranks grew to include sons and new members, recruited for an interest in trout fishing and a tolerance for the kind of jokes that could never be told in polite company.

No girls were allowed at trout opener, but on other weekends dad taught me to fish for trout. He’d say, “trout are mean; they’ll bite at things that annoy them.” As a kid, I caught brookies and German browns on spinners and worms, happily unaware that more sophisticated fishermen consider such methods barbaric.

My dad and his fishing pals weren’t exactly tree huggers, but they taught us an appreciation of the places where trout live. My childhood in the 60s and 70s was when Wisconsin’s wildlife made a comeback. The trout guys were there when I heard my first wolf howl on a winter night north of Mercer, and when I hiked on a trail on Franklin Lake in the Nicolet National Forest to see my first bald eagle nest.

Dad’s year was marked by the male holidays of trout opener and deer hunting, but there was one annual celebration he shared with me. On the April morning of the annual count of sandhill cranes, we’d set out in the dark, hauling our lawn chairs to a spot near St. Colletta’s east of Jefferson, and wait for the first call. The elegant, long-legged crane calls with a rusty croak more fitting for a crow, but no matter. Dad considered the recovery of the crane population to be one of the great achievements of his lifetime.

By last May, my dad was hobbled by bad knees, and confused by Alzheimer’s disease. But his buddies hauled him along all the same, saying it wouldn’t be Trout Opener without him. Luckily, their jokes are so old they need only to say the punch line, and everyone roars with laughter.

This year, spring came early, and dad spent his last day whistling to the cardinals through porch screens. Cries from his beloved sandhill cranes filled the air as he died before dawn on March 18.

They say the spirits of the dead sometimes linger. How else to explain the cardinal that kept bashing into the window during dad’s memorial service? The bird finally perched on the sill, listening alertly as the fishing and hunting buddies told their tales.

They’ll gather on the banks of the Wedde Creek again this opening day, for the first time in 65 years without The Chief. But I bet if they look up, they’ll see a lone sandhill crane, circling in for a final farewell.