We are all stark raving mad -- even the extreme lunatic fringe among us who dared brave something as masochistic as ice fishing during February.                      

IF YOU ARE among the members of the angling fraternity, specifically those purists who insist the only way to catch a trout is with an artificial fly, you are in good company. I am one with you.

As always, at this time of the year, you have my sympathies. I know exactly what you are going through. But take hope. This malaise known as cabin fever is just about to break.

It's been a confusing winter. January faked us out with March-like weather. And just when we thought spring might be around the corner, March slapped us around with the weather we should have had in January.

But it's April, and more importantly, it's less than one week before Opening Day. And we are all stark raving mad -- even the extreme lunatic fringe among us who dared brave something as masochistic as ice fishing during February.

We're ready to get out of the house and throw anything, a fly, a spinner, salmon eggs, even a worm at a trout just to fulfill that inner urge that speaks to us in a still soft voice: I fish, therefore I am. Like the salmon that are inexplicably drawn to the rivers of their birth or the swallows that return to Capistrano every year, resistance is futile.

On Saturday, just as northern bog lemmings crowd one another until many are forced over cliffs en masse into the ocean, we'll all race to our favorite river or stream to stake out a riffle or pool. We'll stand elbow-to-elbow with fellow anglers, stacked like cordwood, for the chance to connect to a quivering, slimy muscled flash of gold speckled with black and red. The trout is our piscatorial prize for having suffered the ravages of yet another winter in the Northeast.

Why do we put ourselves through it, year after year, when we could all move to the Florida Keys and fly-fish for tarpon or bonefish in the mangrove flats every day while basking in the tropical sun? There are no trout in Florida.

To the uninitiated in the lure and the lore of angling for this most noble species of fish, I invite you to stop by any riverbank on Saturday where you chance to see a bunch of anglers congregating. Study their eyes. You will undoubtedly note an expression of extreme concentration. You could mistake it for a blank stare but don't be fooled. For even if it were possible to throw a cow into the water beside them, it is doubtful you could distract any from his prey.

There is a reason for the apparent catatonic trance, but don't go looking on the Internet or in a medical journal for the explanation. Like the rush on the first hill of a roller coaster, Opening Day can only be experienced.

However, having been overcome with Opening Day Obsession so many times myself, I will attempt it here in this space, feeble as words may be to do it justice.

I remember one brutally cold and cruel start to the trout season several years ago. After hours of wading through icy currents, standing in bone-chilling winds, and making one cast after the other until my fingers were numb and my shoulders burning from repetitive motion disorder, the fishing line suddenly moved in a way it hadn't moved all morning.

Coupled with what I thought was a golden flash from under the dark currents -- or was it merely a hallucination like George Mallory's ghost, climbing ever higher on its unfulfilled quest to summit Everest? No! -- the line moved -- I sensed it -- there was a flash! It was as if an otherworldly telepathic transmission between trout and angler had occurred.

And just like that, a fish was on and my line tightened and my pulse quickened and I immediately forgot that for the last four months I'd been a prisoner in my own home and even though it was 35-degrees and spitting flurries, and I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes, it didn't matter because there was a trout connected to me by a thin, gossamer thread.

For the moment, time stopped. The cares of this world dissipated. All was in harmony with the universe. And then the tippet snapped and he was gone.

But I was cured, at least for another year. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist.