Old man winter drifted away down the Mississippi River last
week. Chunk by chunk, ice packs went south as pairs of mated
mallards flew in with the promise of spring.

Honkers honked, crows crowed and, well, golly, the living
seemed as easy as the fishing.

Basking in the sunshine, some of us watched old man winter go
downstream as we drifted for a bite and re-familiarized ourselves
with the melodic magic of open water and rediscover what life's all
about.

It's been a long time, old man. Good riddance, and take your
frozen water with you.

"Man,, it's sure nice to be back in a boat," Griz said. "I got
tired of staring at a hole in the ice."

Griz is Dick Grzywinski, the St. Paul angling phenom who makes
his living the old-fashioned way: Folks pay him to lead them to
fish.

Griz and his pal Frankie Dusenka, the live-bait man from
Chisago City, were dodging ice rafts, testing a new boat and
reeling in a few saugers and walleyes downstream from the St. Paul
skyline.

Fishing is always legal along this stretch of the Mississippi
below the Ford Dam. No closed season. No limits because it's all
required catch-and-release for walleyes, sauger, bass and northern
pike.

The metro river also is the DNR's biggest fish recycling
experiment, and it appears to be working. More than a dozen boats
were pulling in nice fish, here and there. At that rate, the catch
would have been gone long ago if recycling had not been required.
As it is, the river is Minnesota's answer to spring break for
fishaholics.

It wasn't exactly hot the other day floating with the ice
chunks, but Griz wore a spring jacket.

The river valley immediately below St. Paul isn't exactly
pristine, even by urban standards. There are power lines, iron
piles, rusted barges and floating junk, and occasionally there's
something wafting over the air that would curl a dog's nose.

But, hey, it's open water and it's open season. Who's
complaining?

Griz pulled in the first fish of the day, a two-pound sauger.
He also caught several more before Dusenka and I remembered how to
hold a summertime fishing rod.

How to catch 'em wasn't exactly new In-Fisherman revelations.
We were armed with 1/4-ounce Fireball jigs of various colors:
green, chartreuse or blue.

"I don't think color makes much difference at this time of
year," Griz said. "All you have to do is bounce the minnow in
front of its nose."

It's not that simple, of course, except for fish magnets such
as Griz. The hunt also is what makes the metro river, despite its
lack of ambiance, an enjoyable fishing hole.

"The river has lots of little nooks and crannies to try," Griz
said. "You can come here and follow the boats or wander off and
search for new spots. Not all the fish are in just a couple of
places."

We tried a different bend in the river and Griz pulled in a
carp. "Ol' bugle mouth," he said. "'But they're fun to catch,
too."

So, we drifted and basked in the thought that opening day can't
be far away, and we pondered a new fishing season.

Said Dusenka, the bait man: "We could have a minnow shortage
this spring. Lots of minnow ponds died out this winter."

Dusenka said he never has seen a tougher winter on minnows in
his 30 years in the business.

Dusenka's bucket of minnows also looked rather strange with
conventional fatheads swimming with fatheads that looked like pale
goldfish.

"Those are called rosy reds," he said. "They're new around
here but they were cultured out east. It's actually an
orange-colored fathead minnow.

"If they catch fish, I intend to raise more of 'em."

On this day the color of the minnow didn't seem to impress any
lunkers.

"It's a little early yet for the great big ones," Griz said.

Early next month the remarkable magic of the metro river might
show in the form of 6- to 10-pound walleyes. "They're here," Griz
said.

But they're not going to jump into the boat.

The big walleyes are harder to find, sometimes lurking in the
shallows when the river rises from spring melt.

"When it comes close to spawning time they're not out in this
deep water," Griz said.

When this day had ended, we had caught more than a dozen
sauger and walleye but nothing over three pounds.

"That's all right," somebody said. "We've been waiting a long
time for this."

A few ice chunks drifted with us, a few snowbanks lingered on
the shore. But old man winter was long downstream and out of
sight.

And we didn't even wave goodbye.