Fishing on opening day of trout season this Sunday won’t be easy.

Streams are at an almost-unfishable level following heavy rain and those snow-melting, 60-degree days last week. It’s a little difficult to find a place to fish when you can’t get near the banks of the creeks.

You can forget about the lakes, too, because winter came late this year. A friend told me that he caught a 27-inch laker through the ice on Otsego Lake earlier this week. That translates into a late thaw, so don’t bother with traditional spots such as Gilbert Lake and Basswood Pond. Without an auger, getting a worm to a hungry trout will be a little difficult.

Have you given any thought to the stream conditions since last summer’s flood waters receded? The great 100-year washout has changed the rivers and creeks dramatically. The old pools and runs are now filled with gravel, and the stream beds that used to flow along the edge of the woods now spread out through the center of many fields and meadows. Your secret spot doesn’t exist any more.

I remember fishing in the spring after the flood of ’96. I went to one of my old, favorite haunts, but the pool under the willow tree was gone. Actually, the willow tree was gone, too, because it had washed down the creek a couple of miles. Shallow, fast-moving water covered the place where I had caught dozens and dozens of beautiful trout over the previous 45 years. The undercut bank and deeper waters were forever erased. That spot will never produce those big, red-spotted brookies again.

Most of the rivers and streams in this area and in the Upper Catskills have met the same fate. We will have to learn how to fish them all over again and find new pools and hiding places.

This past fall, after the ravages of the 2006 flood, the Department of Environmental Conservation did a stream survey on the Delaware River below the Cannonsville Dam and downstream from Deposit. The results were surprising. There were a lot of big fish in the river, and the sampling found an abundant population of brown trout measuring 16 inches or longer. Many of the big reservoir fish had washed over the dam, so this should be a banner year for larger trout.

If you’re planning to fish the Delaware River, you should be aware that the opening day of trout season has been delayed until April 14 on sections of the river that share a common border with Pennsylvania. This also applies to many of the tributaries of the rivers in Delaware County that flow into that section.

If you plan to fish Sunday, check out the smaller creeks because these waters return to normal far faster than the bigger streams. The water may be a little high and discolored, but it might just be fishable.

Personally, I think I’ll wait a couple of weeks. The waters will fall and the days will warm. After all, the fish aren’t going any place.[an error occurred while processing this directive]