Located between the down-at-the-heels mill towns of New Bedford and Fall River, the Westport’s blue-ribbon, blue-collar fishery remains comparatively crowd-free.

HARTFORD, April 18 (AP) Saturday is the start of trout-fishing season in Connecticut, but environmental officials are concerned that as many as 50,000 of the freshly stocked fish were swept away by the northeaster and might now be swimming in flooded fields and backyards.

Strangely mild weather that bathed the Northeast in springlike temperatures through December and January prevented ice on the lakes of the Adirondacks.

Florida?s season of ?sturgeon strikes? ? collisions between the leaping fish and hapless boaters ? is under way.

On paper, the author’s late-summer fishing trip to Alaska’s vast interior couldn’t have been timed any better.