If you want to live a long and productive life, I’ve come to the conclusion that you can bypass the gingko biloba and start fishing more. I learned everything I’ll ever need to know during yesterday’s opening day of trout season.

My 17-year old son, three-year old daughter and I were treated to a home-cooked fisherman’s breakfast in the morning, grabbed our gear and headed out for the open water — the Little Shamokin Creek near the town of Augustaville, to be more exact. As we drove down the road in anticipation and excitement, we realized too late that we had forgotten our hip waders. School was officially in session.

Lessons learned during the last 72 hours include:

— When you think you have your car packed, check again. Forgetting one pair of hip waders is bad. Forgetting both pairs (one for my son, one for myself) is worse. Note to self: Planning ahead and not waiting to the last minute may be worth trying someday.

— Days that you forget your hip waders are the days you need them most. Not only was it really soggy from Friday night’s rain, but we found a really good fishing hole that was surrounded by standing water.

— Running to Wal-Mart during one’s dinner break to buy a fishing license the night before the opening day of trout season isn’t always productive. Other people might have the same idea. Note to self: Planning ahead and not waiting to the last minute may be worth trying someday.

— Crazy gas prices? Price gouging? Try buying a couple worms from one of those gas station refrigerators. Thirty “trout” worms (a.k.a. regular earthworms that are not big enough to be considered nightcrawlers) cost $3.69. I could buy a whole gallon of gas for that. Twenty-four waxworms are $2.49. Twenty-four mealworms are also $2.49. Overall, I paid $8.67 for 78 worms, or more than 11 cents per worm (including the tiny maggot-like waxworms). Perhaps digging worms ahead of time would be been a worthwhile investment. Note to self: Planning ahead and not waiting to the last minute may be worth trying someday.

— The little plastic cups that worms are packaged in — including the sawdust filling — are very light and fly well, especially when thrown by a three-year-old little girl on a windy day.

— It takes approximately three minutes to find 23 waxworms in the grass/mud after they’ve fallen from a flying plastic cup.

— Gas prices are still rising. At 10:30 a.m. at one Valley gas station (where a certain procrastinator spent a small mint on worms), the price per gallon was $3.25. At 1:30 p.m., I was pumping regular unleaded for $3.29 a gallon at the same station. Note to self: Planning ahead and not waiting to the last minute may be worth trying someday.

— Muddy banks get more slippery when someone is trying to free a snagged line than they typically would be.

— The new fishing licenses (yellow printouts) are much more water resistant than the previous paper licenses.

— Hooks are not sharp enough to stay firmly seated in a trout’s mouth (we had two large trout decide to release themselves), but plenty sharp enough to embed itself into a tree limb or sticker bush branch and never come out again (regardless of countless yanks, pulls and whips).

— When a line breaks after it is yanked, pulled and whipped, it almost always breaks above the hook, swivel and everything else important in the rigging.

— While hooks may be sharp, the jaggers on the branches the hooks catch are a lot sharper.