Successful Year

Everyone seems to think 2020 was a bad year, but we prevail by finding the good in things. That's just what I have to do, to write this post, since today was an especially tough day at work and I feel like hell now. My God did my single-manned department get slammed the last two hours! I'm not complaining about having had work to do; the truth is, the busyness of all that redeemed the day as much as it could have, so I'll leave the rest to imagination. 

That's the spirit of 2020!

Actually, when it comes to us, the blog and readers, really one and the same thing, we didn't have a bad year. What did Litton's Fishing Lines do, after posts in the middle of March foresaw "mass death'? First of all, who believed back then that some 400,000 Americans or much more yet would die of the virus? I saw it coming, so that's what I wrote, regardless of who else would believe it or not. I felt the loss deeply, I expressed that feeling, and then I went about my life. I'm an essential worker who has probably encountered dozens, if not hundreds of infected people, and I feel fortunate I'm alive, though I know it's quite possible I won't make it before I would have got vaccinated. But my wife thinks I'm a paradox. A frail and vulnerable person with an immune system sufficient for me to "drink from the Ganges." So must likely, I will make it.

About 2020 and an angler always finding a way, instead of me going along with all the doom and gloom, I lived out the year like any other, getting up and driving to work in the morning, and fishing on many of my days off. Who knows, maybe that's because I confronted what would happen to America right at first, rather than going into denial, so I was free from thereon. Whatever the case, Litton's Lines responded by logging more posts than any of the years it has been up, except for 2012. 

Happy New Year everyone, and let's look to yet another successful year in 2021.

Tested Neoprene Waders

For Christmas, my wife got me a pair of Hisea neoprene chest waders, and I went over to the river this afternoon to test them. I'm happy to report they are dry, warm, and very comfortable. I had heard so much bad-mouthing about the comfort of neoprene, but these feel very appropriate for cold weather. My only complaint is minor. The boots, although they are 600-gram thinsulate and warm, are not up to doing a lot of walking, and having also tested a wading staff today was a good thing, because the boots don't grip rocks very well. I will be applying my Korkers cleats to them.

Focus Stacking at Round Valley

At Round Valley I did a photo shoot for little more than hour, having realized, as I approached Lot 2, that I hadn't been here since September with Fred. Whole other world now, and it wasn't crowded. 

I had to get over here and shoot before January, because that's about when my camera's warranty expires, and I had trouble with a function new to me. Focus shift allows the camera to shoot a series, say of five or six, but it can be a hundred or more, at differing focus points along the continuum you select. So if I select five shots, I put the focus point on an object in the foreground. The first shot takes that focus, and so on evenly spaced to the deepest range of what's in the frame. The camera was malfunctioning. I would select five shots and get only, say, three. Nikon determined I needed a firmware update. I did that, and from my porch, the camera seemed OK. But I wanted to make sure at Round Valley where there's more range. All seems OK. 

I came home to begin to learn--I think--that my Lightroom 6 will stack each series of photos, but not merge them. I will figure this out when I get time. Meanwhile, the photo series are in a folder. The photo above I simply shot at f5.6 with my 70-200mm lens by putting the focus point near the sandbar. It's a good photo, but what focus stacking does or should do is result in an image sharp in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Which is not always desired, but can be.

The photo at bottom is about the green rock. I noticed a number of them, giving away some copper in Round Valley's geological survey.

 

Sept

Looking to Ice

I had hoped to be writing about temperatures promising for ice fishing by now, but although it's pretty chilly, it's not cold enough yet, which isn't to say there'll be very little ice again this winter. Who knows. The photo above is from January 2019 when we did get out on four inches covering Budd Lake. 

Why do I bother posting about ice fishing when nothing's promising? Reconsider that. The time of year is promising; the 10-day online forecast is not everything. Even though it seems silly, in a way, to put image and word out to honor the possibility, by doing that I psyche myself a little, which means that when it does happen--and if it doesn't happen this winter, it will eventually--I will be better prepared.

So if you ice fish, here's to you, too.

 

Giving Up on Salmon for Pickerel

Matt and I had salmon in mind at Tilcon. We motored up lake, trying to at least get somewhat out of the wind. There we drifted live shiners over 30-35 foot depths close to the surface. Neither of us have ever caught a salmon in New Jersey, although both of us have got hit by them. Today would convince me I really know little about how to go about catching them.

Where we began, I figured salmon might be up near the surface over that deep water, but I sighted the stickups you can see in the photo above. I let the squareback get us near them so Matt could lay the first cast there for any pickerel. It was a seductive move.

To the right of those stickups, there's a pocket where we've caught a lot of bass during the summers. I had that mellow sense of possibility enveloping me. We began working the pocket thoroughly. I had to pretty much keep the electric on in reverse because of the wind, and I did not like shutting it off, because I've read that it's not having an electric on that spooks fish, but turning it off and on. (There must be a way to add an additional setting to electric motors, which doesn't engage the prop, but makes a similar noise...it would have to be an electronic recording of the sound, though it wouldn't emit the same vibrations, so perhaps it wouldn't work.) Anyhow, I did have to turn it off and on, some, but that didn't matter to the pickerel that took my shiner. The fish weighing nearly two pounds, I lost it right at the side of the boat as Matt was about to net it.

And from thereon, we tried for pickerel. 

We really didn't think of bass, though of course they were a possible catch, especially with the water temp at a balmy 49. I told Matt that from what I've heard, salmon cruise along the shorelines this time of year, so we figured...well? 

I found it hard to imagine salmon and weeds together.

Another pickerel nabbed one of my shiners. I had the half-assed idea of setting the hook quickly, because I used a 15-pound test fluorocarbon leader, not wire. (Chances are good a pickerel won't bite through that test of abrasion resistant fluorocarbon, anyhow.) I reeled in the head of my shiner. Matt began talking about pickerel taking a shiner in the middle, head and tail at each side of its mouth, before it stops and turns the shiner head first to swallow it. I've known all about that for almost 50 years, but had disregarded it foolishly today.

And less than an hour later, Matt set the hook too soon on another pickerel. He reeled in the head of his shiner.  

One would hope a pickerel is big enough to have a mouth that engulfs a shiner whole.

Trolling

 

Truly the Work of a Heretic

Just want to tell you I've managed, by my reading about the publishing industry, to keep hope alive for the trout book redone as how-to with experience to support the advice. The hybrid book described in the post linked to below has no hope for a commercial publisher. It's neither how-to nor memoir; it's both, and yet it even functions more like a collection of essays, rather than a memoir, which by definition has a story arc. Some might say my book does have a story arc--it's just not well-defined as chronological. It is that way by design, though I am certain further revision yet would improve on the structure.

I remain proud of the book as is. It's in safekeeping. When I do work on a memoir inspired by it, I will be creating something different. I love how the trout book uniquely combines how-to with profound spiritual disclosure. How it shows that fishing for stocked trout--with a spinning rod--can lead to the very heart of Western Civilization's value. That's what the book does. And stockers and a spinning rod!? Truly the work of a heretic! 

Which makes it exciting for me. I know. You might not give a shit.

A word about the previous post linked to. Where I write that the majority who would not read the book rules out the few who would, I'm on loose ground. They don't really rule it out. They simply would have no interest and since a publisher couldn't profit, it is of course entirely reasonable he doesn't publish it. No, and the real situation is the book's value. Not its worthlessness. What this means is that if I want badly enough the few who would read it to do so, then I have to pay the price of self-publication. 

Also, further reading reveals that self-publication with an ISBN shouldn't negatively affect subsequent publication attempts. So my rather snide remark about money making it a publisher's business to marginalize me for low sales of a self-published book seems erroneous, and besides, the remark almost comes off as a sneer at money as such. I believe money well-earned is never evil. Of course it isn't. It's nothing more than a measure of value.

Book Post 

The Wrong Way to Hold a Fish

Ever since Andy Still criticized me for holding the bass in the photo that way, I've always held them either straight up and down, or have supported the body underneath by my other hand. It's really best to support the fish with two hands; even when held straight--lipping a bass, for instance--the strain might cause the fish damage.

But to bend the neck--no, don't do that. Think of the strain of all that body weight on the neck. Will a fish survive it? Maybe not.

In any event, the bass photographed probably died, because it was a bleeder. I did release it, hoping the bleeding would stop. 

Saffin Pond

Three Fall Rainbow Trout

Mark uses a centerpin rod and reel, allowing his float to navigate into pockets and around boulders, sometimes floating a hundred feet or more downstream of where he stands. He keeps the reel set on freespool until a trout comes to the net, when he engages the clicker.  When he moves on to position elsewhere on the river, he engages the bear claw, which locks the reel so the rig doesn't come loose as he walks. Free-spooling a slip float is the technique, fingers ready to immediately hold the reel in place so the hook gets set.

He caught two trout on Blue Goo egg sacks he bought while fishing the Oswego River in New York recently. He also ties his own sacks. Sometimes he uses a single salmon egg, a nighcrawler, a pink Gulp worm, or a plastic bead. A third trout for him today came on a single pink Mike's Atlas Shrimp egg. All three were about 14, maybe 15 inches long. The rig is identical to a steelhead rig. A half dozen or so split shots trail down the line in descending order by weight. A plastic bead sits underneath the float, one at the top between the float and a stopper. He buys the beads at Michael's. Much less expensive than at tackle shops or online.

I fly cast a black and a copper woolly bugger, catching nothing and getting no hits.

I got to see some more of New Jersey, traveling roads familiar to me elsewhere, but not where I drove today. I had made a left where I was supposed to go right, putting more than 10 extra miles on my odometer, but now I've seen countryside I might never have seen. It's not a good thing to take too much for granted.  The river is always there, but the fox we saw was an event not quite like any other involving a fox we'll see.

Mark told me about a tree in the river no longer there, too. It created an eddy and bowled out the bottom a bit. The river's always becoming a new version of itself.  

Chub

NJ Trout

Walpack Inn & Justin Lerner

Finally got a Sunday off after weeks holding down the fort while my supervisor is out after back surgery. Trish and I headed north, after I felt a little annoyed at her getting ready at what I believed was a late hour. (Did I express my disgruntlement? No, no, no. Not a word.) As it turned out, we arrived about 45 minutes before our table reservation, so we bought hard apple cider and sat on the lawn to enjoy Justin Lerner's performance.

Many of you probably know Justin Lerner from his FB posts of amazing catches. I did get to meet him when he took a break. 

I've felt so interested in shots of him with big browns, I asked him, "What's the biggest wild brown you've caught in New Jersey?"

He said he caught a 26-inch brown, adding that you can't tell for certain. I quickly agreed, but I really didn't know if maybe there's a sure way to tell the difference. He said the fins of his big one were clean. I had heard before that often you can tell it's a club fish by damaged fins.

The Walpack Inn is really only about an hour-and-a-half from Bedminster, when we take the road from Blairstown over to Millbrook. Go to Old Mine Road from Route 80's last exit, and it's surely two hours.

It's our favorite restaurant. Has a real sportsmen's feel about it.

On the way home, a bobcat ran across the road in front of our car.

 

Justin Lerner is Playing at Walpack Inn Tomorrow

 I really should have thought of posting this a week ago. I guess it's better late than never.

Justin Lerner, the legendary angler some of us see on Facebook with his great catches, is also an artist. (But he seems to be plenty of an artist as an angler.) He plays guitar and has two albums out: 18th Avenue and The Dividing Line. His performances--solo and with his band--range from small bars to stadiums. 

The Walpack Inn is located in Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area in Sussex County. It's a great restaurant. If any of you are interested at the last minute, there may still be time for you to make reservations.

Mustad Bronze

Could have bought 100 #10 treble hooks from Amazon for three dollars more, but they are corrosion resistant, so I bought 25 #10 bronze Mustad trebles. Sometimes a fish takes the hook deep, and bronze hooks rust out. Corrosion resistant? Obviously seems less likely they would.

Many would say I shouldn't use trebles for bait. They block food passage if caught in the gut. I shouldn't even use single-prong. Only circle hooks. Anything but a little treble complicates a live herring's freedom in the water. Single-prong hooks turn inward on the herring's eye, while a treble mounts on its head like a crown. I'm not altogether sold on the idea that little treble hooks block food passage, particularly in the case of larger fish, but I hate it when a fish I intend to release gets hooked deeply. Even if it's a yellow perch. 

I set the hook as quickly as I get to the rod and tighten the line.

Got these hooks on my 60th birthday today. I was thinking I may never use them. Bottom fishing live herring doesn't interest me as much as it used to. But suddenly it occurred to me that sometime in the future, my son and I might get that next chance to do it, which we talked about the last time, October 2016, when he was a senior in high school. 

Maybe the little square pack of hooks will wait for him on a shelf.

(He just now phoned as I proofread.)

Lake Hopatcong Conversation

This is the 13th year I've fished Hopatcong in the fall. I especially looked forward to fishing with Jorge, because I knew I could discuss my book with him, but yesterday as closing time came at the supermarket, I felt those primal desires for big fish all of us feel.

But not all of us want to read the kind of book mine as it is at present, the version I've already put on external drives for future safe keeping, while also keeping a copy I'll divide into various essays for literary magazines and material for a possible memoir I may write 10 years from now. The remainder is how-to, especially for microlight salmon-egging stocked trout. The way I seamlessly connect how-to together with material from my life at the shore--when I treaded clams for a living while studying hundreds of books of literature, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology, when I documented innumerable spiritual experiences in many dozens of notebooks--the way I do it clearly seems to work because it shows, especially while I'm stuck in the working class with like associates at the supermarket who also fish stockers, the likes of us not as privileged as traveling fly anglers...it shows how the fishing keeps me connected to the spirituality I achieved during my shore adventure. Best of all, it gives the reader something to believe in, if he will go deep into his own experience. 

Some Baby Boomers might be interested in the parallels the book lines up with lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison. I show how my book could never be the American Prayer it is--every chapter is headed by a quote from an American president--without Jim Morrison's album, An American Prayer., preceding it. I go a step further than to believe the album is really cynicism from the sewer.

But that's what the book seems to be--a prayer. As grounded in fact, experience, realism, and practicality as it is, who will come along for the adventure of its 156 pages? Many would say today that America needs a prayer, but many would seem to say so...and not really care. Besides, I wrote the book for the individual reader, for the man who will actually find on the pages something to believe. I know one of you would read it, but like Jim Morrison, who failed at taking his audience as far as he desired to go with them, my book also fails. By all I can gather, it is an utter impossibility to publish it in today's market. I have been reading heavily on the publishing business. The book is certainly worth keeping on solid state drives. In another 150 years, someone may come upon it and feel interested that Bruce Edward Litton actually wrote it during our dark time.

I may take Jorge's advice. Give readers the meat and potatoes. Write about how to do it. I do wonder why we do it, but right there, I seem to lose 99.9 percent or more of an audience, not because my sentences don't lead one into the next, but because the reader must choose to read them, not to mention connect the logic. Most people who fish stocked trout will not be so serious about the pursuit. Not even to appreciate a story about someone who is.

Or let's be blunt. They may be damn serious about fishin'--but not very bright. 

Even a meat and potatoes book on spinning for trout--it's especially about microlight spinning, the book is a specialty in either form--is likely to draw no interest from publishers. They seem to feel only fly fishermen are book readers, by and large. The rest of us dumb asses who use a spinning rod do read articles about spinning for trout, but by and large, we don't read books. Not any sort of books.

And since the publishing business is all about money, the very few who would gain by my book, they won't read it, because the majority who would never read it represent the lack of money needed to interest a publisher. They vote the better reader out, in effect. My writing mentor, Ed Minus, whose novel, Kite, was published by Penguin Press, told me, "Americans have an insatiable appetite for shit."

If you think I'm telling you about a form of censorship, get rid of that notion, because I could self-publish. It's just that I think the book as is wouldn't sell, so what's the use? I would do it for a very few, if I could afford it. Maybe I can. Electronically. I haven't got as far in my reading about the business yet. But here's how obsessed the publishing business is with money. By what I've gathered, I would have to purchase an ISBN. That means the sales would collect a track record. I have hope to write literary works that may indeed attract publishers. But if they look at my track record and see I published a book that sold 13 copies, I might be in trouble. Why is that their damn business? Well, money makes it their damn business.

Regardless of qualms felt after some three years of writing the book--I did take long hiatus's for other projects--only to save it for some distant future when I'm dead, I get out and fish. Jorge and I were on the lake before dawn, going forward with handheld running lights. As you can see in the photos, we caught some fish. None of them very big.

I'll finish this post by saying that as utterly ridiculous as it seems in an age that has utterly abandoned any spirituality, I believe in the reward of heaven. I can promise you I will suffer more bouts yet of the severe depression accompanying me, ever since I began reading on getting published. But was all of my sincere effort in writing the book in vain? You bet, I feel that. But I don't really think that.

I don't believe everyone achieves the reward of heaven. That doesn't make me elitist. I don't believe in the Elect. It makes me a realist. A favorite move of mine is Danial Kaluuya's Get Out. About "the dark place." A good reason to abandon "the real world" and go fishing.

Jorge and I enjoyed a bite that lasted about an hour-and-a-half. Several white perch took our large herring, some yellow perch did, too, but the two hybrid stripers were better, and I caught the same walleye twice. (See photo of the weird flare-up on its cheek.)

Here's the walleye I caught twice from 30 feet of water.

 

That lesion or whatever it is on its cheek is the proof.

We caught three crappies about a foot long each that took large herring 30 feet down.

After fog cleared (you can see sun on Jorge's face), the bite had died. We began jigging Binsky bladebaits.

Caught this rock bass with interesting coloration on a Binsky. We tried two long-edged drops jigging.

More Photos. Gobble 'em up.

 

Few Minutes After Sunset: Lost a Nice Trout

 Went over to the river after sunset with my two-weight TFO and a Wooly Bugger. Since the storm is coming, I thought maybe a chance existed of getting a trout to hit. I also thought other fishermen might not be there. 

I was right on both counts.

Almost. One guy had just set up, bottom fishing. One other fished spinners, and he had caught one. I had already begun probing the bottom slowly when I spoke to him, so immediately, I gained on up tempo, stripping the bugger.

That worked. I saw the fish turn sidewise the moment after it hit. A nice rainbow of maybe 18 inches. It had broken my line. A bad knot. 

Took awhile to tie on another bugger. And I got a few stripping retrieves in the gathering dusk before the line got hopelessly tangled. Good reason to always grab the headlamp when you the grab the rod, if you're going to fish late.

On the way out, we struck up more conversation, the same fisherman along with his female partner, who asked me if I hunt. She does. With a bow. She hasn't caught any trout yet. Says she fishes bass and this is different. I imagine she'll catch on. As for myself, I'm definitely going to do this fall trout thing after I retire in about five years. I'm just fortunate today to have unusual hours--9:00 to 5:30--since I'm covering for my manager.

Fall Stocker Scene

Got to the river at sunset with my two-weight TFO and began casting upstream of anyone else, discovering that my bodacious shrimp streamer had too much weight to cast on that rod. So I tied on a beadhead black Wooly Bugger, and though at first I had a little difficulty casting that, too, I compensated and from thereon it was a little rough but functional.

I covered some water, mostly just enjoying the water and the heavy sound of insects and getting into various patterns of jigging, stripping, and drift. Warm temperatures meant I took off my jacket and remained in short sleeves. Even as it got dark, I felt comfortable.

Nothing ever hit, but I spoke to two young guys who had a couple. The fall stocking had people out fishing in force, and I felt impressed by the guys with head lamps that came on as darkness fell. I was far from the last guy out.

New Jersey Trout Fishing  

Native Brook Trout Action

Oliver Round and I planned on the trip for many weeks, since sometime in August, I think, when October 6 seemed that other world of fall. I thanked him when it finished, especially because he had selected a brook new to me. It certainly has native brook trout, although I'm unclear on whether or not any wild browns. It flows into Pohatcong Creek. That might make you wonder if any browns swim upstream, although the brook is very small. 

We did find a brook trout fully nine inches long or better--the mouth of a watersnake clamped on its tail. I grabbed the snake and held it in front of the active GoPro on my head and Oliver's phone. The snake dropped the trout before he could snap the shot, and I quickly flung the snake aside into the water, it's wide-open mouth having gone for my arm. That snake had very powerful jaws. The trout was sort of towing it around, but the snake would not let go.

I'll post the video on YouTube at a future date.

To add an interesting catch to the story, I had seen the trout duck under a crevice and I was setting up to target the fish--possibly I would wait it out until my presence became part of its environs--when suddenly that snake came out from underneath with it. I thought at first it was an eel.

Oliver caught his on a dry fly. I hooked one on a sinking ant with a little red on the body; Oliver got a good look at the fish and said it was bigger than his. I will never forget the flash of silver catching sunlight as it struck. 

One of the photos below shows a strange brook trout between a leaf and the clump of leaves. Must have been sick. Would not spook. 

After we thoroughly fished the range we had from where we had parked, we drove on downstream and found a very interesting spot. It was the only one, because private land upstream and down was an access problem. I caught seven or eight chubs; Oliver caught one. With polarizers, he sighted eight brook trout stacked underneath two logs. Repeatedly, we tried to get sinking flies to them, but although chubs kept hitting, the trout stayed put.

It makes sense that if you know about holes holding trout on a given stream, you can come prepared to stalk the fish very carefully and even sit and wait long before making the first cast. We were happy to do some exploring today instead.

The elongated grey patch is a brook trout.

 

Pohandusing Brook

 

Restoration of White Cedar

White cedar used to be abundant in New Jersey, but nineteenth century logging reduced the forests in the Pinelands and even in the Meadowlands. Where Fred Matero and I fish striped bass at DeKorte Park with the Manhattan skyscape in full view, we've lost swimbaits on white cedar stumps on the flats. 

Fish & Wildlife

River Slow for Smallmouths

Several weeks ago, John told me he would have today off. I didn't rule us out going for smallmouth bass, just in case plans changed, as they did. 

Yesterday, Trish and I went to Island Beach State Park, and at Murphy's Hook House, I learned the surf would be too rough to fish, but I bought a pint of killies for the smallmouths, also looking ahead to smallmouths at Lake Hopatcong a month from now. (I might be able to keep them alive with an aerator.)

We have chilly nights recently, early this morning no exception, but I expected the bass to be all over the killies. I started out throwing a Rapala, because they're often good this time of year. I gave up on the plug quickly and confidently put a killie out on a few of my favorite spots, nothing happening.

So it was going to be a slow evening.

I lay a killie against the far bank and felt the line tighten--a swing and a miss. John fished from shore. He would later tell me he would have gone in up to his waist if I got into bass, but that otherwise, he didn't want to soil his $30,000.00 Nissan Z. 

I baited up again and took the same cast, felt a tap, tightened the line, set the hook, and began fighting a good bass I thought might weigh two pounds. It came off deep down in the hole.

I didn't want to get skunked, but I already felt parted from this my favorite stretch. I don't know if it's been fished out, or if the shock of these chilly nights turned the bass off. The water was pretty cold. I wouldn't have been comfortable without my waders. I am thinking, though, of finding another river spot for short forays like this evening's.

I did manage to catch a smallmouth not much larger than 10 inches, but besides those other two hits, that's all we got tonight. 

Almost Four Pounds

 

Water Clarity Borderline for Plugs

It's been almost a year since I last fished with Oliver Shapiro, though it doesn't seem as long. During that outing, he spoke of an essay about how fishing slows time, an idea serving as an antidote to how the years seem to wing by as we get older. That much said, both Oliver and myself look forward to retirement. I can't wait for the next five years to pass, as I hope to retire in 2025, but part of me seems wiser than my eagerness. It keeps telling me to appreciate the time I have right now. No matter that I would rather not participate in the hurly burly of a supermarket. That part of me knows I would rather do that than be dead. The wonder of the Great Beyond aside, the point of living can be to do it well, even when it seems as if rewards are slim.

Like pike. I paid keen attention when one of them came after Oliver's jerkbait. By the commotion at the surface, I felt sure it was a pike, though Oliver hadn't actually seen the fish to make a positive identification. Largemouths exist in the river, too.

It was off-color, but not as bad as it gets. We tried a spot new to me, though Oliver had scouted it once about 10 years ago. Trails took us well upstream, and though we found fish as the photo shows, nothing came at our plugs as the pike attacked during the previous two outings I took this year. (The first was far and away the best.)

One comes here with an expectation of "river monsters" like those represented in photos posted on Facebook, but reality offers the best reward. No doubt plenty of big fish exist, but it seems clear that only a very few anglers, if even that many, catch them well over 30 inches regularly. I have no plans to keep treading the mud until I start catching them myself. Pike fascinate me, but I'm committed to my canoes and other species as well. On the previous outing, a big pike probably over 30 inches did come after my plug, and the way the water moved around and over its body reminds me of the poet Charles Baudelaire when he wrote of "the wing of madness" clipping him.

Early Season Pike

Bars Don't Work for Me as Fishing Can

We got out on the reservoir in the middle of the afternoon, struggling against a fairly strong headwind, riding towards the back. I was looking for a line of submerged boulders we had once fished when the reservoir was full, expecting to see it somewhere up on the grass-covered shore. We did see a point not far beyond where Fred cut the engine and we began drifting.

I cast a tube jig, and besides getting one tap that might have been a sunfish, the nine to 24 feet of water we fished seemed completely barren. After a foreboding half hour or so, we motored to that point, where to my surprise we found that line of boulders I had looked for. I cast the jig towards the bank and hooked up a few seconds later. A smallmouth about a foot long leapt and threw the hook.

Soon we anchored near the point, boulders under the boat and to the left and right, along with some stumps and narrow tree trunks. I felt curious about the three- to four-inch diameter of those trunks, because they've been down deep under the surface for many decades now, and they haven't decomposed. Part of the reason they're still there, perhaps, is due to the reservoir's low fertility--less organic breakdown.

We fished there for what felt like many hours, picking away at the bass. Small ones. One of Fred's smallmouths was 13 inches. I had said, "You would think all of the bass in the reservoir would come here, there's so much dead water." Shortly thereafter, action picked up.

But that's not the only spot. It's a really good rocky spot, but I remembered the last time Fred and I fished here from his boat, in 2015. Near one of the towers, I had noticed weedbeds we didn't have time to fish that day. This evening, as we approached the spot, we noticed we would be out of the wind. That calm surface itself felt inviting, because it was a break in the general pattern of choppy surface. It seems to make no sense that calm surface on a reservoir otherwise riled up would make any difference to the fish, but that's not how the situation felt to me. 

On my first cast with a Senko, I caught the largemouth in the photograph above, good-sized for bass here. (Click on the link below for information on the unusual lack of sizable bass.) I cast where it appeared the weedline ends about 12 to 14 feet deep. Soon Fred caught a nice smallmouth. Then he tied on a topwater plug, catching a largemouth as dusk fell. (He also caught a redbreast sunfish and rock bass on the PopR.)

All told, we put 14 fish in the boat. Four smallmouths apiece. Two largemouths apiece. A rocky spot. A weedy spot.

For me, the best part of the day was fishing while anchored on the rocks. We talked more than we usually do, because we weren't involved in navigation. Just casting and slow retrieves. We got out of ourselves. At least I did, and Fred wasn't off somewhere else. Some people do that best at a bar, but bars just don't work for me as fishing can. 

                                                     Population Survey

 

Two River Smallmouths

 

Going on 10 years since I last fished here. Matt and I caught little that day, but previous outings here had resulted in an 18 1/2-inch largemouth and smallmouths almost as big. Today we came with Matt's Uncle Rick and his cousin Kyle. A family reunion precious as those are, everyone involved not so sure when the next one will work out as each of us go our own ways. I first fished here in 1977 or 1978. By serendipity, Matt & I arrived here with a Cub Scout friend of his and parent after an event further north. That was 2007 or so. 

The place always offers the possibility of a big fish. One of the bass that took a live killiefish from me might have been one of them. (I kept leftover killies from fluke fishing yesterday.) 

Flat shallow water overlooked by Rick & Kyle as they made their way downstream yielded the only two smallmouths we caught. I saw the edge between visible bottom and some weeds, and I decided to wade as far out as I would find possible, which wasn't very far as appearances deceive. Then I let current drift a killie through that dark water near the edge where things become visible. A smallmouth took the bait on my first or second cast. 

And others did, too.

In general, we tried six spots, all of which, besides two of them, have yielded bass and one pickerel over the years. Today, that edge just beyond the flat offered us the only action.

There's a presence in that whole area encompassing the spots we tried that I encounter everywhere else I fish. As much as I'm out to sink a hook into a fish's jaw, I'm out to let the uniqueness of the place I fish pull me into its gullet. There's a tension, a tenacity about the gravity of a place as it tries to claim any condition that colors it--as its own. It does so with some degree of absolute success, and yet there's something sad about any place on this Earth, because anywhere you go not only belongs to the whole planet--the whole planet belongs to something larger.

Smallmouths

One Fluke Island Beach

 

Island Beach crowded with vehicles, my family still had plenty of room. 

Surf was moderately rough. Enough for great belly surfing and too much to use my five-and-a-half-foot St. Croix and split-shot weighted killies. I used my eight-foot Tica and a two-ounce bank sinker. Caught one fluke that way.

A Little Fly Casting

 

My family hiked two-and-a-half miles along the river with a friend this morning. Sadie came along and so did Michael's dog, Quincy, who is 13-years-old if I remember rightly. Sadie is almost 11. Both took their time but were quicker than I expected.

Afterwards, Matt and I fly fished a nearby stretch for smallmouths. The river is in beautiful shape. The water is clear and cool. Not at all bath-water warm. So clear that with sunlight on it, bass had made themselves scarce.

We fished subsurface for a half hour at most, caught nothing, but the experience made me look ahead to late September or October. Hope to be back when the light is low, the temperature not too cold, and--I hope--the river is clear.

Leech/Worm Fly We Used

Hunterdon County NJ Trout Fishing

 Nishisakawick Creek near Frenchtown

The article originally found its place in The Federated Sportsmen's News. 

Hunterdon Hills Trout Streams

By Bruce Edward Litton

 

 

          Stocked streams in New Jersey offer a wide array of qualities. They range from urban settings like that of the Rahway River in Essex County, to obscure rural and mountain streams in Warren and Sussex counties like Jacksonburg Creek and Franklin Pond Creek, as well as scenic rivers like the Musconetcong, Pequest, and Paulinskill. The very high quality water of Dunnfield Creek in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area was stocked at least as late as the 1980’s, but the trend in more recent years is to protect wild and native trout streams against stocked intruders. Many of New Jersey’s highest quality waters no longer receive as much fishing pressure.

         Judging from experience fishing some of these lesser known wild and native trout streams, I can vouch for a series of streams in Hunterdon County differently. Not for water quality sufficient for trout reproduction except for two of them, but for their beauty and productiveness as Trout Maintenance Water. They range south to north from Alexauken Creek near Lambertville, to Hakihokake Creek in the Milford area, all of them flowing into the Delaware River or Delaware and Raritan Canal. Hakihokake Creek is actually a complex system of little tributaries. They host wild brown trout. Well to the south of this watershed a single finger exists near Frenchtown: Warford Creek and its wild trout.

          The other streams named in order from south to north—Alexauken, Wickecheoke, Lockatong, Nishisakawick creeks—flow through farmlands and wooded hills. Below farmland, plenty of the hilly woodland filters out farm contaminants, protects against sun, and improves in general on the relatively low quality of slow water. Healthy stream flow and rocky habitat make the trout fishing interesting. I imagine just enough springs exist for small percentages of the trout to holdover, although the Lockatong (geological) Formation is not known for limestone feeding groundwater through springs into the streams. (The Lockatong Formation includes the streams from the Wickecheoke to the Nishisakawick.) The hilly settings featuring fast rocky riffles and flows, holes, and pools are, in my opinion, especially conducive to the use of salmon eggs, the method depending on drifting eggs in a life-like way through currents. The water looks so good you might forget you’re fishing a stream with no wild trout present.

          Decades ago, I was first introduced to Wickecheoke Creek in February to fish for holdovers. We caught none, but on earlier occasions without me, my friend had caught one or two rainbows on worms fished on bottom in holes once and a while in January and February, while fishing the Lockatong, too. We fished a few holes of the Wickecheoke, and I distinctly remember considerable ice formations surrounding them, temperatures in the teens. I wouldn’t remember this escapade as clearly as I do, unless it were fully worthwhile despite no action from fish.

          That same year, 1975, I began fishing the Hunterdon Hills on Opening Day and on occasion otherwise during the spring season. I’ve also fished them during the ‘80’s, ‘90’s and both decades of the new millennium, drawn to their nourishment as if by homing instinct. On a foray with my son in 2014, water was high and off-color, but we still caught a lot of trout on salmon eggs. The water wasn’t all that muddy.

           Public access is pretty good on all of these streams. Hakihokake Creek gets stocked from County Road 519 downstream to Javes Road and Miller Park Road, pull-offs evident along the way. Warford Creek doesn’t get stocked. The Nishisakawick near it does, and there’s pullover access along CR 519 downstream to Creek Road. The Lockatong Creek is situated considerably further south in Kingwood and is stocked from Union Road on downstream to State Highway 29. Wickecheoke Creek flows near Stockton with pull-off access at CR 519 and along Lower Creek Road. Alexauken Creek offers access along Alexauken Creek Road in the Lambertville area.

           All of the streams are close enough together to car hop from one to another. It all depends on how much you want to do, but the charm of driving at length among the hills to explore new waters is worth at least the thought. The prettiest stretch of stream and roadway is from CR 519 to State Highway 29 by way of Federal Twist Road. It doesn’t actually shoulder the Lockatong, but several side roads—Milltown Road, Strimple’s Mill Road, Raven-Rock Rosemont Road—provide access along a fairly steep way down from CR 519 to the Delaware River. Another spot worth mention is the Frenchtown Cliffs on the Nishisakawick, a short drive upstream on Creek Road from town. Why the state quit stocking this spot about a decade ago, I have little idea, but the view of a 60-foot cliff above a nice hole of clear water is marvelous. Wickecheoke Creek features a covered bridge at Sergeantsville, a spot worth a stop, and on down along Lower Creek Road the views are beautiful and the flow is rocky and pretty quick with pockets and holes holding trout.

          Stocking continues into late April for most of these streams, mid-May for the Lockatong judging by the 2018 information available as I write. Late in May, fly fishing with dry patterns becomes productive as the rainbows acclimate to the streams and begin behaving more like wild fish. Summer shuts the trout fishing down. The few surviving holdovers find scarce springs. None of these streams receive fall stockings.

         For sheer numbers of fish, April is the month to come here, using the lightest ultra-light you own, the reel spool filled with two-pound test. You’ll probably never need a split shot. At least most of the deep flows don’t have current strong enough to warrant the use, but it’s a good idea to buy size 14 snap swivels and clip off the swivels, placing a baby pin through the remaining line loop of each swivel, and then pinning this arrangement to your vest. Use even smaller--size 18 or 20--if you can find any for sale, although snaps smaller than size 14 and measured by weight test are out there.  A couple or a few clipped swivels added to a snap is all the weight you’ll need in some situations. 

          In many others, nothing but a size 14 baitholder hook and a size 14 snap is necessary. The heaviest weight you cast is a single Mike’s salmon egg. You want it to ride the current as life-like as possible, not necessarily dragging bottom but getting down there and making some contact. The streams are fairly small, and they invite you to walk and wade up or downstream of stocking points. You usually don’t have to cast very far, and any stretch you fish will remind you that stocking makes a real difference for quality fishing.

Salmon Eggs for Trout

Lenny, is it Still the WH?

 Lenny, wondering if it's still called the WH. Hope you don't give away what that stands for. Eric was calling it the WH in 2015. I think one of the higher ups named it. 

New Jersey Trout Fishing

 

Fred Matero with Rainbow from North Branch Raritan (Photo care of Fred Matero.)

I've already written a post on wild trout in New Jersey (you can click the link below), so I will focus mostly on the stocking program but very little at that. I'm keeping this post very short, compared to what might be written. By clicking on such labels on this blog as "trout" and "rivers," you can find numerous articles on trout fishing here. Some of them are pertinent to trout fishing nationwide. 

Prior to the furunculosis disease at the Pequest Hatchery during fall 2013, brown trout and brook trout also got stocked; recently only rainbows got stocked by the state, although private organizations, such as South Branch Outfitters in Califon, Round Valley Trout Association of Lebanon, and the Knee Deep Club of Lake Hopatcong have stocked brown trout and perhaps some tigers and brookies.

The state has also recently been stocking landlocked salmon at Tilcon, Wawayanda, and Aeroflex lakes, as well as Merrill Creek Reservoir. 

Traditionally, the state stocks trout in every New Jersey county. Drawing for a moment on my own experience, I recall catching trout in Ocean County's Metedeconk River, from its small stream headwaters in the pines, while fishing during my teens with my mentor, Joe. As a quick aside, I don't recall if I noted in my article on wild trout that information is available online about native brook trout existing in a remote Pinelands region where cold spring water is released. Many other sources indicate that about 50% of native brook habitat produces this species from Somerset County northward. 

What lies ahead regarding stocking anywhere in the state is a guess, but an educated guess is that the state will return to normal after the COVID pandemic. I have found no information online about fall and winter trout stocking yet to come in New Jersey during 2020, and this past spring was not a normal season. 

From tiny streams to the largest lake in the state--Hopatcong--trout stocking in New Jersey has historically supported a major recreational enterprise paid for at least in part by trout stamps. It has a history as an intricate and excellently executed program involving many dozens of waterways--from streams and ponds where trout don't survive the summer to streams and reservoirs where they reproduce. (Don't forget that lake trout were originally stocked in Round Valley Reservoir; they now reproduce there, the southernmost reproduction of this species besides a lake in Arizona, from what I've heard.) 

Thus far, only 2020 has seen such a major disruption of the state's stocking program. The furunculosis outbreak might not seem to compare, because although the spring stocking schedule of 2014 was shortened to four weeks, none of the feeling of uncertainty ensued like that we felt when trout season was arbitrarily opened in March before Opening Day April 11, 2020. A large number of brown and brook trout infected by the disease had to be destroyed during spring 2014, but there was not quite the disruption of the schedule to stock streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and reservoirs, as there was during spring 2020 due to COVID-19. (Rainbow trout were not affected by furunculosis, and to avoid any future infection of furunculosis at the hatchery, the state now stocks only rainbows.)

Note 10/1/2020: The good news is that information is online about fall trout stocking in New Jersey 2020. I wish I had checked again sooner.

Rainbow from Round Valley

Nineteen- and some-inch brown trout from Round Valley.

Stocker brown from North Branch Raritan.

Stocker Rainbow from Pequest River

Round Valley Reservoir Brown

Stocker Brook Trout Lockatong Creek

Tiger Trout from South Branch Raritan (Care of Oliver Round)

I'll mention that the brook trout is the state fish under a recent photo of a native. (Care of Oliver Round)

Mike Petrole with Round Valley Lake Trout

Native and Wild Trout of New Jersey

How's the AC Holding Up, Lenny?

What I really remember were those frigid mornings down around 10 degrees, but the heat worked fine. I also remember a member or someone coming in, asking if I had either heat or AC. Imagine that.

I was over at Round Valley today, shooting photos, but I didn't take that route...you work the morning shift anyway. Been a long time. You're not forgotten, obviously. 

Looks like I retire five years from October 23rd. We both know Fred's done counting. Amazing.

It was four years on July 17th since I worked there.  When no members or other entries were coming in, I was trying to figure out what book to write, but for the time being, I was more into essays for literary magazines. (Looks like finally one of these will be published very soon.) I remember--very distinctly--when once I was preparing to go to the kitchen to get lunch, and the trout book crossed my mind. I actually conceived it in 2006. I just never got to work on it until after March 2017. After four a.m. on March 17, 2017, suffering from insomnia, I dragged out all of the articles I still possess that I got published during my teens, and I read one on fishing salmon eggs. That's when I knew I had to write this book. I got started on it within weeks of that night. I did take some long periods of hiatus, busy on other projects, but in the main, it took three years to write.  

Hope all's well and knowing you, it probably is.  

The Trout Book is Off to Readers

The three years writing my book on trout fishing felt grand. I had an alternative to come home to every night after a day spent at my working-class life. (Thanks to my wife, we do better than that, and I mustn't fail to thank the publishers that pay me, either.) The book is off to various readers. One of them has read it completely and says, "It's very interesting. It's like no other book on trout fishing. I wouldn't change a word." 

My son is into chapter 2 and tells me I need a better title and that I shouldn't describe myself as "conservative with regard to the outdoors and intellectual values" because I'm very forward-thinking about the environment. What else is the outdoors? I don't know what I will do about the sentence as yet. I am also very backward-looking with regard to the outdoors...well aware the practices predate civilization.

The book takes especially microlight method, a way of fishing salmon eggs on three-and-a-half-foot spinning rods, but other methods also--there's even mention of fly fishing here and there--as a portal to go through to the big picture. Microlight method is explained in every detail I can produce for a 156-page book, which will be longer if photos are accepted. I loved writing about how to do it, and yet, as I say, there's more to the fishing than the grab of a hook.

The big picture ultimately amounts to a philosophical view, so I go into mine. It's been no less than thrilling to write about. The book comes to a climax--as if it is a single story with a narrative arc--when I discuss what I believe is the central issue of Western Civilization. I didn't frame it. Aristotle framed it almost 2500 years ago. I merely walked into the picture.  

Better a Bass was on than None

U.S. Highway 206 is in front of our house. Matt and his mother just came in as I begin writing, telling me about the huge convoy of secret service, state police, and Donald Trump that just now drove by. "Did you give him the finger?" I asked my son. "No, Mom wouldn't let me. I didn't want him think we were out there gaga over him!" 

Bedminster is notorious for the golf course. Other than that, I feel it's a really good town. I even had a better opinion of Trump, before he ran for a job he couldn't do. But now that I know of serious criminal evidence against him come to light, I think at least his becoming President might mean a bust and jail time for him afterwards.

We never mentioned a word about him fishing today, though conversation ranged over numerous topics. Andy Beck has spent a lot of time on Long Beach Island, too. I lived there for 13 years, but today I didn't recall the names of bars he reminded me of. And now I remember the name of the big one in Bay Village--The Tide. We both had forgotten. 

His first time fishing, I showed him how to cast, verbalizing each detail, and felt amazed at the distance and accuracy of his first. From then on, he had no trouble fishing a Champers, though he didn't get the worm on any bass.

I caught a little largemouth. 

After not very long, I suggested we move to the right towards some little pads. In past years, weedbeds have existed where apparently the heavy rain thinned them, although water clarity today was good. Experience at casting worms is like the machine artificial intelligence my son is becoming expert at creating and doing. Of course it is, because experience at casting worms, so long as intelligently practiced, is an example of living intelligence. Every cast done by conscious intent is registered in the brain's computer and alters the program, which further suggests why each and every cast counts. The result is what some people call instinct, but I call intuition. For example, the ability to put a worm directly where it needs to go in order to score on the first cast to a new spot. That has some but relatively little to do with external senses. It's about the brain's intelligence producing a best guess. My approach to the pads today is a case in point. My first three casts failed--nothing took the worm. And the fourth cast resulted in a big bass leaving a big surface boil after the worm sailed over the fish closely. The worm needed to touch down a foot in front of where that bass lay. 

I distinctly felt my guesses were off. They were off.

We moved even further to the right and more pads, nothing happening there, when it was about time to go home. I would fish two spots along the steep bank where tree trunks and brush in the water hold bass. I understood Andy would not want to slip down the high, steep dirt and gravel, and I haven't yet checked for ticks. Before I got to water edge, I cast to make sure no bass lay directly in front that would spook. Then I got into position to put a Chompers directly on the edge of a bush in the water. Underneath that edge, water must be at least four feet deep. I let the worm sink and settle. Then I brought it up, over weeds (rigged with an inset hook), and let it drop at the edge of the weeds and sink.

Andy kept talking. I listened closely, interjecting words. A minute or more passed when I was not in focus. That worm was in perfect position for a take, and I did not give the situation the respect it needed. 

Always, always lift the rod tip carefully to feel if a bass is on, and if you feel the resistance and slight tug that indicates a fish is on, set the hook! Hard! Instead, I just lifted on the rod and thought the worm had weeds on it. Until I felt tugging. My rod, already lifted high, could not set the hook. The bass surfaced and I saw how wide its body; it looked like a beautiful 18-incher. And then it came off the hook.

So I struck out twice. Especially the second time. A lack of awareness on my part resulted in loss. And it didn't feel good.

Even so, better a bass was on than none at all. And on the whole, it was an excellent day on the water with a friend who is soon moving to Texas.