The Natural World is Always There for You

You begin a long canoe float with the normal anxiety of everyday life, as if that's all the day will amount to. Towards the middle hours, you feel you don't have it in you to let go, empty yourself, and be filled with that equivalent of necessity that moves like aquatic vegetation undulates in the flow. But it happens, inevitably. You've been gone too long for it not to.

My guess? We did about six miles. I met Brenden Kuprel, 9:00 a.m., at the Confluence. There we left his SUV, riding to Neshanic. The road mileage isn't that much, but the river twists and turns, and we got out of the canoe shortly before 4:00. It wasn't a direct float-through, as if we only moved a mile-an-hour. We anchored a lot.

I had doubted we needed the extra 10 pounds! Thankfully, Brenden thought the anchor an OK idea. Without it, we wouldn't have caught nearly as many fish.

The total for the day was 43. My single largemouth (my first fish), my 13 smallmouths, Brenden's 28 smallmouths and his single green sunfish, which he, too, thought might be a warmouth. (I used to confuse them with warmouths, and I still haven't completely clarified the issue for myself.) Brenden often way outdoes me. He's an excellent angler.

The biggest was that 19-incher photographed above. Brenden caught a 16 1/4-incher, and we watched as a 15-incher leapt and shook the hook of his Ned Rig. At least, I think it was a Ned Rig. Earlier on, he used a round-head jig with, I think, a little paddletail. He did well with that, too. I did fish a Ned Rig some, and got hit, too. But I caught all my fish on four-inch Yum Dingers and Senkos rigged Wacky. 

Shadows amounted to many of the fish caught, maybe more than half, but they weren't the only spots where we caught--and saw--bass. Shadows are pretty hard to come by under high-noon sun, but even where the river is otherwise shallow, we often pulled bass as big as 10 inches out of them. I set the hook on one of them, missed that hit, and reeled back towards the boat with the bass following! I stopped the retrieve, the bass swooped on the Senko, I let it swim swiftly a couple of yards and set the hook. I released the 10 incher, and Brenden said, "I think they're revved up because they come from being in ambush mode." It wasn't the only bass that behaved similarly. 

I paid close attention when we floated over long strands of aquatic vegetation swaying back and forth in the current, because I figured there must be some bass hiding in the shadows, not to mention that we saw a lot of baitfish among the greenery, but we never clearly identified any bass, although I saw some fish nine inches long tear out of there as we passed by. Could have been baby suckers. I'm not sure. Tons of vegetation inhabits the lower South Branch. Some of it is attached to bottom six feet down. It gives you a primordial feeling from a river flowing for many thousands of years. 

Otherwise, the river remains rocky, and it's that rock that holds smallmouths, although some will be seen--when the water is as clear as it was yesterday--swimming leisurely through perhaps three of water amounting to a gravel-bottomed, mid-river flat. We saw a couple of them 18 inches long or better doing that. Others were 14 or 15 inches, 13. And although many of the bass we caught wouldn't have measured much longer than seven inches, plenty of them ranged from nine to 13 inches. We caught a lot of fish yesterday, but think of all the bass we passed by!

The amount of deeper water impressed me. Water six feet deep, even as deep as about 10 feet, is common once you get past about the halfway range between Neshanic and the Confluence. Much of the river back there isn't accessible any other way than by floating, and even then, the river is wide enough that you're pretty much limited to fishing one side. (Often enough, one side is the deeper.) Some places move slow enough that, without wind pushing you around, you can paddle across and back upstream.

By the time we approached Studdiford Bridge, I'd got worried about the amount of sun my legs had absorbed without sunblock. It was just a passing concern, but a good one to have heeded. I was in the zone by then--the kind of feeling inviting you to stay forever. It suggests that perhaps some day each of us does leave ordinary life for a good long stay in eternity, although I've always believed--at least, since my 20s when I discovered the possibility--I'll come back, because the earth is always there to let me know it's just as good, if I will only go out to meet it. You don't feel it in the ordinary confines of civilization. 

Besides my legs frying, my wife had expressed concern (via mobile device) about what time I'd get home. Again, I got the message just as I departed. I had told her I guessed four or five, but she wanted to know for sure. I told her, how can I know that? Just the same, getting back before 5 felt like a good idea, although nature's intimation had superseded. As it always will if you do enough to go into it. 

We passed through a lot of deep water where, had we anchored at it, we could have caught more fish, though we had caught plenty and big. Soon, we saw the bridge over the North Branch at the Confluence. It's not a sad thing to go back, because you know the natural world is always there for you.   

Nice one maybe a little better than 13.

About 12 inches.

Big enough to make commotion.

Can anyone identify the species?

A better one of the little bass.

This one fought super-hard fought downstream.

Sixteen and a quarter.

North Branch

 

I Still Believed Fish are at a Premium in this Lake

Brian Cronk and I fished yesterday late afternoon and evening, but the post is coming only now because I got up this morning and did a South Branch Raritan float trip with Brenden Kuprel. (The story of that pretty much all-day trip should be out tomorrow.) 

Yesterday, we fished about three and a quarter hours. The weather beautiful, we nevertheless found the fish pretty deep. The lake is about 30 feet deep at best, by what we can tell, having given it a pretty good scan. Brian felt enthused yesterday about the possibility of the lake's getting stocked with trout, but of all the holdover lakes, I think White Lake in Sussex County is the shallowest at--I believe--40 feet. Shepherd Lake in Passaic County is--I believe--45 feet, and is also listed by the state as a holdover lake. 

I'm not so sure trout would holdover in 30 feet of water, but Brian might be correct. I can cite some evidence in his favor. Ever read Round Valley Reservoir reports in The Fisherman during summer? How deep are the rainbow trout? About 30 feet. 

So, maybe.

There is abundant evidence of herring here. The lake's 40 surface acres or so were dappled by nervous schools of them yesterday evening. 

And like last time, we worked shorelines. At least we did at first. I had just a few hits, and Brian might have got his Chatterbait knocked. I fished a Chompers worm on an inset hook. No weight added. For any of you not familiar with my technique, I like to let the worm sink slowly. Most hits come on that initial drop. A fast-sinking worm is just another thing to chase down when bass take it easy during summer. But from yesterday, the hit that stands out in memory came when I slowly began retrieving the worm back to Brian's boat. A distinct knock I believed came from a pickerel. I stopped retrieving, felt the fish on, allowed slack, tightened--and set the hook into nothing!

"Son-of-a-bitch!"

I still believed fish are at a premium in this lake. The loss burned. But as things turned out, we fished too shallow, anyway. The worm was getting down 10 feet some of the time, but even that. 

As I say, the weather was beautiful, but we found fish deep despite the moderation in temperature. By trolling. Right when we got started, by departing from a corner to proceed down lake along a weedline, I got hit about 12 feet down. The fish shook off. I caught the 19-incher photographed below further down lake and maybe 14 feet down. Brian hooked a bass I guess would've weighed nearly three pounds. The fish had suspended under a dock floating above 14 feet of water. It gave a clear account of itself by leaping...and throwing the hooks. Brian had tied on a lipless crankbait. I used the standard. A Hot 'n Tot by Storm. That plug gets down 15 feet, probably deeper with enough line out. I missed a couple of other hits about 15 feet down, and had a smallish pickerel--maybe 17 inches--on until it shook off in view along the boat. (The water is pretty clear.)

We had worked that weedline up and down a few times when I said to Brian that perhaps we should work where he wanted to fish next. He said we could follow the shoreline back to the ramp. It's steeper than the side with the weeds, although for less than a hundred yards, there's another weedbed, but the water drops off quicker. Most of the way back towards the ramp, the water drops as quickly to 20 feet as does at Tilcon Lake. 

Brian believes the lake must have once been a sand pit. Makes sense. There's concrete production within earshot. 

So I tried to maneuver us close enough to shore to get our plugs about 14 or 15 feet down, but I couldn't get too close without hanging up on deadfalls. I think I could have been running my plug over bottom 20 feet down, when, approaching another corner, I felt the kind of thump I don't associate with knocking stuff on bottom. I set the hook. The fish started moving--heavy--towards deeper water, and I believed I had hooked a bass that might go five pounds. It was give and take to the boat, some pretty serious weight feeling like a tow, but it proved not to be too serious. At 24 1/2 inches, the pickerel weighed three pounds and something or other. 

I did measure the length. 

We got to Brian's favorite spot with just enough sunlight to make it all possible. Brian had told me they want you out of there at sunset. I took that to mean trailering up.

I had completely forgotten that the particular shoreline does not drop off quickly compared to others, and we had some trouble catching weeds. When we managed to get the right depth, it wasn't a minute before, once again, I hooked a big one. (Three pounds and some.) A pickerel right at 24 inches. I just can't seem to get beyond the vicinity of approaching four pounds with a way to go yet. 

Brian switched to a Hot 'n Tot. He's bought some. 

I've been using the same two for over a decade and have caught on them countless pickerel and bass trolling. I make friends with my plugs. Why not? Starting to look like others are making friends with AI. (I make friends with AI, too, but I think I got off topic...hint, hint.)

Brian hooked up within minutes. A pickerel of about 19 inches leapt, throwing the hooks.

The sun set. The boat's bow met sand. A police vehicle had driven off, but I said, "You never know, it could come back." 

Nineteen or so Inches

Twenty Four Inches

Painted Turtle

Last Time

 

Good Day Forgetting Online Tedium

Nearing exit 67 where I would leave the Garden State Parkway, I got a text. When I got to Fred's house, he was outside awaiting me as he always does. We shook hands and began to catch up. I moved stuff from my car to his Subaru, but I also checked on that message. It was from my wife, telling me she had overlooked getting her car inspected last month. Put me in a tizzy. It took me awhile, but I re-slotted my schedule, all in my head, realizing I can probably get the car inspected in Randolph on Saturday...after I drop my canoe off. Back where I store it in the vicinity. Good thing I had that pinned down, although I didn't think to simply check my mobile device for the inspection station hours so I could be more sure. 

I suffered the four hours or so we fished the jetty, because of the insecurity of so much I have to do. Not just reminded of that, but having to shift plans. Computers are scary to me, because--in my experience--they always go wrong and I'm left to my own devices in setting them right again, until I have to seek professional help to get a computer fixed. The last I did that, the problem got solved in three minutes right at the front desk, and I wasn't charged. I've had bad experiences in the past. 

Right now, I'm stuck in the middle of building the new website, because my cursor became white against a white background in text blocks, so I can't effectively type. It's driving me nuts! I've been back and forth with support services for a week, and I can't imagine how the problem will be solved, besides maybe scrapping all my work and starting a new trial website. But then, will that one present the same problem? For the first week of working on the new site, the cursor worked fine, and I got a lot done.

It's not good for mental health to feel you're screwed by technical issues. I'm not a very technical sort to begin with. I'm a writer, and besides what I do for recreation, and the hobby of photography, I'd rather not do much else. I want to spend my time reading books and writing them. Reading my The Fisherman every month, too. Angler's Journal and The Flyfish Journal when they come. I don't want to wonder why in hell I'm singled out in this universe to have started building a website only to be unable, at least thus far, to complete it. From what the support service tells me, it happens to no one that all the hurdles are leaped and the problem remains. 

I'm one in a million.

So I was happy when Fred came up with the plan of moving on from the jetty at Barnegat Inlet to fish the beach on our way out with jigs for fluke, and then a certain bulkhead for triggerfish, blackfish, any possible sheepshead, and fluke. He had caught a fluke on his first cast on the ocean side of the jetty. Besides that, just a tiny seabass! We've always done well before. 

Fred said he got a hit as we fished the beach, if I remember rightly. When we had walked in, there was a guy doing well on live killies at the end of a groin that cuts across at a 45-degree angle from the end of the jetty. The wind wasn't bad. From the northeast and very light. When we had left the beach and got to that bulkhead, the surface of the water was flat. I caught a little seabass on one of Fred's previously frozen sand fleas and that was it, besides Fred's Gulp jig getting hit once. Someone else fishing there with a Gulp Jerk Shad had caught a keeper fluke.

I finally called it on the fishing. I'd felt better leaning against the rail and getting some interest at least from little fish tapping on that bait, but I got tired of it, nothing of any size intervening. For a moment, I had felt as if I'd rise out of my worries, but I fell into feeling pissed off about pressured fish! It's a weekday, yet the rails were crowded with fisherman, and though I have nothing else against people getting out and fishing, it can be annoying when no keepers seem to exist where they can be reached. I had felt good for about five minutes back on the jetty, when I got it in my head that if I persisted and covered ground, I might catch a sheepshead. But I lost three rigs to the rocks in about as many minutes in the attempt to do that, and it put me off.

Sure enough, not long before we left, someone came from the jetty end, done his morning's fishing, with a keeper bag containing a nice sheepshead and a keeper blackfish, so my intuition wasn't exactly groundless. I just wasn't aligned right to do it today.

"I think a nice cold Coke will do me well," I told Fred.

So we rode to the Neptune Market, got soft drinks, and sat out in front of the store on a bench and talked and talked. I began talking about pressured fish. I think that's how I got started. That led into problems of access, and from that, the pressure radical environmentalists are putting on recreational fishing. Fred mentioned PETA, which got me even more riled up. I'm only outlining what was said. I'm not going to triple the length of my post. But Fred made a really good point about our teeth betraying the fact that we're genetically suited to being omnivorous, and that led me to say something that made eating red meat sound like an exercise in metaphysics.

Just the same, to limit fish to aquaculture and commercial interests, picking on us recreational fishermen because we're somehow not serious, that won't go away. I can get very pessimistic about a dystopian future. 

I felt 100% better. We didn't talk about happy things, but we talked openly, and that lifted the cover off all the garbage stewing in me. My blog, Litton's Fishing Lines, is among the computer problems I mentioned earlier, too, as I really screwed up by offering you guys (and gals) "thin content" and "dodgy links" before I began to learn about Search Engine Optimization. That's when I promptly informed you I had to quit doing that. A lot of people liked those links! But now I have to go back and delete all those unindexed posts, because for the past four months, the Googlebot has not been indexing my new ones! You find them on other browsers and in the blog per se, but not as individually indexed for Google searches. 

We talked all the way back to Fred's house and some there. Turned out to be another good day when I forgot all the tedium of the online world.       

An old Sea Ray in the background.

Miss Barnegat Light

Four Years Ago

 

The Value of Being Out There

This outing I managed to get up for shortly after 5:30 a.m. I had mistakenly set my alarm on p.m., so fortunately I woke up anyway, seven minutes later than intended. I drove some 15 or 20 minutes further than yesterday. By the time I parked, the sun had lifted slightly off the horizon but trees obscured it. I knew both sides of the river, and even the middle, invited my little eighth-ounce topwater plug, and it got hit on the first cast right along the edge between shallows and seven- or eight-foot depth, gravel and rocks on the bottom. I used to think nothing would hit a surface plug over the depths, until Jorge Hildago showed me up by catching a 19 1/4-incher on a Whopper Plopper.

The outing was a lot like yesterday, other than that I didn't need to walk as far. Engrossed in the fishing, it once occurred to me, as I approached my gear set down on exposed gravel--from having made my way downstream and out of sight of it--that "this," my foraging around for the bass, is all that expensive gear will ever be worth. I did find it curious how I concentrate value in things I own, when I can be a little undisciplined about maintaining the value of being out there. I mean, after all, what's my camera really "worth"? I've owned it nearly 10 years, had bought it as a refurbished model to begin with, when that model had been on the market a long time already and had "lost" value. I probably couldn't get $300.00 for it on eBay now if I tried. On the market, it's worth about two dinner meals out with my wife, and that makes you think again of making the best of an event such as fishing the river. Two hours and some there. That is comparable to a dinner out. 

Still, the camera is worth better than 300 bucks to me.

I enjoyed a lot more action than yesterday. It's a curious thing, because a friend had texted me after I had got home and settled, that he had been fishing not far downstream and had made his way to where I began fishing yesterday shortly after I had left, come home, and had to return to that area of Somerville to buy dog food, which I failed to mention yesterday. Had I made myself aware of Loki's need, I could have bought the dog food on the way home. As it turned out, my wife texted me--minutes after I did get home. The friend did really well. That made me want to give it another try, but I didn't want to return to the big river. I'd fish a spot on the South Branch Raritan, instead. Regardless, the value of being there had me in its grip!

I ended up catching a little smallmouth and four little largemouths, all on that eighth-ounce popper. Also a longear sunfish, or so I call whatever species it is, the most common in streams, and a green sunfish. Haven't seen a green sunfish in a long time. Given the choice between a four-inch and five-inch Yum Dinger, I chose one of my five-inch crayfish-colored ones, because that's how I've fished the river successfully for more than a decade. As it turns out, after a couple of other missed hits, I watched as an eight-inch smallmouth pulled that Yum Dinger off the hook and off the O-ring I used to mount that hook, in water a little too deep to wade and try to find that worm. After that I fished a four-incher, and I also drove to a different stretch and fished it there where nothing was doing, but a gal and guy showed up with three more Labradors...which is when I decided to make my exit. Wasn't going to entertain Loki without holding him on his leash. 

Done fishing the South Branch, the sky had begun to cloud over. I stopped at the Lamington River on the way home. I wanted to see if any bass hang out in the pool Trout Scapes LLC created by removing the Burnt Mills Dam. Since the sky was completely clouded over, I went back to fishing topwater, but all I caught was a longear. I also waded across the river, Loki wading across with me, so I could get casts into the big eddy.

Nothing.   

Lamington River

 Bluegill

Attention Paid to the Doing

Old railway stanchion.

Seventy-eight degrees when I left Bedminster at 8:20. Once I got on the Raritan River, where it flows wide at U.S. Highway 206, I started to feel I should have arrived before dawn. I wanted this outing to be the relaxed kind of thing when getting up a little earlier than usual is all that's called for, but wading into the water, I felt the day had already moved along a little too much. 

I did find some shadows, and I began casting to them with my light rod and four-pound test tied to a little eighth-ounce topwater. I cast a good distance into those shadows. Fished them pretty extensively, but all I got in return for my efforts--besides the exercise of exploring the water--was a bounce from a sunfish. 

When I got out of the water to fetch my other rod, I noticed my upper back was in good shape. It's improved since I left the supermarket, and I not only feel younger, I have the kind of free motion that's contrary to age. Instead of being "careful" (distrustful), I leapt off a high bank onto the gravel below and my knees absorbed the weight without any problem. The world's more like a playground again. I have a lot of good things I can say about working for a wage, and the book I hope to get published fairly soon goes into detail from both sides of the issue, but whether you take a good attitude to the job or not, the job's a burden (who would disagree that it's a "job"?). I'm finding that with that burden lifted, I'm starting to come back more into my own, which isn't to say I didn't make my job my own, but you know what I mean. Without it there's space to grow back into, like when you lived free as a teenager.

I had hiked three or four hundred yards upstream with Loki the black Labrador, when I got snagged, broke off, and had to shuffle back downstream in water over my knees to my tackle bag a hundred feet or so. I retied and went back upstream to cast and get snagged again eventually. But in the meantime, I was aware of my outing as if it were someone with us, with Loki and me, offering me the invitation to accept the health this wildness gives...regardless of the brutal fact of pressured fish. 

Yeah...I'm good with that. I accept, but I didn't like it that I had caught only one bass. An average stream smallmouth I didn't even want to photograph. I put the end of my six-pound test under the line keeper on the reel spool after that last breakoff, but I did feel it had been a good morning. To come out here and mess around in the river got me away from everything else. I paid attention only to what I was doing and it felt good. There was nothing to it this time. The two hours passed easily, although I made efforts that others might not. A better outing in that way, compared to the previous, because although I caught a couple of nice largemouths in short order, I didn't feel right in the way I felt right today, and soon my conscience bugged me while I continued to explore that pond...and I left much earlier than I had planned so I could get stuff done. 

I didn't even think about stuff today. 

The smallmouth took a four-inch crayfish-colored Yum Dinger, all except for the yellow tail. Besides that bass, I had a strong tap that might have been another one. Pretty sad results for a river with such beautiful boulders in deep, clear water that gobble up lures, instead of bass you're sure are there gobbling them up. I even saw one I thought was a carp come mosey beside me a few paces distant, and though I put the worm out in front of the fish, and the fish took interest in it, I got no take. Probably 16 inches. I did catch one about that big last September here, although I'm sure there are more and bigger than that.

I doubt it's the heat that's responsible for today's demise, but something is. I fished hard for a couple hours. Enjoyed it, and that's what matters...even though you can't help but want to rack up some bass when it's been awhile since you've done that. 

When the thermometer settled as I drove homeward, it registered 90 degrees. A fast rise in temperature. It's 96 out there now as I write.     

Support for U.S. Highway 206

Last September

Poppers Sometimes Work in the Chop

Plans changed a couple of times yesterday, but I got out and fished as I set out to do. I just didn't fish for very long, when I had expected a topwater bite after sundown. I left long before then. The fact that I'm not getting as much done as I'd like to started gnawing on my conscience, so I left before that bite might have materialized, set upon waking up earlier this morning than I would have. I got the grocery shopping done, and I managed to get back home before 10:00 this morning, when I set upon the task of cleaning the oven once I got the groceries put away.

Instead of fishing where I knew rocks and smallmouth bass exist, I tried what proved to be a shallow pond of maybe six acres, weedbeds existing out in the middle of it away from the shoreline. I found that out once I switched from a topwater plug to a Yum Dinger and soon caught a 15-inch largemouth by casting straight out, rather than close to the shoreline with grass overhanging the water. The depth out there is about five feet, judged by when my line would go slack, the worm having found bottom. The water drops from the shoreline edge surprisingly fast, though, giving you the illusion that it might be deeper out there.

Poppers Sometimes Work in the Chop

I had begun with a 3/8-ounce Rebel Pop-R despite direct sunlight and wind on that water. The outing was supposed to be about topwater fishing, but I realized once I got there that I had arrived a lot earlier than would have been convenient. 

I've done it before. Summonsed a largemouth to a topwater plug with sun on the water and wind creating chop. By using a popper made by Adam Mihara. It seems to me the trick is to pop a plug steadily and hard, retrieving at a slow to moderate pace. My friend Brian Cronk's favorite topwater is the Zara Spook and he does well on it, but I'd think twice before trying to walk the dog through chop, though a prop plug like the Hedden Torpedo might work. And a gurgler like the Heddon Crazy Crawler might be an excellent choice. My son and I had some success with Crazy Crawlers in choppy water many years ago on Lake Musconetcong.

I could have otherwise tried a Chatterbait, but I had left mine in the car trunk and wasn't interested in walking back. 

Where the pond gets narrow, I cast all the way across, leveraging power with my 7-foot medium-heavy Lew's Speed Stick. The 20-pound Power Pro braid I use is low diameter and generally casts well, but I got a bad wind knot yesterday, though I managed to untie it. My best cast had me retrieving away from the bank where it turns at a corner. I popped and retrieved just a yard or two before the bass pounded that plug, and I believed I had a smallmouth on, it fought so hard, though it proved to be a 16 1/2-inch largemouth. 

I doubt any smallmouths exist in that particular pond with the weeds and mostly earthen bottom, though I could be mistaken. A bunch of open water spaces are connected, marshes in-between. Smallmouths are more plentiful than largemouths, when you take the whole into account. 

In the Chop

 

Farmington River, Connecticut, Blue-Winged Olives in July

Connecticut's Farmington River is known as a world class tailwater river, so you can be sure it's pressured hard. It's full of fish that don't yield. At least not in July. It's also located close to where my brother David lives in West Hartford. I don't remember when I started talking about the two of us fishing it this summer, but David spoke about the possibility of fishing together there sometime long before. I guess it was Easter at my other brother's house here in New Jersey when Rick expressed desire to fish with us, so we made that the plan. A couple of months ago, I suggested July 20th as a possibility. We refined the date a little so we'd be fishing on a weekday. Monday the 21st. Rick and I drove up Sunday.

A tailwater river is a stream that flows out of the bottom of a dammed reservoir. The water for miles below is always cool. We began fishing maybe nine miles below the dam. Somewhere down that way, we got a water temperature of 62. (Just below the dam, it's about 55.) Temperatures had reached the low 90s on Sunday.

We had got light takeout breakfasts and coffee, getting to the river before any sun was on the water. Rick managed to wade just a little below the bridge, but the boulders were big and the depth inconsistent. Wading further downstream where trout rose wasn't practicable. I didn't have any idea what they rose for, but I didn't think to ask my brothers, either. The scene bore an aura of mystery in the early morning lack of light as if I weren't fully awake yet, and I felt at loss for not attempting to wade, but I knew doing that was useless. As I remember, which isn't perfect, my boots stayed on dry land. We drove upstream, spending an hour-and-a-half or so in a stretch with a few series of riffles and flatter fast moving water about a quarter mile or so in total length, finding nothing deeper than our thighs, not finding any trout anywhere, although just as I was leaving to catch up with Dave and Rick waiting for me at Dave's truck, I saw a splash rise under trees. I had thought the spot looked inviting within the first five minutes we had fished the area. Rick and I fished it with stonefly wet fly/pheasant tail nymph dropper combinations. After Rick moved out and headed downriver, I got casts even closer to the bank, as if maybe trout hung back in shadow. 

And maybe a few did. Although Rick got two hits on that combination of wet fly and nymph after we had driven on and he had worked his way upstream from where we next parked, that was all underwater presentations produced for us all day. I think of how eagerly California trout hit nymphs last summer and in April 2022, but those fish weren't nearly as pressured. Not even those of the South Fork Merced River. When we got to the Church Pool, we contended with four other anglers. A weekday flourish in July that probably is the usual. I watched one of the others catch a brown about 18 inches long, later learning that he used a floating ant, casting near the bank where you would think that fly might be effective.

Dave and Rick fished downstream in the same vicinity. Not only did Rick catch an 11-inch brown on a Hendrickson dry fly, he witnessed a big trout crashing the surface "like a bass going after bluegills." We understood big browns exist in the river, but no accounts could have impressed Rick of the fact more than witnessing that fish. His enthusiasm for it never abated. 

In the meantime, I had taken my time at paying attention to some rising trout. David and I sat down on a bench and talked. He pointed out that "Rick fishes hard," and I readily agreed. Rick pieces apart a river while he fly fishes similarly as I piece apart the length of a cover-studded shoreline while throwing a Wacky rig or Chompers on an inset hook for largemouths. You undo the construction of the water, eliminating possibilities until you score at one of them, and then you continue on to another fish. It's all tied in a knot for you to untie. Dave also told me the hatch was probably correlated to the blue-winged olive dry fly pattern. He'd done his reading, and although we saw few bugs to make an even more informed guess, I knew, of course, that information in print is accurate. I had been casting a parachute Adams of about size 14 without any interest from the trout. I tied on a size 16 blue-winged olive and got nothing, but an old man in his 80s or 90s fishing near me caught a small rainbow.

"What did you catch it on?" I asked.

"Blue-winged olive, size 22, 7x!"

The three of us had got into an involved conversation with an older man when we first got to the Church Pool parking lot. He told us about 90-year-olds who take turns fishing the pool and using the bench, not able to stand for long. Since the old man who caught the rainbow alternated between the fishing and the bench, I suspected he was a regular who knew what he was doing. 

Dave had a spare blue-winged olive he lent me. It looked about size 22 and might have been exactly that. I had 6x tippet to tie to my 5x leader but not 7x. Just as well. Apparently, my first three drifts got hit, but I couldn't tell, because I couldn't see the fly. A few more times I might have got hit, but finally I did see a trout poke its nose up and take right where I saw my line ended when I tried to set the hook. I never got hook grab on any of them! 

Rick and Dave felt ready to move on. I wanted to return here later, but for now, we had more river to explore. Also lunch to eat. It was almost 4:00 p.m. when pulled up to the Riverton General Store about to close. They're open at 6:00 a.m., so it's a long day at that. David got a sandwich and I ate a pound of tuna fish salad. A sign on the door forbids anyone coming in with cleats, but Dave took that the opposite way than I did, as an invitation to come on inside with waders on, which we did. We didn't get chased out. The food was delicious. Rick felt breakfast bars we had brought along were enough and didn't want anything.

Afterwards, we found some water not too far below the dam that I thought looked really good. I had kept the little blue-winged olive on the line and began drifting it on a clean surface without suds, so I was able to see it. The water moved but wasn't riffled and at least four or five feet deep. On my fourth or fifth cast, I saw a trout nose up and take that fly. I set the hook, had it on, and fought the little 10-incher for a few moments before it got off. 

I fished the stretch hard, but I couldn't get any further interest from trout, even though I witnessed at least half a dozen rises. Upstream, Rick had witnessed a couple get caught by others on dry flies, but the quarters were too cramped for us to go up there and take position. We drove back downstream to the Self Storage Pool.

The water flowed fast but pretty deep, so I had tied on an olive Wooly Bugger. The water under the bridge situates in such a way that a railing exists along big rocks you can step down and back up along, tight to the concrete wall, descending and ascending some 15 feet or more. I think Rick used the nymph and a wet fly. Even though I catch lots of winter trout here in New Jersey on jigs that are basically the same as Buggers, the big beadheads seemed too clumsy in CT where trout seem to turn their noses on virtually everything. They were the best I felt I could try, though. The river had been stocked with 2000 trout early in the first week of July, but even so, catching anything would have surprised me. It seems to be a feat of matching the hatches this time of year. Not all of the trout are stocked, by the way. In addition to heavy trout stockings, the river has wild ones.

One more try at the Church Pool. I insisted on it. 

There we saw plenty of rises, but nothing at all came up for the size 22 blue-winged olive. An older man had taken position where I had got the hits earlier, and he did catch a rainbow about a foot long on some pattern or other. Another guy fished downstream, catching nothing. Dave and Rick had gone down there, getting hit by nothing, finally settling on the bench and watching me...until inevitably I felt it time to go. 

The effect of 12 hours fishing and moving between spots on the river felt great. We would have felt more gain in catching trout, but there was no loss in catching only one between the three of us; we fished hard, never gave up, and made a full day of exploring a beautiful river, finding interest in each place we stopped at. After it was done, either Dave or Rick suggested we make it an annual event, and on that we all agreed. I got some photos I'm not posting. Two of them I'm planning on getting prints made of, one for each of my brothers.   

Dave casts at the Church Pool.

Riverton Self Storage Pool Lot

Rick casting the Self-Storage Pool.

East Fork San Gabriel River

 

Finding Access on a Few Hidden Lakes

On Tuesday, I traveled north with Loki the black Lab, spending a gorgeously warm afternoon finding ways in to a few large ponds or small lakes. One of them will allow for putting the squareback on it and probably doing pretty well in March or April. It's far too weeded-in now. The other two are ice fishing possibilities, shoreline access crowded out by brush and thick aquatic vegetation, no way I found to get the squareback canoe on the water. I did access one spot where there's a break in the weeds, almost as if someone went in the water and cleared them, because it's the only spot where I found a way in. I caught one largemouth about 12 inches long on an eight-inch blue Chomper's worm rigged with an inset hook, no weight added.

Come to think of it, I could load my tippy canoe onto the dolly, wheel it that half mile on the trail I found, and then sort of squeeze it through the hundred feet of narrow trail through the thick woods. It's not nearly as heavy as the squareback. Especially considering the additional weight of marine battery and electric motor associated with it. Launch the Tippy right there at that little fishing spot. Then paddle, which would be no problem on a calm day.

It's a long way in, though. Even for a Jet Sled with ice fishing gear, but that's easier than wheeling a canoe, I think. Got to be loads of fish in that lake. It's hardly fished at all. 

Just a matter of will. You find that and away you go.

I can see using little spinnerbaits and inline spinners during March while getting around in the squareback. But I wouldn't mind live-lining shiners. It's always the question of commitments to other waters. Whether or not I'd really get anyone onboard with me to fish the lake is doubtful. That time of year, we're either fishing a private lake with big bass in it, or thinking at least a little of those salmon everyone wants to catch. In April, Brian and I might be on Clinton Reservoir again. This past April, I caught 15-inch smallmouths on a Mepp's Aglia Long, size 6, when water temps hadn't quite hit 50.  Of course, if I really want to badly enough, I can take my tippy canoe on the new lake early in the year and just paddle. That I can load by myself. The squareback I need help with. It's heavy. 

Exploring New Jersey Highlands Bass Ponds

 

How Catching a Fish Can Make Such a Difference

Brian Cronk and I explored a new lake, apparently a former sandpit from long ago. A concrete operation exists nearby, so it makes sense it would have been a sandpit. Shorelines quickly drop off to 20 feet and deeper. Sound familiar? 

Right there at the ramp we cast topwaters over a very appealing weedbed at about 8:00 a.m. under cloud cover and some raindrops, but we failed to raise any action. I began to feel it would be a tough morning. 

Pretty soon we motored across the lake (maybe 50 acres total) over depths as great as 27 feet. Brian phoned a friend who fishes here with shiners and live herring. He wanted any help. Told to fish to the left of the concreate company and an "inlet," we happened to find the little creek leading in he mentioned, right away. I started a process of picking apart weeds and shoreline cover with a Yum Dinger rigged Wacky, soon switching out the color in case that would help, but I came to the realization pretty quickly that I needed to use a Chompers rigged on an inset hook to manage those weeds. 

Meanwhile, a nice pickerel had followed Brian's Chatterbait to the boat. 

Neither of us had had a hit.

Sunfish like to play with my Chompers. Maybe it's the garlic. Any case, they're signs of life but can be a little annoying. Soon, though, I saw my line moving towards deeper water with authority in the motion, so I tightened up, set the hook, and then I saw I played a fairly good sized pickerel. (The one photographed below.)

One would have thought bass, but it was a pretty fish. 

Deliverance! I struggle with getting skunked. When it happens, I struggle to feel good about the outing. I wonder about how catching a fish can make such a difference in life, but catching them really does amount to a whole other quality. It can't all be in the numbers, because that's quantity. It's like the difference between being lonely and left out, and being a member of the community. 

You can fish an entire outing and never get hit. That happened to me at Furnace Lake this spring, although Brian lost a musky. And it happened at Aeroflex four years ago with Jorge Hildago in June. Neither of us got a hit. Cloudy, not too warm. I usually do well at both places. On one occasion, I caught 15 largemouths, just about all of them good sized, at Furnace. 

So you can't just say the lake sucks the first time you try it--if it goes sour on you--and be entirely certain that's true.

Brian had wanted to stop at noon and I agreed. Possibility of thunderstorms, though since I've come home, none have showed up at least in my corner of the state. We situated in the back of the lake, and Brian suggested we troll Hot 'n Tots from there to the ramp.

We had a clean run--no weeds on hooks, no snags--all the way back to that original weedbed, and that's where hell broke loose. I felt like a pilot. Managing the troll along that weedline edge. It seemed as if weed clusters rose almost right beside the boat. If I wasn't going to foul that deep-diver of mine, that would be something. Brian was fishing the deeper side of the boat. My skill in getting that plug of mine right in the zone made all the difference. I did feel the fish when it hit, but I couldn't help but think weeds, just too good to be true otherwise. Now that fish was taking drag.  

I've never measured a pickerel I've caught longer: 24 3/4 inches. I've caught more just about that size than I can count, having measured another 24 1/4 inches once, and maybe having caught one longer through the ice. I released it quickly to avoid exposure. I called it 24 inches, but it might have been 25. Even if not, it was a very hefty fish and probably weighed more than the one I caught today. 

We made two more passes along those weeds. Up and back twice. On the first of those last passes, I hooked something that felt just like a hybrid. Pickerel kind of lug. Largemouths bulldog. Neither species gives those hard and very quick jabs--altogether distinct--that a hybrid does, or otherwise a salmon. No possibility exists of salmon in this lake, but Brian told me hybrids got caught last year. My fish got off the hook, unfortunately. 

We did see what looked like herring dimpling and leaping at the surface when we arrived. 

 

Furnace Last Year

The Bluegill Sunfish Aren't as Common in the Rivers

We caught a lot of fish. Fifty of them easily, but no big ones. Mostly sunfish. I think last summer we passed on fishing here, but we've been coming in July for years now. I remember Mark telling me about a pool below a waterfall full of smallmouths, and you can just imagine...how I imagined that. Even so, we've caught some good ones. Mark's caught a couple about 15 inches and better, and he lost one that looked like 17, easily. I saw that fish before the hook popped out. I hooked a big one on a little #5 Rapala I believed was 18 inches, but you never know until you measure the fish.

Last year we tried the Paulinskill, but not far upstream, unknown to us at the time, a dam was being removed, so the water was muddy. We diverted our plans and went to the Pequest. We caught some bass and a trout. 

Mark had fished at least a couple of the pools we fished today a week ago. He did pretty well. Smallies were a little bigger, and he caught a rainbow trout.

The best part of the morning for me involved fishing a shallow stretch that still manages to hold bass. We've always caught them there. We also catch longear or redbreast sunfish, and today I caught a single bluegill, as well as a few rock bass. The bluegills aren't nearly as common in the rivers. One of the longears that took a Rapala #5 off the surface was good sized, bigger than my hand. I caught a couple of little eight-inch smallmouths, too, losing another on the leap, and missing hits on the surface, mostly from sunfish. It's just an involving way to forget about everything else. Mark texted me since we fished, and I like his suggestion of trying it again before summer's out. 

Mark's always brought along nightcrawlers to resort to. I succumbed to them right from the start. I must have cast my 1/8-ounce swimbait three times before I gave up on it and took my ultra-light in hand instead. I caught a couple of bass about nine inches long on the worms and lots of sunfish. A few bass smaller. Casting the plug instead, I got to thinking about how clean that approach is. I could feel the difference. And yet, when I use salmon eggs for trout early in the spring, part of what makes the fishing what it is and is appealing to me is the smell of the oil. It does smell like salmon, of course, and salmon are great to eat. 

It's possible the allure of the smell has something to do with Omega 3 fatty acids, too. Who knows. The desirability of them. Whatever it is, I like to get involved with the mess and catch trout on the eggs. 

Mark caught the smallest bass. That's a fingerling, isn't it.

A Few Years Ago

 

Enchantment with a New Portion of the State and a Pattern of Return

This afternoon I visited a part of the state I'm familiar with but not in detail. The Scotch Plains, Fanwood area, invited by Garret Daniels to fish crappie. I ended up catching a small largemouth, and Garret a small crappie. If that were the end of the story, there'd be no point in wasting my time on Google. I lived in North Plainfield with my wife-to-be for a year, and a few times we visited Westfield nearby. I fished the Green Brook repeatedly in the spring for stockers, which now happens to be some of Garret's favorite water, but this was before he was born. I remember once passing through an area, I believe on State Highway 28, and seeing a pond to my right as I traveled south. It was full of map turtles. Whichever, it was a major roadway with the pond right next to it. 

New Jersey is rich with waters to discover. It's not upstate New York or Utah, but if you live here in the same state I do, why waste your time dreaming if you want to fish? I'm not mentioning the place Garret and I fished today, nor showing a photo of it, but everywhere you can find public water. 

And new adventure, as well as to touch base, perhaps, on former. We fished only an hour, it's all the time Garret had today, and as I drove home, I switched on WDHA. I hadn't heard "Mystery Achievement" by the Pretenders in more than a decade. Is it a guy who is the girl's achievement, or is it herself? Read the lyrics and you can't tell exactly, except that, "Don't breathe down my neck, no," at the song's beginning does suggest it's someone else. 

Whatever. The instrumental tone, the instrumental refrain like church bells, and the verbal refrain on "mystery achievement" used to make me feel no matter how unfinished my own work--I was busy at keeping hundreds of handwritten notebooks--they've achieved an integral cultural value. It's not the only way I believed that, of course, but the song was a "thing." This was back before I had any internet, too, so no way existed of promoting the work, and I lived too far out on the edge to publish as yet. 

I turned the radio off. It was the only song I heard on the drive home. Garret and I had talked about long COVID and a little else about "COVID times." A little about the possibility of a July 4th incident of another sort. Clearly, this is a somewhat dystopian time we've entered into over the course of the past decade, but speaking for myself, I never give up on the soil that roots the trees. Roots are absolutely necessary to what we see of trees outright, but they're all underground and out of sight. 

Like my handwritten journals, but also like qualities of my experience anyone else might also relate to, because patterns belong to us all. 

I had switched off the radio when I passed under Interstate 78, recognizing that I had been here on March 17, 2020, the day businesses began to get shut down because of COVID. I had driven to Scotch Plains, the Stonehouse Coin Shop. I had some silver coins I wanted to sell, but the proprietor turned me away, telling me that with what was coming, they wouldn't be able to sell them. He told me to come back after things returned to normal. 

They have but in a way inclusive of long COVID and other unease in many people. I'm not a political writer, but anyone can turn on the news. I'm someone who can recognize in an underpass not hope exactly, but the mystery of recurrence after a portion of the state new to me had awakened enchantment. Not a dark shadow under that highway. Recurrence has a way of suggesting closure, as if maybe new values will seek the light as the old are absorbed into the ground. I had felt excited to be at the Stonehouse perhaps the last day it opened before the Shutdown. Why would that be, unless I already knew it wouldn't last? 

Outsmart It

Hillsborough NJ River Largemouth

Often an encounter with the wild isn't the serenity and bliss we expect, though we still manage to finish the outing feeling it was worthwhile. I got back home before my wife was up and before the tv got turned on, so the feeling of early morning peace remained in the air, though she turned it on within five minutes. (Not even 6:30 a.m.) That's when I understood that for all the conflict the news brings, it comes from the world we call home and feel proud of, if we're successful. We occupy our own property and achievement within that world, and though it stands in relation to the wider world of others, we don't abandon ourselves nor our belongings, as if politics determines us altogether. No. And like war, the wild is a place that will swallow us whole if we stay too long; even a short outing can subtly remind us that its beauty has a dark side. Politics that has gone astray always seems to involve so-called leaders who have abandoned their own. Ultimately, the penalty is death. Just as the wild exacts the same eventuality on those who do not build. The difference is that within society, laws bind us together. In the wild, it is the absence of law that will assure us of death if we establish nothing. Not only have leaders abandoned their constituents. Why on earth would those constituents have voted them in? The agreement moves both ways. 

It was a feeling I had today. Possibly because the South Branch Raritan River at Hillsborough ran off color after recent rain. And possibly because, when I got there, it was still too dark out to tell.

I put a Rebel Pop-R, quarter ounce, along the break between evident bottom and darker depths. At least, that was the situation when I fished there during the winter for rainbow trout stocked in the fall. I couldn't actually see today. I had decided I'd go with a quarter-ounce plug, because I felt I stood a better chance with a bigger bass. I did bring smaller along, as if I might try one of them, too. Casting, I felt reminded that the quarter-ounce plug casts a lot farther.

My second cast came down near some wood in the shallows. I popped once and got hit. I believed from a fairly big fish. Just what I had been hoping for, and it felt too good to be true. Even so, I'll amend those hopes a little. If it was a good fish, it was no 22-inch smallmouth as I had dreamed of. (Some day, I'd really like to catch one that big in the river.) I thought maybe it was 15 inches, judging from the weight I had felt for a moment before the plug came free. I put another cast there. Within a moment or two, I was aware I didn't see the plug. It was dark out, but I could just barely make it out on the surface. That is, unless a fish had taken it under. It has white feathers tied to the rear treble and sometimes a fish will take the plug down by nipping them. Though I set the hook into substantial weight, you might think of sunfish pulling on those feathers. 

A good fish, but it didn't feel like a smallmouth. I believed I had a largemouth on. The splashes it let loose were heavy and powerful, but the fight had that comparative sluggishness. I got the fish along in front of me, where I thought I could just barely make out the horizontal stripe of a largemouth in the dark. And then on the sand and pebbly gravel, there it was--largemouth bass. I measured it at 17 inches. 

I made sure to fish out and across the river where I knew the water got shallow. It moved through there a little faster, too. I worked the plug thoroughly, but didn't tempt another hit. My plan had been to switch to a Wacky rig, once I was satisfied the bass weren't going to hit up top any longer. In that nice, deeper water I figured I had a chance. 

But it wasn't looking very petty. By now enough light on it revealed that it was off color. I had gone over to the North Branch near home yesterday just to check, and it ran plenty clear. I knew the lower South Branch is another story and might not be clear, though. I had also checked the United States Geological Survey and it showed the water still up a bit. 

I don't like fishing off color river water with a Wacky rig, and even if I had a noise-making Rat-L-Trap with me, I wasn't sticking around.

Years Back