Trolling the Mepp's Aglia

Brian told me Clinton Reservoir's water temp reached 48 on Tuesday. The weather can be considerably cooler up near West Milford than in the Dover area, let alone Bedminster. I wonder how cold it was last night. 

Getting the boat off the trailer, I waded above my knees barefoot. Numbed quickly, it was only painful at first. I still had some feeling on the underside of my feet. I felt the point of a piece of glass--it must have been lodged in-between stone--on the bottom of that right foot. The glass wasn't lengthy enough to penetrate the skin.

We trolled here a couple of years ago, catching smallmouths. It's a mystery to me why we haven't caught more trout. I used a Mepp's Aglia Long size 6 almost all day today, almost the full four hours, and I doubt a trout would feel it's too big, but maybe that's why. I don't know.

We had trolled up along a shoreline where we've caught a few in the past. After we turned the corner of a point, my antennae twiggled. I don't always anticipate a catch, especially when cold water makes them difficult. But often, I do. I envisaged myself getting my Aglia right down near bottom among rocks, having asked Brian about depth. We had seven or eight feet, and that felt just right. I was on setting two or three of the 55-pound thrust Minn-Kota. (Brian always has me run it, which is OK. I have a boater's certificate.)

I thought I had hooked a trout, the way the fish zigzagged quickly. I soon had a smallmouth about 15 inches long in the boat. 

"I knew what I was doing," I said. I didn't tell Brian I had felt I was about to hookup.

Near an island, we stopped trolling. We cast a rocky flat with water as shallow as a foot or two, most of it five or six feet. Clear water. I made out rocks as deep as eight feet. I figured that with the abundant sunshine, those rocks would warm a little. 

Apparently nothing was there.

We've done better during the early season along the opposite shoreline. Brian trolled crankbaits, and although the shoreline does not drop off nearly as steeply, and he got snagged more than a few times, he was able to fish them. My Aglia produced once more, another 15-incher. I didn't anticipate the fish directly as I had the other, but I saw a stickup above the surface ahead, which did pique my interest. I took note of the bass having hit just yards ahead of it.

Today was a much-needed release from so much nonsense my brain keeps me struggling with. Working at the Supermarket wasn't bad. It's much better to hold a job than to live in a dystopian world after civilization collapses. If anyone can live in such a world. When the electrical grid permanently fails, won't the numerous nuclear power plants in America melt down, killing all life on the continent? And yet the supermarket did cause me stress. Extreme stress for the first four years or so. Such stress can enlarge the amygdala, which means all sorts of overkill continues to stress the brain. 

On the reservoir today, I got relief from all that.

Near the end of our outing, I heard my phone ping repeatedly, thinking that must be my son. He often pings rapidly. About three minutes later, one last ping.

We beached and I checked my phone. No. The fast series of pings had been from Brian sending me photos he took with his phone. But the ping that came three minutes later--from my son! I stood there wrapped in a moment of awe. Did my thinking of Matt prompt him to send me the message? He almost never messages me, though it is true that when he does, he often sends a few in quick succession. 

He's working on nuclear fusion at UCLA. If we can power the grid by (clean) fusion power, we'll have solved the energy problem.

We had noticed a couple of guys in a bass boat. With Brian's boat on the trailer, they passed by the ramp, asking had we caught any. They had caught one smallmouth. I asked if they had a water temp.

"It's 51 up here and 49 in the back!" 

 

Spinners

 

Water Slightly Stained, Pinkish Red Egg Made the Difference

I made up my mind to switch out my favorite pale eggs for pinkish red, since the water had something of an opaque quality, not running too high, but a little stained. I had caught one rainbow and missed another hit. It seemed to take forever to lose the pale egg on my hook, after I had decided to switch. Cast after cast. Today is Tuesday, and the South Branch Raritan Brenden and I fished got stocked. I figured they didn't stock many, but my judgment, I was about to learn, was a little skewed. 

Brenden had missed a hit and caught one on his Berkley worm--think it's Berkley--under a float. My red egg got hit on the first cast. Hits followed, almost every cast. I played two trout and lost them at the net. On my microlight rod and two-pound test--yes, Berkley Trilene XL, clear--every one of them takes runs. I caught another. Action halted after that, but I enjoyed having had some. Brenden had said about his worm under the float, "They're just knocking into it. They won't commit." 

The casts and the drifts I managed to get on that light tackle impressed me, given that wind gusts seemed to reach 40 mph. We heard a big dead branch above us crack, and we heard a tree trunk snap and watched the big tree fall downstream, everyone fishing in the vicinity awed by that event. I used the same snap swivel I had used at the North Branch almost a week ago, and I added two broken swivels to it before Brenden and I departed Bedminster. He had met me in the lot at my condo. If the air calmed, I would have removed those snaps, because even though the river seemed to flow a little high, the pace of the water would have allowed less weight.

As we continued to fish, we watched a couple of guys on the other side of the river and downstream of the bridge (we waded in the river upstream) catch a lot of trout. While Brenden and I slogged away after the trout stopped hitting, those two guys left. I guess Brenden and I had the same idea as we witnessed that happen.

"I'm going to go fish where those two guys left," Brenden said.

"So am I."

Climbing down the bank wasn't a breeze for me. I felt awkward at it. I don't know what happens as you get older, but it has to do with balance somehow. I feel like a young man, but then I'm confronted with a challenge like getting down to the river there, and it's stymying. When I'm writing, there seems to be zero difference between now and when I was younger, except that I'm even more skilled than I used to be. Life is kind of odd in the way that you can witness your own physical decline in a detached way that feels youthful. It's as if that decline is silly. And if medicine is allowed to continue to develop--if we don't become an authoritarian society and destroy progress--it's possible aging will be reversed. 

Earlier on, I had dropped my Egg Lug into the river when I pulled a stringer from my wader pocket. I reached for it with my net, soaking my right arm in the process. That contributed to my developing the shivers. Temp at 64 when we first descended upon the river, it had fallen to 56 when we left. I did have a light jacket on but shook in the heavy wind gusts. 

Not lasting very long at our second spot, I never got hit once, anyhow, but Brenden did catch one. I had planned to stay out to sunset, but the chill was enough. We fished two hours from the opener at 5 p.m.

Worm Under Float vs Salmon Eggs