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