300th Anniversary of Edward Teaches' Decapitation

It's the 300-year anniversary of the decapitation of pirate Blackbeard here at Ocracoke, and the celebrations go on by the minute and the hour. We sacrificed a mess of fish to the honor of the Virginia Governor, Alexander Spotswood, who ordered Edward Teaches' death, sending a ship south and ending, among worse acts, the unholy collusion between the pirate and some of the ancestors of people here today. I would only be joking, since none of us invoked Spotswood by any intent or recollection, if not for correlation between the anniversary and some thoughts of mine about two ways of looking at life.

All that about a pirate and a little island with so much better going for it is deep in the past and the collusion between the murderer and some of the early island residents is as shrouded in mystery, perhaps, as the location(s) of Blackbeard's treasure. My son says he buried silver bars somewhere or other, never found, and probably never to be found. Blackbeard is marketed on the island today, but the best of the attractions offers admission to a small museum portraying an objective account by featuring displays allowing visitors to infer that it was real and came to a gruesome but just end. Surely none of the island's early residents had any real need of him. I can only imagine human sympathy got taken in, and likely also an element of fascination for an awesomely bold man with great personal courage, though on the wrong side in a world of good and evil, who began his seamanship as an aboveboard sailor, and is said to have possibly come from a wealthy family.

I don't know as much about Ocracoke as I should. Its history. But I do know the fishing village is resilient. I've purchased some books and have read a couple of them, hoping to find time to read more, all the while knowing that no matter how many hurricanes lap up against the sand here vulnerable to these storms, when evacuations get called, a stronghold of residents won't budge and the social life of the island will go on just as it has for hundreds of years. The O'Neal family, among others, has roots here in a time when people spoke a very different English, Elizabethan or Shakespeare's English, difficult to understand, and the only dialect spoken here not very long ago. A little of the brogue remains, it's said, though I've never heard it besides getting captivated by a recording, unless I have a vague memory of overhearing speech in 1969. My first visit was not very long after the time Ocracoke emerged from more than 300 years of isolation. Now we have wifi here.

We met Ryan O'Neal going on 10 years ago. He was the youngest charter Captain to get his license here in the Southeast. He's had clients since age 18, but most are one-time deals, I believe. Before we left the dock on Thursday, he urged me to call if we needed anything during the remainder of our stay. Offhand, I can't count the number of times we've fished the inlet and just outside together, and each venture offers something different.

Especially today, gray weakfish, or as they call them here, trout, made the difference. That's Matt with one of his in the photo above. Before we got into these fish, we began fishing as we always have, by trolling, catching blues and Spanish mackerel on Clark spoons getting five to maybe seven feet deep by use of planers. Trolling is for the birds. Those birds are always the aim. The baitfish schools rove and dive, and wherever they come up the terns and gulls seem to find them first, but there's no telling by so obvious a sign as congregated and diving birds that the fish we're after stay on them most tenaciously.

In 2011, as we caught sheepshead, I asked Ryan about trout, and he said he puts clients on them sometimes, but I felt left to an aura of mystery. So today I felt skeptical about us catching any. And as events unfolded, we drifted using squid for bait a long quarter mile or so before either of us got a hit. Ryan invited Trish to fish, but she declined the offer. How anyone can deny the fun, once a fish gets on, is more of a mystery to me than trout, but I recall an incident years ago when Trish hooked a striper in the surf. The look on her face was despairing rather than thrilled. She just held the rod and refused to reel. Once I got by her side, she gave the rod to me.

There are two ways of looking at life. (Don't ask me how many other ways.) It's one big festival or else it's mass panic. According to the latter view, every living thing is always ducking for cover. We humans have the moral responsibility to aid. Of course, the realism involved in the festival feeling would seem perverse to prevailing moral sentiment among us. Creatures everywhere devouring one another and having a great time at it. As gray trout eat little fish with abandon, we put them on ice to fillet and eat for lunch. (That lunch was delicious, by the way. We had killed the fish about an hour prior.)

It's really not so simple. We humans do have a moral responsibility to aid where we can, such as releasing fish in healthy condition. I think in my wife's hands, the rod with a striped bass on could have felt disturbing. I feel plenty of empathy for this. But I don't take the view that a fighting fish is "terrified." In pain, perhaps, though nothing like pain I would feel with a hook set in my mouth and a line pulling. The world of nature is pure competition. So a fish on a hook sort of expects a struggle. And gives it! We humans make the best of life through cooperation. Anyone who has to compete all day at work to make nickels and dimes as profit margin....not a whole lot more...knows that the stress isn't very good for him. Go on vacation and if you don't feel things come together--cooperating--you've failed your visit. And you know your success is as human life should be. Coming together and feeling good about what you do.

Suddenly--our baits began to work their way up a drop-off from 26 feet towards shallows--we were into fish. In addition to two Spanish of about 18 inches and a bluefish on the troll, I caught two more blues (these fish about 14 inches), two fluke, and three gray weakfish. Matt caught three grays, some blues, whiting...he lost count but caught more fish than I did. One of his gray trout was too small and tenderly released by Ryan.

"What are we after today?" I asked him when we met before leaving the dock to enter three-mile-wide Ocracoke Inlet.

"I was going to take you out for red drum. I can't get the bait."

"I read in one of the fishing reports there're a lot around."

Red drum have been on my mind for awhile. Forty, fifty, sixty pounds. Maybe next time.

From the beach this afternoon, in-between reading Chris Dombrowski's Body of Water, I caught a kingfish, a member of the drum family smaller than a croaker, mine about nine inches. It took an eighth-ounce jig tipped with a piece of shrimp fished on my light St. Croix rod.

Back home, preparing for shark fishing tonight, Matt took off to get bait, finding a number of new Pamlico Sound spots, scoring four bluefish on that Hopkins Shorty in the process. That's bait. He also asked a young woman about his age, described as beautiful, for a few of the fish she caught on bait and would have tossed back. So he's prepared.

Preparing for lunch and more meals yet. (Some of our catch.)

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2015/08/ocracoke-shark-attack-revenge.html

Belvidere, New Jersey, Visit

 Martin's Creek Power Plant on the Delaware River

For years, I've meant to take my wife to Belvidere, "beautiful place to see," in Italian. Matt and I fished there in the Delaware River at the mouth of the Pequest seven years or so ago, trying for stripers at night with live eels. I've felt obliquely familiar with the town since my teens, passing near it on the way to the Delaware Water Gap and back, and so naturally, my curiosity grew. Somehow or other I learned of Victorian homes, and I imagined there would be a nice downtown to walk.

The plan included driving from Milford to Reigelsville on CR 627 along the Delaware River, a drive I've never made, but time prohibited. We would have continued north through Philipsburg. We did take I-78 west to Philipsburg, got on CR 621 from U.S. Highway 22, and followed the river to Belvidere, a fairly long ride. I parked in the town's center and said, "It's not what I thought it would be." Patricia had asked me if there's a downtown to walk, and I said there was. Later, as we drove home, she asked had I lied. No. But I told her I should have been critical of my belief and said I didn't know.

As we stood in Belvidere, the Pequest River racing under a bridge, she made fun of the town with her typical dry wit, though I don't remember the words. We saw only about half a dozen Victorian homes. Most are early 20th century. But one of the Victorians, pink and very large, up on a hill, especially fascinated me. We were driving out after ice cream, after I went inside an antiques co-op that didn't offer much, but Early American Life magazine was interesting, though I didn't buy an issue. I turned around and drove down a dead-end street. A trail lead up to the house, but I not only judged it wasn't appropriate to walk on up; parking there in front of a couple homes would be too nosy also.

So we rode out to U.S. 46 and stopped at Hot Dog Johnny's. Patricia expressed confidence that we'll stop here again in May, since the powers-that-be where I work won't want to pay me time-and-a-half back to back, she figured, on Memorial Day weekend. She wants to return to Millbrook Village in Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area. The thought of really hiking up Van Campens Brook with my two-weight fly rod flickered in my mind. Last year, we visited Layton and the Little Flatbrook before arriving at Millbrook Village. I plainly judged that to fish the Little Flatbrook, you have to walk right up the middle of it between a lot of brush. Since I've begun working at Shop Rite nine months ago, one of the butchers and I have a running conversation on fly fishing New Jersey streams. He's talked about that Little Flatbrook a number of times. I knew last year that if I were ever to do this, it's not a trip to take my wife along. The butcher confirms my initial observation: you have walk straight up the middle of the stream, and it's tough casting.

There's so much worth doing, which the American hegemony of economic power concentrated among the super-wealthy won't allow so many of us to do, because we have to serve them just like slaves--paid peanuts as tokens of American freedom--with very little time off to pursue values a lot more worthwhile than Bread and Circuses. I refuse to be their victim. It is better to fight and die while refusing to submit as the voiceless sacrifice they might demand you be, than live as a victim. This doesn't mean I don't work, hard and efficiently. Just the opposite. What else do I go to my job for than to work? There's a lot I don't agree with. But I punch that clock. And within that time I agree to work, I do my best. It's my work. The very little I am limited to.

 Pequest River

Country Gate. A stage presentation of Into the Woods at one of the first venues I noticed as we drove into town, the play piqued interest. Not only do I know the book, the young man who sought adventure and freedom was moved by deep yearnings that must have been similar to what moved me to walk out of society to harvest clams commercially in wild bays, which I did for 13 years as if away on a very prolonged Jewish Kibbutz. I wasn't the only one, and that's the reason I can draw that comparison.



http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/06/historic-speedwell-lake-stephen-vail.html

Hainesville Pond, Little Flatbrook, Millbrook Village Outing

Hainesville Pond has been on my mind for years now, and I must have been verbally introduced by Oliver Shapiro's Fishing in New Jersey: A Guide for Freshwater Anglers, forever after intending to come here. Well, we have been going up to the Ridge and Valley on Memorial Day weekend for many years, and finally I incorporated a visit, knowing full well that this 37-acre pond is notorious for weeding in early, but hoping my son and I could fish it anyhow. Actually, the wide angle lens from which I shot the photo, above, makes the water seem more open than really is. Although Scum Frogs and the like really would work, I just didn't have the heart to make the effort today, especially with a thunderstorm coming right up behind us, and so much water out there just spells out: Use the canoe or forget it.

Maybe in March or April. It's nearly June now and this place is very forbidding this late. And very shallow. Kind of interesting to find a Jurassic Swamp up here in the mountains. 

We headed back down U.S. 206 to connect with CR 615, arrive in Layton and the Little Flatbrook, indeed find a Division of Fish & Game posting behind a local venue that apparently doesn't mind people parking and walking in--everyone we encountered friendly--and yet, to fish this little creek, you really need to bushwhack and wade upstream with no trails to guide your progress, apparently. At any rate, that thunderstorm bore down, and before we could search any further, lightning and rain erupted as we drove off, two-weight TFO and Matt's five-weight with us unemployed.

Next stop Millbrook Village, although I felt very tired, we could possibly hike up along Van Campen's Brook and at least get some difficult fly casting in. The stream is noted for wild brown trout, but they don't come easy. Patricia and I hiked up a few years ago, and though I hooked a little one, we really need to hike further and fish harder to do anything more memorable.

I got a shot of the Millbrook Village Methodist-Episcopal Church that turned out better than it looked on the Nikon's screen. God's angry with us, wouldn't you say? And so the storm clouds faithfully hint at the truth, though the rain and thunder that came as an absolute deluge I can't show you, because I didn't capture that.

Before we geared it out with rain on our tracks again, Patricia and Matt caught up with two National Park employees, who, in conversation, told them the staffed event with open doors to various preserved buildings and period dress closed at 3:00, this to my wife's sadness, but there's always next year! OK. So I might have preferred to explore some other Ridge and Valley corner, but we can go to Millbrook Village...and hike the Van Campen's a lot further than last time.

Don't get me wrong. I had a wonderful time with the history here. But once might be enough?

We got pretty far up the creek, too. And I would rather wade the Little Flatbrook, but I can't imagine Patricia slipping on those wet rocks in good conscience.

We drove on down U.S. 46, after passing through the Water Gap enshrouded with fantastic cloud configurations, and as I drove past, I got that great view up the almost vertical rocks rising 1200 vertical feet...and what an adventure that would be, to climb that. Bet you'd get arrested, too.

And down along the Delaware, where once, many, many years ago, we stopped, got out fishing rods, and Matt and I fished as his mother witnessed. Yes, we caught smallmouth bass where the river runs very deep with jagged bank boulders in and out of the water. How many smallmouths, exactly, I don't remember. But those were days my son was really into the fishing.

To Johnny's Hot Dog Stand. The climax of the trip for Patricia. Well, before we got there, again, as this is the third year of that now, I stopped at the soft ice cream shop in Buttzville. Nearly 40 years ago, friends and I always stopped here, a landmark for us, as we drove from Lawrence in Mercer County to fish, hike, and camp in the National Recreation Area.

Don't misunderstand "outdoors people." Or at least not us. We don't denigrate culture, technology, and developed means, but we do believe in progress and making things of better quality and value, the invention of new applications more appropriate to reality. And that's what it's really about for us--the real world, whether exploring local history or enjoying a world class Broadway play in Manhattan, Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Morristown, or the Van Campen's Brook, a creek which happens to really exist and is therefore significant. Or using the mobile device to get pertinent info as we travel. (I haven't bothered to own one of those yet, but my son and wife do.)

 Little Flatbrook at Layton

 Well, you can wade up from here.

 Millbrook Methodist-Episcopal Church

Walpack Valley

I'm writing The Microlight Quest: Trout, Adventure, Renwal, a memoir I intend to get published.

Natirar Hike and Photography: Mother's Day Special

Usually I make the suggestion on where to go, although sometimes an offhand reference to someplace I speak of gets tackled by Patricia. More often than not, a place she picks from my brain becomes a family tradition. Such as Hot Dog Johnny's on Route 46 near Buttzville, NJ. My idea to bring her along with Matt and me to fly fish the Flatbrook on Memorial Day weekend years ago, we've headed up there every one of those weekends since, and a few years ago, I mentioned Johnny's and she riveted upon the idea. I felt she would, once I thought of it, but I also wondered why I hadn't thought of going there with her three years before. Well, go figure. A guy in the habit of selecting spaces that fulfill his own interests...can be a little slow about thinking of those that suit others.

Not today. Mother's Day, my wife reserved full rights on where to go. She didn't want to go far, but she did want to go someplace she feels is special. When she told me this will be Natirar, immediately I thought of getting some river photography and whole-heartedly agreed on her idea. I admit I'm selfish. If I don't see some advantage in whatever I do, I'm just not inclined to be there, and very often when things aren't going my way, I find out how to turn events in my favor--in others' interest too. Best of all, things mutually work out for two or more of us together, and while--as you can see--I shot some pictures today, I knew I couldn't spend a whole lot of time at it, and although I went into my closet and reached to get the waders, I told myself, "What am I doing?" I let them be. It wouldn't have been appropriate to put them on for better river position with my tripod on her day, and even when we recently visited the Ken Lockwood Gorge, I didn't go that far.

Natirar used to be the famous Walter Ladd estate, named in 1905 after the river--actually the North Branch Raritan--that flows through near the Far Hills/Peapack, New Jersey, border. Natirar is Raritan spelled in reverse. Originally, the estate comprised about 1000 acres, and today it's a Somerset County Park of 491 acres, which seemed to draw about that many people today. It's a thriving, very popular park that includes an expensive restaurant. Situated in the Highlands, just three miles to the east and a little south, our home is on the Piedmont.

We came to hike, and I suppose we walked as many as three miles, perhaps not quite more than two, but we walked for nearly an hour-a-half, though we stopped to sit on one of the benches provided along the way, relax and talk. As we set out beyond the river, I got to thinking that my favorite hikes entail regions of the Highlands wilder and less crowded. In fact, I usually pick spots where we might see two other people during our entire outing. More than once, we've seen no one else. When we hiked Marble Mountain recently, we spoke as freely as the space around us existed entirely as our own, but as we began arduous walking today, I felt put off by so many others.

And then we reached the belly of the hike, the midway regions, and I paid peculiar attention to a group of people ahead of us; they obviously enjoyed a very nice time, speaking just as freely as we had on Marble Mountain. I felt like a suck, groping for some way out of my silent discomfort. All of a sudden, I began to talk. I can't recall what about and that doesn't matter.

Two or three minutes into conversation, I realized I'd done it again. I had dug myself a little hole on a bad premise, as if a place full of people out-of-doors isn't as good as a place that doesn't attract many, a place that doesn't have the same sort of prestige, but about which I am a snob because I know wilderness quality trumps the sort of trails grassed over with mown sod.

And now? Once again, I had taken a wrong turn and reversed the polarity. I guess that means I'm bipolar, but then that's a good thing, because I can always find my way to a better place.

We came home just in time to meet Matt after he came home from work, and Patricia looked into movie possibilities. The latest movie about Ernest Hemingway seems too cheap to bother with at all. We don't like a Nobel Prize winning novelist getting made into some sort of superficial action figure. So she decided on Sing Street, an independent film showing in Montgomery about teenagers starting up a rock band, really about the same principle poet Rainer Maria Rilke challenged artists to take up. Going all the way, never settling on halfway. The 15-year-old takes his 16-year-old girlfriend and they leave home for good, crossing from Ireland to Wales, England, in a little boat of about 17 feet and 50 horsepower to start life anew.

Marble Mountain Ice Cave Warren County New Jersey

The Marble Mountain Ice Cave occupied my mind since this time last year, and I planed on hiking with my wife two weeks ago, diverted by necessities otherwise. The weather then cold and windy anyway, yesterday turned out to be a much better day. While walking our black Lab Sadie during a recent night, I realized we could take a roundabout way towards the Phillipsburg area by CR 512 from Bedminster, through Califon, and to the Ken Lockwood Gorge, thus giving me the opportunity to take some needed river photos with spring growth fairly minimal as yet, and also to show my wife where I want to teach her some fly fishing.

I thought we would just hang out near the trailhead accessible by Hoffman's Crossing Road, but once Patricia saw the opportunity, she wanted to walk back in, so we walked at least a half mile here altogether. Just a few of the photos I shot I've posted.

We accessed Interstate 78 by State Highway 31 and eventually rode onto CR 621, exiting U.S. 22 in Phillipsburg, the trail access parking coming into view quickly after about a mile. Marble Mountain in Warren County is a ridge flanking the Delaware River, the likes of which characterize the terrain all the way down to Lambertville and below. The trail gradient is pretty modest, but after hiking about a mile when we met with the orange trail to take us aside to the Ice Cave, we had ascended at least 300 vertical feet.

The Ice Cave is no natural cave, but the abandoned Fulmer Mine, active during the 19th century when tons of rich iron ore extracted remains something of a mystery, since no paper trail left behind for future historians tracks where it went to market. The New Jersey Highlands pocked here and there by such mines, most of the forest vanished into smelting furnaces, a massive project overall which included some copper and graphite mining among other minerals as well. How they hauled rock down off such ridges and mountains, I wonder.

Rather than turn around after our hike, I drove northward on CR 621 following railroad tracks and the river to the first right turn, a distance of five miles, perhaps. Eventually, we connected with CR 519, a road familiar to me. No GPS in my car, I hope this device never comes standard with any vehicle we buy. I like to use my sense of direction, not relying on maps, either. The county road I first became familiar with during the 1970's as a conduit between Hunterdon County's Locatong and Wickecheoke creeks, where we trout fished, 519 would have taken us back into Alpha next to Phillipsburg, so I turned left onto State Highway 57 and soon made a right onto CR 625, which took us through Stewartsville.

We enjoyed a nice view of Pohatcong Creek before getting onto Interstate 78.

Ice Cave information set in front of a big fire pit.

Superfund Site in Ringwood "Holes and Caves"

My wife, Patricia, follows the news much more closely than I do. She majored in journalism at Boston University, so it's no surprise she has a much keener mind about current affairs than I do. Nearly five years ago, prompted by reading Manny Luftglass's Gone Fishin' in New Jersey late in 2010, I took our son, Matt, to Shepherd Lake near Ringwood, New Jersey, off Sloatsburg Road near the New York state border, in Ringwood State Park. Patricia warned me of a Superfund site nearby and that we shouldn't bring any fish home.

Back a year or two before we got married, in the mid-90's, we visited Ringwood Manor and also hiked a couple of trails in the area. She's the quiet sort who thinks privately more than she says. We never discussed the Superfund site until the possibility, or so it seemed, of a foul meal involved us.

One of the things we had explored in the area, old iron works have a nearly ubiquitous presence in North Jersey. During the 18th and/or 19th centuries, much of the land forested now got clear-cut to fuel iron furnaces, and many mines now remain scattered among the mountains, abandoned shafts that served real purpose as the American Industrial Revolution gained power.

And then came the 20th century, which Superfunds are all about. Cleaning up after the party. Two North Jersey mines near Ringwood--Peter's Mine and Cannon Mine--got stuffed with chemical waste containing 1,4 dioxane, suspected of causing cancer in people. Only now it's coming out in the news that dioxane is in the groundwater up there at specific testing sites (we live in Bedminster, central Jersey) 50 to 95 times the New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency's safe standard.

What a strange fate for innocent mine shafts. And according to the article I read, residents in the toxic area have reported serious illnesses and early deaths.

Here's the link to an article about the mess: http://www.northjersey.com/news/epa-did-not-disclose-ringwood-contamination-1.1516597

A Stony Brook Fish Story

The Bend

Yet another reflective story as winter seems to wind down now, ice-out perhaps coming very early and ponds, lakes and reservoirs remaining open hereafter. My best friend from my teens emailed me from California last night, and suggested I write a story around the four-pound smallmouth he caught in Stony Brook, Princeton Township, back when we were 15 and 16.

"Steve, you're dreamin'!" I replied. "It was two-and-a-half."

Something flashed through my mind when I read his request. Now it occurs to me the theme involves concrete essence, a most radical idea introduced by philosopher Aristotle about 2500 years ago in ancient Greece. All the more radical, when you consider his best friend was Plato. For Plato, essences or Forms were out of this world. But instead of agreeing with his mentor that the body is a prison, Aristotle seemed never to forget the enjoyment of his partying days, and pointed to ordinary things and creatures as important.

About that riotous youth he enjoyed, when he got it together after long, hard nights to mind business, peddling herbs brought in the money.

When I look at the photograph of my second-favorite Stony Brook spot, the Bend, it makes me want to be there, slate knocking under my feet, assuring me of life's value as I cast a mellow yellow Mr. Twister, a foot-long smallmouth hammering it.

Now imagine if I were Platonic, had died and escaped the "prison" to dwell among the Forms. According to Plato, you're supposed to behold the Forms when you're dead. Suppose I did something naughty and looked the other way, back down to earth, to see something "corrupted" like the photo I've included with this story. What if, for all the Platonic High, what if those weighty rocks, supposedly no good for their tendency to go downward, made me remember how good it is to be somewhere? Plato's eternal Forms aren't really in any place since they're not concrete.

I'd come straight back to earth and be reborn, if I had the choice. Maybe if you're a real stoner, you can deal with being so high it doesn't matter being nowhere, but I think the root word of the self-description would imply inescapable gravity.

My favorite Stony Brook spot is called the Eight Foot Hole. A number of us still call it that on rare occasion. A spring release at bottom is good for both bass and holdover trout. Sometime during the past decade, my nephew once caught four rainbows there in August, and it's where in 1977 Steve caught his two-and-an-eighth-pound smallmouth. Even I had embellished it, when I wrote Steve back.

A number of us camped in the woods streamside, and on a number of occasions. Fair bet kids don't anymore, and even back then there was never anyone else doing it, but no one ever troubled us. Steve caught his bass in the evening, and I had come prepared with a wire-mesh catch bag for just the event of a big one caught. We also caught some 10-inchers--back then legal size was nine inches--and put them in the bag, too, keeping them in the water overnight.

And then before dawn, we got up, fixed scrapple and eggs by a nice fire and hiked the mile to the Princeton Day School ponds...with the smallmouths that survived out of water the near-jogging pace, to be stocked in the lower pond. We know at least one lived, because I caught the big one a year later on a Hedden Plunker off the surface. We even loaded a section of water with rocks, hoping the bass would reproduce.

We had permission to fish the ponds. The school Headmaster sang in the Episcopal choirs I sang in. But stock them? Well, we were kids.

Who knows. Maybe both Aristotle and Plato are right. Maybe this earth gets "stocked" with naughty people from Nowhere.    

Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park: Mule Barges, Rough Men, and Bass

Delaware & Raritan Canal

The Basin

Coal barges pulled by mules, maneuvered into Baker's Basin by muscle, took refuge here from the Delaware & Raritan Canal current. Rough, wearied men rested on the 10 or so acres overnight, not so exhausted. They built bonfires, partied and drank. The stories told here are legend no one will ever know. Nineteenth century history never printed. Free as the air we breathe. The lusts that gleamed in fire-lit eyes as men rapped back and forth about women must have been enough to power a tractor trailer.

I heard about bass caught here when I was 10, so I cajoled my father to drive me over to have a look, having memorized directions from the father of a girl I knew, a father who cast big bass plugs into the pond.

Dad drove me over. There were about a dozen black men hanging out, and I felt deeply curious, because they didn't seem in the same space I came from at all. One of them turned and glared at me with wide open eyes holding great power. Mine didn't flinch. From the passenger seat, I held his enormous gaze, and analyzed it as I concentrated. Not exactly hatred or negativity, though that was there with rage just behind. I swore I saw the faintest glimmer of desire to know, rather than destroy.

"This place is wild!" My father said. Without saying another word, he simply swerved the station wagon around before he ever stopped, and vacated the grounds.

I understood and said nothing.

Four years later, by my request, a friend's father drove the friend and me over. We fished. Maybe that's when I first noticed the Allied Van Company immediately in front of the gravel lot, off U.S. Highway 1, loaded with tractor trailers. One form of commerce transportation to another.

I caught a bass and couldn't believe fishing as good existed so close to home. I had caught bullheads in the canal downstream, crossing Route 1 on my bicycle as a 12-year-old. But largemouth bass?

I fished here often, completely unafraid of my neighbors from Trenton. I don't know what Dad thought. Probably nothing. Most adults repress their fears and hope for the best.

It's good I went that first time with Dad. Then, the original mule entry existed. Four years later, a mere ditch pipe exchanged water where the open swath had been filled in. I saw something that existed since about 1830, when canal construction completed.

Now, not mule barges, but bass cruise in from the canal and winter over in the calm basin water, deeper and better habitat for bass in cold water, water in which they don't have to expend such energy with low metabolism struggling against a current. Just like the barges at night.   

 

Remembering the 1970's and Fishing as an Eternal Verity

I've understood winter as a time to reflect and read since my teens, so it's no wonder I've been posting stories more than accounts. Having missed out on the ice fishing, because I got caught up in other things, Round Valley Reservoir yet awaits laker fishing, specifically. Even more to the point--from shore. I might catch rainbows instead.

I like to get into the technicalities of the game and see how these lead to natural effects, how a creature of nature responds as the focal point of an ecosystem, me included in that particular system in which I participate. It all begins at home. After all, ecology and economics share the same prefix, and the word economics originates in ancient Greece, oikonomia, meaning the organization and management of the household. I pick up on facts like this from reading. In an uncanny way, they're native to me, just as a Litton's Lines post on Ancient Greece and Round Valley Reservoir relates a wildly weird experience I had there. Broad and sunlit, mind you.

When I'm at home arranging tackle for an outing, I always seem to start by thinking concretely on just what to gather, sort, and prepare. I do all that sort of piecemeal while clues tend to lead on to how I can fish, like little things. I find the spinnerbait stinger hooks that got lost for a year and don't need an awkward bluefish hook in the place of one of them. On and on it goes, and I start to remember other things, like the 17-inch bass caught the previous year on a certain black custom quarter-ounce Colorado-bladed job. Before long, I'm in a deep reverie, enjoying some theme or other about the outing or many of them.

That's why, once and awhile, I post themes rather than accounts, and why my accounts themselves tend to be thematic. More than how-to, where-to, tactics and patterns--why we fish matters. None of us would have done it in the first place, unless we had a basic desire to feel what it's about. And then, once we inevitably got frustrated at the difficulty, we began to piece out how to do it. But this led on for each of us who kept at it.

The more we get into it, the more we desire to experience. And if this isn't personal experience, fishing's becoming meaningless, rather than becoming more of a story.

So that's my lead and I'm going to try and keep this post reasonably short, since after all, it's only a blog through which I'm writing.

Back in the day, those world-famous 1970's when 75% or more of high school seniors smoked pot much more openly than they seem to smoke the stuff today, when rock 'n roll was in it's heyday--arguably, '70's music is better than '60's, but not as good as classical--when the weather always seemed warm and sunny--if you're my age, I bet that's how you remember it--when everyone was usually in a good mood, and if not that, in a great mood...the 70's were a time when a few friends and I--besides all this other stuff--fished the early season for largemouth bass.

Typically, it began in late February on the bottom. At least I used to crawl a Johnson Beetle Spin so slowly on gravel I noticed the second hand of my watch seem to turn at about the speed of the handle of my Penn 716. I don't recall anyone else trying this technique. It probably required too much patience. Whether or not, I do know I came up with it. Next, we got them in the mid-column with water warming a little, in between the bottom and the shallows, reeling in-line spinners slow to moderately. I think all of us fished this way. But I made my own out of knock-off CP Swing components that worked just as well. Size 6. So did an older mentor, who showed me how to do this. Brunswick Sports and Hardware in Trenton near the Lawrence Township line sold the parts, or was it Andy's Sports Shop in Trenton? Most likely, old Andy had the equipment. I'm certain now, because my mentor hated Brunswick Sports and Hardware.

Finally, when bass barely nudged into the shallows, we got them by slightly twitching 2 1/2-inch Rebel Minnows on the surface.

Why do this, when so much partying went on? I remember just once, one afternoon I hit Baker's Basin high. It was sacrilege. I really don't say this ironically, because the guilt felt palpable. We, the immoral majority who broke the law, had our ways and means of sharing the sacrament of mother nature, the bones we burned to offer togetherness.

Who knows, perhaps we released the wrath of great spirits, who would have preferred we engage other arts instead. After all, at least the spirit of great works remains with us, and to ignore this fact doesn't make them go away.

Fishing, for one of its qualities, was a way to preserve purity. I knew whatever insights I momentarily gleaned by looking askance as we got into the Dead, these insights rarely, if ever, amounted to anything, because forgotten. I never fully gave into the counter culture, as a few of my friends did and still offer everything up in smoke.

Fishing was much more important. Again, for one thing, because it was unambiguously real. I bet anyone who smokes that stuff is uncertain of reality sometimes when on it. I remember two incidents, one on an island during a calm night of camping on a lake, another in a cabin by a pond, when reality felt more certain and positive than usual, and yet so many times we teens fell prey to confusions about what deeper levels of mind informed us, while the ability to stop action and consider had got let loose like a tape we couldn't stop and rewind. And then we felt as if missing something important, since stuff happening to us we couldn't control didn't seem right for good reason. I guess adults exist who have come to terms with pot and have learned how to let control go, but I've come to good terms with life without the stuff, so it's pretty much a non-issue for me.

I fished all the time during my teens, and avoided those who smoked all the time. I gave up my closest friend--who later came back--because he went too far into the haze. The rest of us teenaged fools and pseudo-intellectual Honor Society types, after freshman year in college when I dropped out to begin in the shellfishing business, it took me three troubled years of conflict with friends to finally write them off as full of---

Is the mind's standard reality or not? If not, it can be all sorts of things, whether you smoke pot or not. Things all of which amount to social prejudices of one sort or another.

So were the '70's Purple Haze or clear sunlight? If I wrote sunshine, you might think of the code designation. I remember the sunlight.

Nevertheless, I make a confession. I honor the Dead. God save the child who rings the Liberty Bell. Robert Hunter's "Franklin's Tower" stems from his passionate love of history, which says a lot for the power of the human mind under duress of agents that destroy it. Ultimately, we can't blame the drugs as the agents. They're chosen in the context of a broader cultural power structure.

Go away and fish. You stand outside it all, looking in on the whole world of folly.

Here's the link to that Round Valley post: http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/10/round-vallley-reservoir-and-ancient.html

Photo Outing Found Trout Round Valley After Big Snow

Alarm went off at 7:15 and I felt wretched exhaustion and set it for 8:45, hoping sunlight on the Clinton Mill would balance the red. As often happens, I get manic in the head and insomniac when I go to sleep at night, ideas competing with my wish to sleep. Before I finally zoned out sometime well after midnight, I hoped to awake energetic, as sometimes a little manic bout punches energy level enough to wake up ready to go.

Not this morning. But by 8:45, I was OK, except I decided to forego the fishing tackle for Round Valley Reservoir and hit the road immediately, scooping up my camera, tripod, and leashing Sadie the black Lab. On the way, I worried about light perhaps not being right. You can see it is, but there's some bad white balance that resulted in blue snow you can see if you look for it. I can correct that. The "kit lens" has pretty deep color tone, but I may buy the much more expensive 17-55mm yet. I Don't think the photo quite does it, but the camera is a D7100, top of the DX format line.

After a dozen shots or so, I headed up Route 31 looking for a kayak outfitter I never found, so I have to wait yet to buy cartop racks. But I drove into Glen Gardner, turning around at Hot Rod Hot Dogs, and marveling at the size of the mountain with a rock face in front of me. Some of the houses along the way are beat up and kind of appealing, a feeling of honest ruin and letting it all go. I guess some things have to rot, and though I wouldn't live in ramshackle house, I would hate to live in a country where every house is prim.

I drove to Round Valley and shot photos, left, got the idea of walking to a low-water peninsula to photograph it, and turned the Honda Civic back. So I got a good trudge in deep snow with Sadie and got more photos, that peninsula shot worth it all the way. And then I walked along the water, most of the way in refrozen, boot-resistant snow, to one of two guys fishing trout.

He had two rainbows, each about 17 inches, caught on shiners. He told me some lakers got caught just before the snowstorm slammed us. I drove up here on Tuesday, and the main park entrance was closed. It must have opened yesterday, since boot marks on the trail were old, but this guy was the first out to that point, judging by his.

I may get out and fish trout here soon.

 Used my Tokina 11-16mm

Nikkor 70-200mm f/4, 1.4 Nikkor Extender, 1.3 camera crop function

Institute for Advanced Study Bulldozes part of Princeton Battlefield

The Institute for Advanced Study has begun to bulldoze six acres they own of the approximately 21-acre tract including Princeton Battlefield State Park. The Institute intends to build housing on hallowed ground where men fought and died for the founding of the American nation. I've followed this development for a few years; not closely, because I gave up on the news mentality at age 18, at least that mainline sensation of urgent importance I used to vitally feel. My brother-in-law used to be extremely involved in historic preservation in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and he fought the Institute hard and dearly to keep the integrity of this land intact. Since he was up against one of the most famous architects in the country on the other side, Hillyer I believe is the name, he knew they have a lot of power for the nonce.

In the broader view of events, the Institute I felt proud of living near while growing up seems to value six acres of housing an awful lot, as if any question about its image locally, nationally and globally is less important. Albert Einstein had an office at the Institute, as great minds do today, but whatever the outcome--with bulldozers already at work--we all know that if the Revolutionary War hadn't happened, including the decisive victory here, the unleashing of human productivity as never before in history, which has been America, wouldn't have either.

Einstein hoped for international government, an idea foreign to most of us, and I wonder how he appreciated the Battlefield. Great minds come from many countries to Princeton, Orville and Wilbur Wright having made the convenience of their travels possible at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

I know Einstein loved Stony Brook nearby, because I came upon a written passage of his own that expressed the amazement he felt just walking about it's edges to turn over stones or what have you and encounter whatever he found. Especially the awakening of ideas that nature stimulates. 

My brother-in-law used to be involved in Revolutionary War reenactments. Shot's blurry, just like the thundering cannon at Princeton Battlefield seemed to shake the air. He and my sister-in-law cleared out of the area for Maine, leaving behind the Corporate World they came to find no longer tenable.

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Holiday Events Well Worth Participation

The National Park Service will host "First Weekend" events at Millbrook Village on Mine Road, easily accessed from Interstate 80 after traveling north along the river some six miles or more. A "Victorian Christmas Celebration will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 5th, complete with historic homes decorated in the Victorian style accompanied by costumed guides preparing holiday meals on woodstoves and over open hearths, while craftsmen show you how it was done.

I highly recommend it, since my wife and I visited Millbrook Village on Memorial Day last year (source of these photos), and the guides brought the place fully alive. I vaguely felt as we drove in as if, "Oh, no, another boring historical farce," the way that in my teens I did not like Waterloo Village in NJ, not even Williamsburg, VA, very much, but it's nothing fake. It's way better than visiting such places without people in roles who really know what they're about. If you're open to other times, other places--seek them out.

Also, "A Christmas Carol Service" will happen at Millbrook Village from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, December 6th, light refreshments served. This of course is participatory, and since I sang in an Episcopal Choir for 13 years, I can relate to you that singing really does more than "lift the spirit." It's part of what being a healthy human being is all about. If singing were not natural, that would be another issue, but anyone can sing. And there's a reason for this.

You can find other Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area holiday events elsewhere online.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks as always for visiting Litton's Fishing Lines!

Jockey Hollow Grand Parade Trail Hike

Angulated fence near Wick House

My wife and I hiked the Grand Parade Trail today in Jockey Hollow, actually part of Morristown National Historical Park. Many books are written on the crucial history lived out here, especially by the troops of George Washington, who suffered record cold during the winter encampment of 1779-1780, some of whom didn't make it. Washington himself was well-protected, I'm sure, though he was no stranger to the situation and profoundly concerned for his men.

I've read none of the books, unfortunately, though I would like to, and the Jockey Hollow Visitor Center has many for sale I have perused in some detail. My first experience hiking Jockey Hollow and Morristown happened back in 1973, when as a Boy Scout with Lawrenceville's Troop 28, we hiked a grueling 18 miles. I remember how tough it was, up and down hills.

Today, we hiked about three miles total, and though the day began for me with very sour feelings, waking at 1:15 in the afternoon after having stayed up to 4:00 a.m., once I got my camera out of the bag and photographed that classic wooden fence, all swiftly rose back in place for me, as the world suddenly made sense again.

For us, a real nice hike, and even though perhaps two tenths of a mile near the end of it made me feel very old, rather than youthful as I usually feel, I accepted the feeling as pretty accurate. After all, in five very short years--as years pass these days at my age--I'll be 60. So I may as well feel it on rare occasion. And then the sun angled upon us after we crested a hill and I felt vital, despite my left leg with nerves that fried from extreme sciatica, the leg feeling weakened as if the nerves simply can no longer support the muscular action fully. It's only after I've hiked a couple of miles that I feel this slight pain and unease. Done hiking, we opened the car trunk and chugged water, and upon arriving home, felt the world from a deeper sense of its peace, despite the association of Morristown with war.

Years ago, I took lunches in Jockey Hollow, while working for New Jersey's largest credit union. Doing this for about three straight years through all four seasons, developed a deep awareness of this land as hallowed ground, although I felt the affinity especially from November through winter. Land that is lush with flourishing summer life relates all too well the success of life in the present, but with the added sense of space late and very early in the year, we may know a deeper presence in the very absence of life. Usually, when we visit a place, we're only conscious of it in the context of the very thin strip of present time. But history is not just "past." Remains are in fact existential, and the present and future cannot, in fact, exist without the past. Past, present, future are what time is.

 Wick House. Here the Wick's lived...not really so long ago.

 Lots of fallen, cut trees on the Grand Parade Trail

 Kids are just as eager to meet new dogs, as dogs are.

 Approaching the Soldier's Huts from above. The four huts, of course, are model renditions. Since enough men camped here in the Hollow to fill a 400 by 300 yard space during the daily Grand Parade--a formality that kept organization intact--I wonder how many dozens of huts existed. 600 acres of forests were cut down entirely to build the huts and make firewood. 

Hut rendition interior.