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

 

Baker's Basin and Moving On

First of all, let me say today was a strange day in many ways. It coincides with the fallout of so-called Liberation Day, though I wasn't thinking about that. Since I've got home, I've made sure to watch Fox News, but I remain skeptical about the President's idea about bringing back manufacturing, as if that cultural implication will actually revive the country. And I say that because I believe the future is new forms of advanced digital industry and energy--thus new jobs--not the past forms that are simply obsolete given the mind's advance since then. I fear that we've simply been set way back on the flourishing aspect of a future that is inevitable, while threatening to increase the heat of climate change. 

Not to mention that it would have been nice if the bull market didn't end once the President was inaugurated. Gas prices going up. What next? And the big question--what for? Nothing, right? Isn't that how vengeance always works. The vengeance takes down both the assailant and his victims. 

I rode over to The Sporting Life in Whitehouse to buy a dozen shiners. Not because the weather is too cold for lures, but because I had in mind my favorite spot on the canal in Lawrence Township near Princeton by way of Quaker Bridge Road, where I've usually fished colder water with shiners. Ideally, it's a mild day when I fish there, because a pipe drains a small, very shallow pond into the canal, and that water flowing out can be warmer. I would fish there for maybe half and hour and then move on to the place I had most in mind: Bakers Basin, at Carnegie Road, Lawrence Township, and I would get there by way of U.S. Highway 1.  

I quickly caught a bass of about 13 inches by casting from up above so as not to spook anything in close. Got it up on the bank, the circle hook came free, and it plopped back in, so no photo of it. Then I missed a few hits from something that seemed to play with the (large) shiners, more than get serious about eating. I got hit again and reeled in the small crappie. Had a few more hits like that afterwards and caught the bass photographed.

I had bought size 4 and 6 circle hooks from Melton Tackle. It's a good price, but not only will a bass swallow a circle hook as quickly as it will swallow any other, a circle hook will not rust out easily, unless it's bronze like my Eagle Claw J hooks. Have seen only corrosion-resistant finish, which of course means resistant to rusting. So you can end up killing more fish with circle hooks. Not only that. It's quite difficult to hook a shiner through the lips with a circle hook. Had little trouble hooking them through the dorsal area when ice fishing, though. So today I switched back to a J hook and consigned my circle hooks to ice fishing. Maybe for Yum Dingers, too, 1/0. 

I fished my canal spot as if alienated from something I love to do. I said I did not think about what happened yesterday and the fallout today. I did see the Dow was down four percent before I went out, so I knew for certain but put it out of mind. Or so I would have thought. It felt as if I were being drawn into facing some unpleasant truth about myself and the fishing, which for decades has vitalized my energies. It was interesting enough to keep at it there for 45 minutes, but it seemed oddly incongruous to something having to do with the present year compared to long ago.

I mentioned Baker's Basin in a recent post, and today I fully intended on visiting the place. It's in Lawrence Township near the border with Hamilton Township. Why, I wasn't sure. As I rode U.S. Highway 1 from Quaker Bridge Road south, it didn't seem good. I turned right onto Carnegie Road, after turning around at Darrah Lane, and noticed the old Allied Van Lines warehouse is now a storage company. I rode a little further to see that indeed, Baker's Basin no longer has a parking lot. Instead, I parked in a lot adjacent the canal and walked the trail along the canal to the pond. 

The first thing I noticed is that the pipe connecting the basin to the canal--when I first saw the basin in 1971, there was the large opening to the canal where mule barges of the 19th century crossed--is broken. (I think they moved coal.) The front section apparently rusted away and sank into the pond, but there's still a flow between canal and pond. Bass go in and out.

Pads were up. Usually, I'd feel that's kind of nice, but it seemed like something from Jurassic times, the way the leaves protruded above the surface. I cast along an edge and a small bass tried to take the large shiner, too small a bass to hook. I did work my way down to the deep corner, hanging out there awhile. Some people do fish the Basin; litter gave that away. Not the other side, though. It's grown over and possibly holds more bass and pickerel, though I don't think the fishing pressure here is anything like it used to be, when it consistently produced. A fence with No Trespassing signs hugs close to where we always used to park and fish on that other side. Warehouse a little to the left. 

I fished where, 50 years ago, I caught bass in late February on shiners by fishing them very slow in the 12 foot depths, live lined. That inspired my first published article in The New Jersey Fisherman in March, 1977, "Early Largemouth." That magazine became The Fisherman. You might think that would be cause for celebration today, at least a leap of joy, but neither happened. Instead, the world seemed a pretty dead place. 

I have to get a new website up before I return to my book and finish it. 

All writers suffer self-doubt. Chris Pierra of the NJ Multispecies Podcast famously said, "Suffer for the fish," and there's no doubt that artists, writers among them, suffer as well. Sometimes I do in horrifying ways, but by always applying a pinch of salt as if I'm skeptical of the frightening scenarios the mind drags up from hell. I neutralize the moods. I always have plenty of control, and my friends might be relieved to learn it always seems to happen when I'm alone.

Not that I don't like being alone. I'll always fish alone on occasion. Come hell or high water. 

Besides, Loki the black Lab came along today. It's just that voice ought to be given to this weird thing coming down the pike as stocks plummeted. According to some psychologists with advanced degrees, there's such a thing as the collective unconscious. something I've taken for granted since I was 19, and it's as if today I blew around in the winds of the spirit. Not a good thing with such loss all the way across the country and around the globe.

I did catch a pickerel as I headed back towards my Honda Civic. There was an opening between trees and brush, where obviously some fishermen approach the pond. It was a saving grace to have one of my hunches. That's something I love about fishing. The psychic aspect. The ability to have a feeling about a spot, even when all the others have failed me. And for that spot to produce. Small pickerel. But even though I had had that feeling and had followed through, it seemed kind of absurd to have caught it. I even felt today that I should be working a job. What? Now we can't retire, because we have to all lose money for no purpose but some delusion about return to outmoded forms of production?

But I mean, really, I'll get the website up. It's not the end of the world. Takes some work, but I'll do it! I'll get the book done. I'll write the novel next. It's just that 51 years since I began fishing the Basin is a very long time, and I guess the message it relayed is that I damn well better move on.    

More Big Sliders Than in the Past

Pads Up

Beavers weren't here in the past. This is a big tree, and it's as if the beaver knew that, backed off, and is awaiting heavy winds to bring it down.

Delaware and Raritan Canal

 

Circle Hooks for Ice Fishing

Today I played out a fish better than many in this pond, and I thoroughly enjoyed the give-and-take on the Dacron, not having played one on it for three years. Just minutes ago, I uploaded an ice fishing video to my Litton's Fishing Lines YouTube channel, and I checked the date. February 14, 2021. I remember it crystal clear. My wife and I had just bought the Honda I drive. I made an issue of my spending Valentine's Day ice fishing, and she made an issue of making sure I went.

That fish, not surprisingly, turned out to be a pickerel of just slightly under 18 inches. I know that, because I took it home. The moment it came through the hole, it came through dripping blood. That pissed me off, and I immediately vowed to stop at Dick's on the way home for circle hooks.

Recently, I read a Chris Pierra post on Facebook, and his persuasion of the use of circle hooks ice fishing all but convinced me. Old habits die hard, and I've used plain shank size 6 Mustad  hooks since I used to buy them by the loose dozens at Brunswick Sports and Hardware of Trenton in 1975. I went online and saw expensive options as expected, but really, size 6 circles hooks for 90 cents apiece? It's obscene.

What convinced me was seeing the blood on the fish as I lifted it out of the pond. Yes, my wife wants me to bring home more fish. I don't have to remind her about the Y bones until later. Maybe I'll divulge in a later post whether or not I was able to remove them. Patience, patience. A lot on my plate and the pickerel won't be much!

Pickerel have white flesh and a mild flavor. Old Bay seasoning will be interesting cooked into it. But I release almost all the fish I catch. All I can say in favor of taking a fairly nice pickerel is two things. For one, most of the pickerel here are smaller. They might be stunted. Harvesting some might help the size increase. And secondly, there's less competition against the bass population.

Oliver out-fished me again. When we fished with Cronk and Kevin Glenn the other day, Oliver caught the most fish, though Kevin caught the larger pickerel and perhaps the larger perch. Today Oliver caught three pickerel, his biggest slightly shorter than mine perhaps, lost a hook to another, while I missed a hit and had fish take four shiners and fatheads from me.

What happened that's very interesting is that on two or three tip-ups, Oliver set fatheads only two feet under the ice on his beloved Jaw Jackers. Something got one of them. It could have been a perch, but then again, maybe it really was a trout.

Why pickerel cruise around out in the middle of the pond, far from the bottom of the sharp shoreline drop-offs down to 15 feet, beats me. But they did exactly the same in the Princeton Day School pond I fished during my youth. 

I got to Dick's, where the smallest circle hooks are size 1/0 and a little more than 50 cents each, which is really expensive. Why someone doesn't compete by producing cheaper bronzed hooks that will rust out easily if they DO gut hook, which is possible, when they would be sharp enough...they don't have to be chemically sharpened and all that expensive jazz...beats me. 

At first, I figured 1/0 is way too big. But I gave two different brands of the hooks a careful look, and decided the ones that are a dollar less expensive per pack will do fine on large shiners, and they'll work for Yum Dingers during summer, too. A 1/0 J hook would be too big and heavy for shiners, and for Yum Dinger's I've been using size 2 plain shanks that look bigger than the 1/0 circles at Dick's. Oliver's using circle hooks of about 1/0 on his Jaw Jackers, and he has no trouble catching pickerel as little as 12 inches. That said, I do want to find smaller ones of size 6 or at least size 4. And I really would like to find a reasonable price, but tonight I didn't feel bad when I squandered 10 dollars of my very hard-earned money.  

Smaller Pickerel

Another Smaller Pickerel

Preparing to Set the J-Hook

Tightening Up with Loki

Slightly Under 18 inches

Nice Bass Through Ice

Mount Hope 2025

 

Bucket Brigades, Pressured Fish, Spot Burns

Yesterday I read old blog posts & came upon the two about Sunrise Lake and also the Burnham Park Ponds. Three years ago, someone left a comment on the Sunrise Lake post that continues to alarm me, about the bass being "gone." The obvious implication is that my post, dating back to 2012, is probably complicit in directing the bucket brigades there. It's not easy to draw the same conclusion about Burnham Park's lack of fish, because the second of two posts about the two ponds indexed by Google in 2012 talks about the absence of fish compared to previous times. (Namely around 2006.) The population had already been assaulted when I first wrote about the ponds in my "Reel Time" column for Recorder Newspapers and then after six months posted the article on Litton's Fishing Lines.

Sunrise was already a pressured pond when I posted about it, but the people I met fishing there put their bass back. Besides, I assume both Sunrise and the Burnham Park Ponds have taken spot burns by Fishbrain for many years. The whole point of that website is to mark spots and present them to account holders. I met someone at Burnham Park today who caught a pickerel there on a spinner and released the fish, and he mentioned Fishbrain, which made me feel relief to have been reminded, because it's strong evidence of more involved than just me being a fool. 

I've always had a conventional streak of personality,     

very free in offering information to others rather than being tight lipped. It makes me a perfect match for the journalism career I never pursued--besides outdoor writing--even though I was offered a newspaper staff position when I was 19. I worked for Beach Haven Times/Manahawkin Beacon as a stringer when the editor-in-chief decided to test me, giving me a big feature assignment on Long Beach Island housing development. I did such a slam dunk of a great job that he wanted me working for him officially and full time. 

I digress, but only for a sec. At Lynchburg College, where I had dropped out after a semester, I had the deep inward desire to find my voice as a writer in the wilderness. I believed mine was a literary quest, and though certainly Jack London's was that, mine might really have greater philosophical import. Mind you, I did not drop out because of poor academic performance. I earned a 3.8 grade average for a heavy load of 21 credits, including a senior level English course I enabled myself to take only because I had earned a perfect 5 on the advanced placement test during high school. (I didn't even bother taking the AP course.) I found the bays behind Long Beach Island wilderness enough, and I stayed true to that desire I've mentioned, rather than to become a professional. That's also why I wasn't in school. School was too easy. A teenage professional I would have been, no less, as a college dropout. You can just imagine my material success taking off with the manic power native to me. I wanted much more than a professional job could offer, which isn't to say that I never tried to land a professional job thereafter. 

I've often spilled beans as news writers do. 

Look at what I did to Mount Hope Pond. Invited every bucket dragger and his whole family to "lunker" bass shouted out loud in the post's title. I photographed a big one I caught there and put that photo on the page. Who can read that post without feeling the urgent need to get up there! More on that in a moment. You probably notice I get away from such blatant spot burning since the early years of the blog, but rather than seeking any excuse, I'm trying to face a little of what I've done. I was moved deeply enough yesterday to commit to driving to Mendham and Morristown and fish a few ponds rather than the Raritan River with its promise of smallmouths. I figured I'd get skunked instead, but I'd take the punishment and maybe figure something out. No way did I burn the place down and never look back. It rained and I loved it.

Well, I didn't get skunked, either. I fished a Yum Dinger along a shoreline that always used to produce, and I didn't even get tapped by sunfish. Didn't see any, either, which is strange. I switched to a MiniKing spinnerbait, and got hit by something small. I walked all the way around to the back, and that's where I had some action that surprised me. I missed hits from a few bass that wouldn't commit. Kind of behaved like pressured fish. I also had one on not bad sized. And I caught the one photographed.

But there's no doubt the population is decimated. 

The pond was plenty pressured before but always yielded at least a few bass. Same with Burnham Park. The ponds there are within the city limits of Morristown and get stocked with trout by the state, so you can just imagine. The spinnerbait got hit there by what was unmistakably a bass. I felt the click and then felt nothing--the bass had hit the spinnerbait by coming directly from behind it and at me. The other guy caught the pickerel. I also saw a bass that behaved like a pressured fish, ignoring my Yum Dinger. Not to mention that a cormorant stood at the back of the upper pond, possibly lingering from springtime when the species feasts upon stocked trout. They eat fish every day, so it's a sign of serious business at decimating whatever bass population remains. I don't know why the fishing ever was as good as it was around 2006, but the cormorant, just for that example, I believe used to be much more of a coastal species. 

About the biggest spot burn of all of them, Mount Hope Pond is tough fishing. When I began fishing there, I would leave the pond an hour later with as many as a dozen ticks to pull off my clothes. Having caught maybe one bass, most likely two at most, though they would be 16 or 17 inches long. Sometimes 18. The two biggest 19 1/2. My arms got scratched. I risked getting my clothes ripped by briars. It wasn't easy getting around, and most bucket fishermen would sit at one spot, get skunked, and not return. (I never saw a bucket fisherman, and I saw only one who braved the sticks and rocks.) 

It's the toughest pond to fish I know. It's also 18 acres, whereas Sunrise is only three.

The interesting thing is the buck stops with me, 

and yet I let be. I could delete the post on Lewis Morris Park that talks about the fishing. The other talks about New Jersey's first governor in a certain capacity, but whatever--governors, bass, and bass killers are all about power. Instead, I'm forever grateful for the guy who commented, reminding anyone who will read it that the bass are gone, a "travesty" that I can't help but see reflected back on my work. I answered the guy, and he answered in turn. No hard feelings there you can detect with any absolute certainty. 

I'm in with all the guys & gals who pressure fish. That's fishing in New Jersey, but we still have the problem of fish getting taken home, even though, and I make the point again, I never see anyone out there doing it. Besides put & take trout that don't count in the same way. Even walleye and hybrids don't count in quite the same way, because, besides the walleyes in the Delaware and Raritan rivers, possibly other moving waters they enter, the walleyes and hybrids are stocked and don't reproduce, though I put many of them back. Why largemouth and smallmouth bass aren't limited to one or two fish to be taken beats me. Look how strict saltwater management is. We can really use it, freshwater. Sometimes a bass bleeds out. I'll take the fish home and it tastes good. But I've never had two bass on a given outing hooked badly like that.    

Sunrise Lake

Burnham Park Lower Pond

Burnham Park Lack of Fish

 

Checked Up On a Pond

My neighbor and fishing buddy Mike told me a local boy is catching fish in the neighborhood pond, so I decided to check up on things.

It hasn't come back anywhere near to its former glory, but the water has a very nice deep black "tea" tone, and the edges are finely grown over. I worked and worked a Senko, getting only sunfish taps, when a sizeable bass finally assaulted it. Setting the hook only resulted in the worm flying off the hook and somewhere into the thick. 

Earlier today, I discovered my O-ring tool is missing, and when I ordered a new one, I selected the bargain including a hundred of the rings. My stock is low and I've been using ones that don't quite fit. Thus, the worm flew off the hook. 

I snapped on a Hedden Tiny Torpedo. Soon, I caught a 10 1/2-inch largemouth. I kept plugging away, hoping for a surprise, but for whatever reason, some 25 minutes of fishing proved to me that the pond still refuses to fully come back.

Elimination of Parking at Bedminster Pond

Notice width of breakdown lane.

I won't say much about it. Too depressing. I put my all into my TO THE EDITOR letter soon to be published in Bernardsville News. Perhaps I'll publish that in the blog later this week.

None of us would believe what they claim about this situation. That they're doing it to protect us. That the situation is too dangerous for us to manage. It's a safety issue. 

Don't we need our politicians....

Just think, without them we'd be so stupid as to park there, as I did days before they filled in the lot.

So wide my long morning shadow doesn't touch the gravel. And I stand only halfway to the white line.

They've marked the road. Parking at the AT&T stretch appears to be doomed.

And that's what the sign implies. Where a gravel parking lot for anglers used to exist, flowers are supposed to be planted. Like a grave. 

Wild and Native Trout

Another New Pond and First Open Water Fish

This is the pond Brenden's been fishing. The other one he hasn't tried yet. 

I couldn't stay into dusk last evening, because my wife came with Sadie the black Labrador, who is almost 13 and has severe arthritis. I decided to keep morale up by being with them as Sadie struggled back to the car. I guess I fished about 20 minutes, not long enough to really get a handle on the fishing, but long enough to take the Beetle Spin harness off and just fish the jig, lose that to a snag, and then tie on another jig and stupidly yank the tail off one of my 8-inch blue Chompers. I have six-inch green ones. Blue Chompers aren't on the market anymore, last I checked, and I managed to get three packs off ebay, though I might not be able to find any now. 

I did spot a nice 13-incher pretty quick. It didn't care for the Beetle Spin so I switched to a jig, the water dropping off quickly. The little one I did catch rushed that jig as I retrieved it for the next cast, and that next cast meant it got whalloped by the bass instantly. 

I like the place. Bigger than I expected, too. A lot of wood in the water, always a good sign, although not so much wood as Mount Hope Pond where I used to fish. Water color is well balanced. Does not have the off-color tinge the pond I fished the other day has.

Temperature was 72 when I arrived.

 

Tried a Pond New to Me for Bass

 

Got news of action here in Clinton, but I've left it to the youthful talent to show me up once more. Brenden caught 10 or 12 largemouths that warm day just before it turned cold, on a little jig and Z-Man plastic. One or two them 16 inches, he told me. I got over there early in the afternoon when it was 64 degrees, and very soon felt it would be a late bite. I saw no evidence of any fish, as I worked my way around to the back where there's a flat.

I was throwing an old favorite, the Johnson Beetle Spin, my "Beat Spinner" as I play with the name, which is basically a spinnerbait, but you can detach the spinner arm and just fish the jig, if you want. All 1/8th ounce of it casts pretty well on my St. Croix, the reel loaded with 6-pound mono. 

Something little did whack it, because I saw it carried to the side, though I didn't see the fish! I continued further around the pond, fishing the side that had got the most sun, and as I say, it was shallow and that muddy bottom was warming. I saw three large carp wallowing in that warmth like pigs. A pleasant thing to see. 

Saw no bass. No sunnies. No crappies. And Brennan had also caught a 13-inch crappie.  

Later on, I was at Round Valley shooting photos, and after I left, I got 70 degrees. Maybe it will hit 80 on Friday, and if so, that will be some evening to fish.

Beaver Cuts and a Coot

Now I felt determined to see signs of life, and I found that easy. I guess I just didn't notice these recent beaver cuts yesterday, unless they were done early this morning. Notice how one of the beavers got up there pretty high on the tree cut down some three feet or more from the water surface. Down below, it almost cut through but abandoned doing so for some reason. 

Otherwise, I did see a coot. I got photos of coots with my 35mm film camera at the Bedminster Pond more than 10 years ago, and I've never seen one since, except for today. 

I fished the same Rapala. I just figured I'd keep playing with that. I did get into tight spots, the two photographed below, figuring that if any bass finned in the warmer shallow water, these corners would easily hold one or two. Sixty-seven degrees out. Some sun, too.

But for the most part, the water's cold and nothings moving. When the frogs begin making song, you count on at least a little bass action, but not a sound yet. 

The Township has been working on the pond. Treating the heavy algae buildup and other aquatic vegetation. I'm surprised that includes water chestnuts, only because they take over rapidly and thoroughly, and I haven't seen that happen. Only the algae. 

Tight corner. To the immediate right in the top of the photo, the bank forms a little buttress against water that has a couple feet of depth or so.

 Here there's a shallow and tiny little cove I tried out in front of where the picture begins.

No Sign of Life Yet

No sign of life at Bedminster Pond, besides light itself. Cast a #5 Rapala Floater. Worked it on the surface and slowly underneath. Wanted to get a taste of the fishing before the warming weather comes. Didn't fish more than 10 minutes, and I hope to return tomorrow.

 

Fished a Little Pond for Bass

On the way back from getting my wife's car inspected, I stopped at a CVS and bought a 20-ounce Arizona Ice Tea in a can for 99 cents. I drove on with this little pond in mind. 

Caught nothing, but I have caught bass here before. The population is very sparse. I like the black "tea" water, though I'd call this coffee water. It has clarity but deep tone. My worm splashes appeared bronzed in the sun.

Had it all to myself, working on my casts, getting the worm tight against eaves on the water, underneath overhangs, on wood. 

The sun felt friendly. 

Some Small Bass on Jerkbait and Topwater Plug

A day that defied spinners. 

Bedminster Pond remained calm the entire hour and fifteen minutes I fished. Fifty-nine degrees when I arrived, 52 when I left.  Maybe it was cooler in the damp shadows than by the highway. 

I first made my way to the pond's edge at a corner, the surface exploded in dozens of boils, though the fish weren't large. Maybe a few nine or 10-inch bass. I couldn't tell. I cast one of the two large spinners I made the other night, which throbbed heavily as I expected it would, a good rendition of the Savko Special I caught an 18-incher on three years ago here, a big blade and a string of lightweight beads on the wire. Nothing went for it and I quickly advanced to the next spot.

It blew up with four times more fish basking in the sun. Dramatic. "Holy shit," I said out loud. But again, none very large. 

Nothing hit the spinner and I wondered if I had a Rebel Minnow in my box. I did not, but among other sinking plugs, I had one about an inch-and-a-half-inch long that sinks very slowly. On the first cast, I caught a little eight-inch largemouth. Nothing else would hit, so I moved on, once fish quit regrouping and boiling the surface as I cast over them.

Subsequent spots had no fish basking, but I did catch a smaller bass on the plug as I made my way back, switching to a little surface plug. That exercise resulted in two more bass of about eight inches.

Like last year--small bass. And though I did see small fish out in the middle get busted, I saw no other evidence of larger. They must be in the pond, because the last few years have involved no thick ice that could have resulted in a fish kill. 

Smallest bass

 

Gave Bedminster Pond a Try

Open Water in North-Central Jersey

With Daylight Savings Time, I had time to fish after work today. Other days, I don't get off until 7:30. Thirty-nine degrees out when I arrived at Bedminster Pond before sunset, I had earlier thought that I seem to have always avoided fishing here when it's below 50. Sometimes a bass will hit a spinner when the water temp is down in the 40's. I thought of that shallow bottom absorbing abundant sunlight and warming a little better than the air temp. And then I got there and cast for a half hour or so.

Best moment involved a split second when my favorite rod, a St. Croix medium power, released vivid memory, the feeling of its effectiveness during the normal season, the pride I take in it when I'm regularly catching largemouths over three pounds. Actually, that memory came more from the years I fished the banks of certain ponds. Good ones where I can count on bass that big. Since I've been fishing lakes more in recent years, I probably catch more of my bass on my medium-heavy Speed Stick. 

I was just thinking at work today that when I retire, I want to fish especially one of those ponds I used to fish.

 

Light-weight spinner I built from component parts. The hollow nickel beads are light, but I managed 50-foot casts.

18-Inch Largemouth

Better a Bass was on than None

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

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

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

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

I caught a little largemouth. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Gift

We fish when we can, not necessarily when conditions are best for catching, unless we're independently wealthy and utterly committed to fishing whenever and wherever it's best to. Today would've been a day to fish trout, and after the heavy rain not long ago spreading out those trout, I know of spots I would have loved to fish today, far from the madding crowd. But I showed John Lusk this pond, so he can come here on his own sometime. 

Matt and I discovered this place not long ago. I am about 100% certain it has bass, but John and I didn't prove that today. We fished an hour at most, first throwing in-line spinners against a brutal, cold wind, but not getting any knocks we could have interpreted as reluctant fish. Then we switched to a traditional worm on John's rod, a Senko on mine, and, as expected, tempted nothing from near a few a deadfalls, getting those worms as close to sticks as we could. 

You never know. But probability is pretty fool proof. I once cast a #9 Rapala floater against the wind into a pond in November, water temps in the 40's, and scored a 13-inch largemouth. That pond, which my son and I fished, gets a lot of pressure, too. On a more recent occasion, I threw an in-line spinner into another pond with no exceptional catch rate, the water temperature 45 in March, and scored another largemouth about the same size. I could say a lot more....

As we departed, John checked distance on his device. "I'm 20 minutes away,"  he said. Now he has an alternative to ponds even closer to his home, which are closed.

Caught Some Pond Bass

The late afternoon warmth after a good day off from work motivated me to do more fishing. I haven't been over to Fairview Farms in rural Bedminster Township since, I think it was, 2010, when I took my son and a friend of his. I first fished the pond with Matt in 2004, one of four bass caught nearly two-and-a-half pounds. I caught a two-pounder on another occasion, and although we didn't fish here often, we did enough to know the pond doesn't fish fast.

So it's been almost a decade. Hard to believe. Since then, the Raritan Watershed Association has installed a fishing dock. The pond needs it. I found the banks fully overgrown. Maybe had I walked the trail further, I'd find pathways in, but the best I could judge the situation from where I stood on the dock, all of the spots we depended upon in the past are completely grown in, and the only way to fish the pond is from that dock.

That's bad and good news. Apparently, most of the bass are inaccessible, as stationing along shore here and there normally gets you to them when fishing a pond. But brush overhangs have become a very interesting feature.

I came intending to fly fish, and that's how I started. The popper I tied on is pretty big, and I had a hard time casting. Mainly, it's a problem of the fly line or the rod. (It's moderate action.) The best I could get was 40 feet, before my popper got snagged on the back of the dock, my wherewithal not all that good. I did give it a good try for 15 minutes or so, but refused to retie. I wanted to catch some bass, and the overhangs looked too good not to target them with a plastic worm.

With my St. Croix medium power spinning rod, I was fully in control. I got the worm right into a pocket under brush, on the other side of a cut of vegetation, let it sink, tightened, and hooked the bass photographed. I caught another about the same size near the edge of brush photographed below. Casting a worm with a spinning rod, when pinpoint targets are involved, is a thrill.

It was getting dark and I had to leave. I didn't feel I was at such a loss fly fishing the North Branch this morning, nor when on the South Branch, so maybe I won't find the fly rod a handicap when Oliver Round and I float the latter river. I've caught smallmouths fly fishing the North Branch and Paulinskill rivers, while targeting this species. While fly fishing redfish in South Carolina, I routinely got 50 feet or better, and I didn't feel put out on the Salmon River, but I do have something to learn yet.

Jeremy Mehlhaff, our South Carolina guide, got 90 feet.

I get 60 with my worm on the spinning rod.

It's nice to have a place like Fairview Farms nearby, thanks to RWA. I may not return for another decade, for all I know, but it exists. On the way there, Larger Cross Road took me out of myself, the sun low. I realized, as I left, that in part my motive was to escape my troublesome job...and I couldn't. But I didn't think about it as I fished, if my feelings were perhaps all too conditioned by the habit of doing that job. Seeing darkness encroach and knowing it means getting up soon to go do the job again felt ominous, put me in a low mood, and yet someone was burning wood along U.S. 206, and the smell lifted that mood, reminding me of the Steelhead Inn in Pulaski. We do such damn jobs so we can go to places like that, so these jobs cannot possibly be all bad. 

I may as well confess to you that my father once observed, when I was about 22, that I "try to escape reality." I think there's nothing wrong with trying, if escaping reality, for me, is living on royalties from books written. It's just that I'm a lot older now than 35, the age at which, I hoped when I was 26, I would begin living on royalties. It's not that I was a bad writer; it's that my curiosity led me in so many directions. I was still reading books and searching out my own ideas by age 35. Fishing got me back to getting published, having first got published on fishing at age 16, and fishing has grounded my approach to writing memoir. So there's hope I'll earn royalties yet. 

These last two photos got screwed up because of condensation on my lens, having taken the camera outdoors from air conditioned house. I wiped most of it off, but didn't have the patience to get it just right.

Brush overhang is really good here. That's holding water under those bushes. Getting a worm right into that pocket near the photo's middle...a cast like that yielded my second bass.

Tried a Senko in the Rain

Slipped a big trash bag over my camera bag and hauled it and my rod over to the neighborhood pond in pouring rain. Found the stream leading in by way of storm pipe pumping mud into water still otherwise clear enough to serve my Senko, this fishing an approach differing from the standard spinnerbait. Just had a hankering to try it after doing well on Senkos last spring.

Especially fished edges between muddy and clearer water, nothing. That pond hasn't been itself in about five years now. It's the first I've fished it since early last year, and like last year, there seem very few bass present, when it used to be easy to catch 10 averaging two pounds in a half hour. A big fish kill due to thick ice hasn't healed. The pond is mostly about two or three feet deep, four at most.

Big snapping turtle stuck its snoot above surface. A hulking beast like that has to eat, so there are fish here...and possibly getting targeted plenty, not that I know how a turtle can grab a living bass. I believe more than one with a shell more than two feet wide exists. I don't bring Sadie here, because I see turtles too often.

I never see cormorants. Only geese and very few pied-billed grebes on the water. Along the edges, I often see a great blue heron.

Private Ponds for Largemouths and Crappies

I had the good fortune to take Tom Savko's invitation and fish a couple of ponds with him. Small and shallow, they hold really big bass in spite of appearances. Tom's caught a number of them around seven pounds, his largest seven and a half. Plenty more four and five pounds. He caught a four-pounder today on his second cast with a spinnerbait in close to the bank among lily pads. He got it against the bank, where somehow the line broke: 

Tom tried to catch the hook of his spinnerbait with the tip of his stout rod.

The water badly stained in that first pond we fished, I managed to catch two small bass on a spinnerbait with a chrome Colorado blade, but then tried, by Tom's suggestion, one of his with a brass blade, catching another bass. Tom had caught three or four more small ones. Finally, I tied on a Senko and caught one more from beside pads. All the while I felt the presence of big bass in that muddy water. Tom missed a hit right at the surface from another bass of about four pounds, but unless one of my missed hits was such a fish, I never drew any to my offerings. We fished all the way around the pond.

At the second pond we fished, I said, "Maybe there's a bass by that shadowline," and winged my Senko into sunlit water next to shade. First cast in proximity to a pond corner, but many yards from the bank. I got a pick-up but missed out on setting the hook. Tom tried for crappies with a jig under a bobber, catching a couple of bluegills, while I quickly landed three bass, none of them larger than a pound, and missed another hit. Tom having switched to a spinnerbait, I leapt ahead down along the shoreline to s small point, where nothing hit my Senko, although by casting all the way across the pond to some sticks, I missed a couple of hits.

My right arm is in bad shape. I fear it could be serious. I don't know what it is. A popped tendon, or something. Just playing bass under a pound was a little stressful, and I dread what a five-pound hybrid striper might do to me next month. I love catching those fish. The fight is the best I know. So I feel put off, for sure. Today, my casting ability was affected. And so was getting hooks set. I'm patient with it. I never want to jump the gun and see a doctor too soon. I trust the thing to heal. It gave me trouble for months after I arm wrestled my son, then got better. Whatever it is, it's related. 

Meanwhile, as I fished near that point, Tom drove the large ATV up, cast his spinnerbait alongside that point, and scored a small bass. Soon, we got all the way back at the pond's end, and I missed a hit from a bass that felt pretty good, though I don't believe it was more than a pound and a half, if that. Just not certain.

Done giving the ponds the best we could, we ate lunch at a deli restaurant, talking fishing. He spoke about having fished bass tournaments, so I mentioned that I used to be a member of Mercer County Bassmasters. "So was I," he said. He joined a year or so after I left for college. He's fished local, state, and national tournaments. For one of the nationals, an event on the Hudson, he got paired with Rick Clunn. This astonishes me. Luck of the draw, but who knows, really, what unseen mechanism of fortune might guide chance. It's dangerous to be too optimistic about events in your favor--in case you fail to see threats--but it's not a matter of any of us being at the mercy of the elements, because we know anyone exposed too long to nature doesn't make it; rather, something deep within each of us, and linked to one another, seems to help guide our lives, if we allow it to.

Tom told me he learned a lot from Clunn. "Sheer genius," he said. And he told me Clunn volunteered to let him have the front of the boat for half of the total of the tournament hours. 

Today I got to see a part of Jersey I haven't seen in 40 years, though I used to see these places quite often. Seeing the past right before my physical eyes had a calming effect for a good hour or so, but I'm glad I moved away from that wider area to make a home with my own family. Now that today I've been where I used to be, I remember the early years with my wife-to-be in this region where we've lived for more than 25 years now, and realize by comparison especially with the years of my upbringing how familiar it's become.

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