Take a Clue from River Bass Migrations

Matt where we spotted the big bass a couple of years later.

Take a Clue from River Bass Migrations

          Many years ago, my son and I walked a return loop along the North Branch Raritan, pausing at our favorite spot, sighting an immense smallmouth bass I estimated at 20 inches long. We stood high above the bass, which stationed at the edge of deep water closer to the opposite bank, and cast plastic worms, arms and rods motioning in synchronized rhythm with our offerings splashing down in front of the apparently indifferent fish. We felt eager to come back and try again with live shiners. Two days later, we arrived to find an older man fishing the same spot.

          He said, “There are huge smallmouth bass in this river.”

          “I know,” I said.

          “Just yesterday, I caught a 21-incher upstream in the Lamington.”

          “Really!? Right in the hole above the bridge?”

          “Yeah.”

          The Cowperthwaite Road iron bridge over the Lamington River is about three tenths of a mile upstream of the river’s confluence with the North Branch. We stood about a hundred yards downstream of the joining flows. I never mentioned the bass we had attempted to catch, but I thought surely this man had caught the same fish. The chances of two bass that big so close to one another seemed very unlikely. If the man lied as a diversion, no evidence suggested so.

          Not long after these incidents, my son and I began snorkeling in the clean river along the Bedminster Hike and Bike Trail. We wanted to sight fish. Many face to face events with smallmouth bass unfolded over the next four years of occasional summer exploration; two incidents especially convinced us that bass migrate around rivers they inhabit. I discovered half-a-dozen smallmouth bass in a particular hole one afternoon, and found none in it the next day. Another day, Matt discovered upwards of two dozen bass, some of them a foot long, underneath a bank cut about two feet deep by sluicing current, an entire school of smallmouths racing out of this shelter, charging downstream like a herd of small buffalo.

          Since we had found a lair easy to check on, I investigated the undercut repeatedly. It did not hold a consistent number of bass, and usually none. After years of familiarizing ourselves with bass that don’t seem to be homebodies, we still didn’t believe our evidence that smallmouth bass migrate around small rivers is conclusive. Perhaps the half dozen bass that vacated the first hole in question simply fled my intrusion. And maybe the inconsistent number of fish in the undercut had to do with stream flooding, which would easily influence the number of bass in such a tight space.

          After eight years since we spotted the big bass, I simply went online after doing all this first-hand research on our own. Plenty of sites offer evidence that smallmouth do exactly as the big bass we spotted made us first suppose. In my imagination, I see my son and me standing on the concrete of the old bridge abutment, our arms moving in sync with plastic splashing in front of the bass. I see this as though from the fish’s perspective and think I may know one of a number of causes for migration. No bass could rationally infer that the sudden presence of plastic worms in front of it was caused by our arm motions, but with water clear and the fish’s eyesight sharp, the bass surely perceived this action. Who knows, the fish may have been moved to clear out, having perceived a subtle threat.

          Later, my son and I had stood at our favorite hole with a big bucket of shiners, prepared to catch the biggest smallmouth we had ever seen. But after I got news that evening from the old timer about the fish’s whereabouts, I distinctly felt duped—by a bass.

          Assuming that stream bass travel about, rather than reliably reside in holes favored by fishermen, what does this mean for our approach to fishing New Jersey Highlands streams? Perhaps nothing, since such behavior is beyond our predicting any of it accurately, although we may assume that just because we encounter a big bass in a particular hole or stretch, this doesn’t necessarily mean the fish will be there next time. For all we know, a hole may empty entirely of bass overnight, yet harbor dozens at a later time.

          This much I know: We like the comfort of knowing a good spot. It’s easy to prepare anticipations by imagining enjoyment in a familiar place, and all too easy to stay put too long when it really isn’t yielding much.    



South Branch Raritan River Flowing a Little Stained

Went to Neshanic chiefly to shoot photos, though of course I brought along my favorite St. Croix and Penn 430ssg. Wading across at the white bridge, river water felt like a bath, and trout stocked last week must have scrambled for any spring releases, though these are few if any down this far in the Sourlands.

The river's running pretty low but slightly stained. Always disgusts me when it's not clear, and I almost never catch bass when it's off color. This evening no exception, I didn't get a take, casting my favorite Senko-style worm, and just feeling freed for the exercise of placing casts directly where I wanted them to go, which would have resulted in at least a bass or two, I'm sure, if I could see the outlines of the holes through the water.

Light got real good for photography as sunset neared. I feared I needed my tripod, which I had left in my trunk. I almost decided to walk back and get it, then realized the light would be gone, as it disappeared minutes later. Shots are sharp anyhow. Two below I intentionally processed in soft clarity.

Left feeling exquisitely refreshed and reminded that the book I'm writing on fishing is worthwhile. 

Wrapping up May Bass

Festive day at Round Valley Reservoir. I arrived at about 4:30 and don't recall ever seeing it so crowded, hard to get a parking space in the main launch area. I shot some photos and fished for about 45 minutes, catching this little 11-incher that looks even smaller through the wide angle that got some colors and patterns besides. With polarized lenses, I sighted maybe three little bass nine inches or so, so I focused on fishing a Senko-style worm about 15 feet deep and more where I hooked this bass.

This is probably the end of my Round Valley bass fishing from shore this year. I've done very little after Memorial Day, although Fred and I always get out in his boat for bass once over the summer. No big ones this year, but I hooked and lost a nice one. Since 2011, I've caught bass over three pounds every May but this year, so I'm happy I hooked the big one I should have caught, had I checked the line further up from where I knew it had got frayed.

Round Valley's been a wonder for me, some of the most enjoyable fishing I've ever done, though in it's own way. I've written elsewhere in this blog how I fall in love with a place, enjoy it to the full...and then let it go, abandon it, never treading on for the mere sake of dead tradition. I feel as if today might have been the matter of a parting gift between me and these May bass, feeling peculiarly satisfied when this one took the worm unexpectedly with so much ruckus and sun about, and if it was the last of this lovely gig, it's captured in a photo that will last online anyway.

Hybrid Striped Bass on the Flat-Line Troll

"Do we use the tolling motor?"

I told Fred we use the outboard, and I was a little nervous when we actually began trolling, because I had never flat-lined like this before on my own, only in very small lakes behind a trolling motor for largemouths, besides Manasquan Reservoir...there we've trolled for the heck of it while getting around limited to electric, catching only big white perch. Last year, me, Joe and a friend of his flat-lined Hopatcong in May, but Joe was introducing me; he's done it for many years.

We turned around the corner of a point and motored on down into the belly of a cove not much more than an indention, very small as coves loom large at Hopatcong. The four-pounder struck like a freight train. I'll never forget how it whalloped the #9 Rapala and streaked away, drag screeching. It happened within a half hour since launching, and I released the fish for good luck. My family's in the habit of eating hybrids, but I hoped I would catch two more even larger today, more than a little presumptuous of me. Some big hybrids over five, six, or seven pounds get caught almost every week, but most are about three pounds, if that.

We managed to stay in 10-14 feet of water trolling with ease, and caught three more small hybrids: one for Fred, two for me. Fred hooked something really big that somehow broke his line, despite an apparently well-set drag and I think eight-pound test. It was a clean cut. Fred thought pickerel.

"Not out here, more likely a musky."

If pickerel, then enormous. A really big pickerel might inhabit 12 feet of water, but wouldn't streak upward to grab a plug swiftly passing through near surface. Muskies are more open-water oriented. But Fred's fish was on and running too long, it seemed to me, to have been a matter of razor-sharp teeth cutting the line, which happens more or less instantaneously. Who knows, maybe the plug situated in the mouth in just such a way that the line didn't become vulnerable to a musky's teeth until it had taken about 12 yards of line. 

I used six-pound test. Lighter line gets a Rapala down just a little deeper than heavier line with wider diameter and more resistance from water.

Besides this trolling, which got really exciting when for awhile the little hybrids swiped the plug and didn't get hooked, we fished Senkos for bass and trolled three pickerel in three and four feet of water in a matter of minutes. I lost a bass on a Senko-style worm and also caught the pumpkinseed photographed while trolling for pickerel.   

 The colors are too good to always take for granted.

Looking west with Halsey Island to the right and out of the picture.

Raritan River Clean-Up Efforts Symbolic for Our Time

The Central Jersey Stream is collaborating with the Raritan & Millstone River Commission to clean up the Raritan River from Dukes Parkway Park in Manville to about a mile downstream. They're in need of volunteers for the May 31st event.

 

No one else can inspire people to the meaning of this sort of effort as does Andy, who posts dozens of photos of his trash-scouting and clean-up efforts on the Save the Raritan River Facebook site and elsewhere. He knows the entire Raritan watershed, upper and lower, and can tell you where a car needs to be removed from the Raritan River and give you exact counts of tires in the water at locations up and down the rivers, if he hasn't pulled them already while enlisting others for help.

 

About a year ago, I was captivated by his posts about golf balls in the Lamington River and North Branch Raritan below the confluence in Bedminster. He's even got a shot of a brook trout with a golf ball in its internal ventral region. I guess the ball got swept by current and the trout took a reaction swipe, but how a 13 or 14-inch trout could force a golf ball down its throat I really don't know or why it would be inclined to do that, but there it is and posted on the internet.

 

He photographs discarded mattresses, spring beds, and big time trash of all sorts, creating for himself a symbolic presence in New Jersey that future generations are likely to well remember, because the environmental movement is not going away. We're gathering ground and Andy proves the point. We want clean, healthy rivers and our efforts will accrue over time, resulting in better yet.

 

Andy's efforts don't stop at removal of discarded fixtures of an industrial civilization breathing the last of its carbon emissions as the new age of an environmentally informed public begins to replace the mania for billowing expansion. He has photographs of an apparent sea-run brook trout caught in the Raritan River. He's actively involved in the efforts to understand the shad and herring runs on the Raritan and tributaries. He canoes and fishes. And he posts more information on the web about organizational efforts for the benefit of the Raritan, its ecosystem, and the people who flourish or can thrive through recreational activities on the rivers than anyone else out there.

 

Visit Save the Raritan River to read and see for yourself (https://www.facebook.com/groups/207244652638944/). And if getting soaked on a Saturday seems like a baptism to new life you'll enjoy, RSVP on the Central Jersey Stream Team's site (http://www.cjstreamteam.org/). After all, it's all about resurrection. Once upon a time the Raritan flowed pristine. Baptism and resurrection are strong words for something natural, but why not, since the Raritan will never again be the river original to the landscape before Europe took over.

Nowhere else on the planet--and everywhere the planet's in big trouble--does the environmental movement symbolize more, perhaps, than where it concerns a river right at the Northeast Corridor's dead center. This is where industry developed big time. So get out with Andy and the Stream Team and make history.  



 



Round Valley Reservoir Recent Bass

Third outing fishing the reservoir since last wrote on it. A week ago, driving home from Bernardsville, I remembered a bass had frayed line against rock and I had to retie. Why didn't I just do it when I got home? I micromanage my time and it doesn't always work out. A pound-and-a-half bass broke off on Saturday. I retied, had a solid pick-up I knew from a really good bass, and set the hook into a three or four-pounder. Line broke. Yeah, the line had frayed further up than I had noticed. I caught one bass and left after 20 minutes, the weekend commotion too much, but I felt very psyched for next time.

Which was the next evening after work. I caught five largemouths, all small, the best not even a pound. Today I caught only a small largemouth just under a pound. All these bass from the reservoir, I fished the pond last weekend and this evening as well. There I lost one bass less than a pound on a jump. Besides that, no action, and I'm a little nonplussed as to why. Haven't seen any bucks on beds, either. I think last year I caught none at all, whereas previous years I did pretty well for the larger females. I hope the ice fishing pressure isn't a matter of fishermen hauling bass home. Mostly, I hear about pickerel through the ice and big ones. I've never caught a pickerel in the pond, but they're there.

Looking forward to Lake Hopatcong with Fred on Monday. And then on Tuesday Joe has a secret bass pond to introduce me. You'll know story and results if you read about it, but you won't know where. :)

Bass at Hoffman Park Pond and Other Travels

Checking for directions to Mulhockaway Creek on Google Maps, I noticed Hoffman Park and a pond marked. I swung around Spruce Run Reservoir on Van Syckle Road to explore Mulhockaway a little, taking photos, soaking my hiking boots, having forgotten my wading boots. I had my two-weight fly rod in the car, but didn't see anything happen to prompt me to try.

I drove through Pattenburg, picking up on the Mulhockaway further upstream, but residences forbade any further exploring. I turned around on CR 614 at the border of Alexandria Township, where what appears to be Hickory Tavern stands, but the architecture is of the very early 20th century, not early 18th century from which the history along the King's Highway originates, that
 astonishingly early, though the Dutch were in New Jersey earlier at least near the Water Gap.

The Hoffman Park Pond is about eight acres, maybe more, and fishes slow. I caught two bass, biggest about 13 inches, saw only a couple of bucks busy with beds, missed a couple of hits at long range. A Senko-type worm casts forever, so far that when a bass takes at such range, setting the hook is a problem. I cast to cover I could reach from across relatively narrow water. Only a few spots drew my interest and they had bass. Interesting to have found new water, but I won't return. There's too many places otherwise to visit.

I had two more things in mind: Spruce Run Reservoir and the Black River, the former for bass, latter photography. Before I swung back on I-78 at exit 11, I photographed Bethlehem Baptist Church, abandoned 1909, founded 1837. Historical registry and the markers are really helpful. I also saw Van Syckle Tavern, where someone or other was hanged in 1773. This is at the end of Van Syckle Road and nothing about it is available by Google, apparently--but it's there! What's more, it's on the registry. Well, now a little is available by googling.

Having realized I never thought of the fact that the Black River is way the hell over in another corner of the Highlands near Chester, I had time, but I would return to Bedminster and go up U.S. 206. I wasn't sure I wanted to, had enjoyed plenty of an afternoon. And sure enough, once I got on 206, I remembered that 5:30 p.m. is not a good time to be traveling. Forget it. I'll go to the Black River another day, and this next time, visit Electric Brook and photograph the falls near Long Valley, just on up the road from the river, rather than attempt anything foolish like I tried today.

So, all in all, I really should have doubled back on the reservoir. I've found a few good spots there where bass can be caught from shore. I had one of them in mind, and the water's back up. The reservoir's not full, but water level is a lot higher than it was early April.

Bethlehem Baptist Church: Trees with big trunks grow from where the congregation used to sit. (Notice limb to the left, tree trunk is a foot and a half thick.)

Corporate presence isolated in our Highlands.

Hickory Tavern Site. This building cannot be it. 20th century, I think, and besides, it's wood. Photograph is a little oversaturated as if to suggest a mild dose of psilocybin at work, just a fancy to combine with a perhaps overly prosaic attitude to history encountered in some people. We can keep it quaint and also have in fun in Shop to actually see it differently.