Preparing for the Reef and Beyond

I research gear online and in shops, but I never forget Pat McDermott, back when I worked for Affinity Federal Credit Union. He led the Business Development Department, and on occasion, we talked fishing. Those years happened to coincide with Chris Lido's role as Managing Editor for The Fisherman. While I submitted articles to him, his good friend, Pat, was in earshot of me almost on a daily basis. They grew up together near Califon.

Before my family's 2012 trip to the Florida Keys, I told Pat that I was going to look into buying jigging rods. He told me immediately, "Shimano Trevela." I did my homework online and bought two: one for me, one for Matt. I felt amazed when they arrived. The tips are light. The butt diameter not much. And yet they're rated for 50- to 100-pound test Power Pro. I recently bought Penn Fathom high speed conventional reels. They have a 7.1:1 gear ratio so we can butterfly jig at top speed. (And slow, too. I'll get worn out!)

In 2012, we mounted Penn Squall reels on the rods, but the 4.3:1 gear ratio is too slow. I stupidly denied that, or rather, I believe I was thinking $159.00 each is doable, but twice that, no. In either case, a refusal on my part to think further. Money never matters as much. Turns out the Fathom reels normally cost about $275.00 each, but I found a couple for $182.00. Wind forbade us passage to the reef and beyond in 2012 anyhow.

Tonight I checked United Airlines baggage restrictions. I can carry on my camera bag. And the Trevala rods have butt ferrules. Without that, the 62-inch linear restriction for the rod tube would be a problem. Since the oversize penalty is about $200.00, I don't plan on us taking our six-foot stand up rods. I haven't felt they're very important. Besides using light tackle on the reef itself--snappers & such--we plan on jigging. True, it would be interesting to rig ballyhoo. We might go ahead and do that with the jigging rods, just for variety's sake, and while a stand up rod would be better for bait, for $200.00, it's better to just mess around, if we use bait on big fish at all. Another use for the stand up rods is tarpon inshore. For tarpon, we do plan on bait, but again, while our pool cues would lend more power behind the 80-pound braid on our Penn Squall conventional reels, we can go ahead and shake up our nerves, instead.

It could be my stubborn stupidity again. The boat will cost about $1200.00; why not pitch in another $200.00? Well, I might have to buy an additional rod tube, haven't tried to fit all four rods plus others in the one. And it might be wise to phone United before showing up with something that doesn't meet restrictions.

We'll save the stand up rods for trolley rigging off the end of Avon Pier in the future sometime.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/07/groupers-snappers-in-bahia-honda.html

Thanksgiving Trout Try

Happy Thanksigiving!

It wouldn't be the first time I've harvested fish on this day for the dinner. Matt and I fly casted the North Branch Raritan at 202/206, catching up on things and having fun at getting good casts far back under the bridge, where there's got to be some trout. 

I told him about the trout that darted out from the dark and took a worm I drifted in during November, a 16-inch rainbow I lost at the bank, when a big trout broke water furiously to our right.

Why? Who knows. It's cold out. And very windy. So it surely was a trout, rather than any other species. 

Missing My Buddy Mike

Went down memory lane tonight, beginning with my handwritten fishing log, then this blog, reading posts from 2011 and 2012. My son was a boy, now a man. No problem there, we'll fish, but now that I've re-emerged in our present time, noticing that I blew most of my chance to continue working on my book tonight, I miss my buddy Mike.

His porch was a fish-hub for a couple of years. Now it's all mechanic's tools. Praiseworthy. He makes money.

Once, he spoke about a couple of the guys prominent on the local fishing scene, and I had the opportunity to say something about my own abilities not matching there's. I've got some savvy at getting published, which I began to figure out successfully when I was 16 years old, and I did fish almost every day then, besides, but any of you who read my blog know I don't fish every day now, and I don't catch as many and as big as some around here do, either. When Mike contradicted my self-effacement, it did feel good.

But two years later, I realize the status I enjoyed in that moment really belonged to Mike's porch. 

Flatbrook

Upstream of the obstructions in the photo, there's a hole five or six feet deep with strong current, where trout can hug bottom where water is slack. I swung a black bead-head Woolly Bugger through repeatedly, fly casting it into different positions to get different drifts for 15 minutes or so. Then my wife and I left for dinner at Walpack Inn.

You'd see a shot of trout, had I caught any, but even a stint as short as this one, and as absent of action, can be a highlight. 

An Avid Sense for Where Fish Await

It was a treat to fish from Mark Licht's 18-foot center console yesterday. We put in at Lee's Cove, having met at 5:45 before first light, and then rode over to Dow's Boat Rentals, where I bought three dozen herring and a dozen nightcrawlers, feeling pleased Mark had told me he likes fishing the crawlers for the panfish. As expected, the herring Joe Welsh is netting remain small, but he told me plenty of walleye are getting caught, and that his brother, Jimmy Welsh, caught an 11-pound catfish on one of them the day before.

No fish in the boat before sun-up, resolve before the prospect of a slow day came early for me, and rather than give in to the desire to call it a short one, I kept busy on Mark's boat, going back and forth between checking on and tending set lines, and jigging a Binsky. I am a far cry from what I was five years ago, when I marked about four times as many dates over the course of a year in my handwritten fishing log than I do now. I'm too busy supporting my son's university studies, writing my book, and never flagging on my freelance writing and photography output, which increases in volume rather than subsides. 

Like most outings, in the middle of it, I came alive. That's not to say I didn't appreciate the early light, and Mark said he did, too, but it's to say it takes me awhile to fully get into the flow of experience, especially as I grow older, having forgotten where I came from and what I'm doing elsewhere, to fully accept the fishing. I credit myself for getting through some tough stuff and always ending up in a good mood. Even if I feel physical stress, I place my spirit ahead of that, and to my pleasure I find it truly in the lead.

I didn't inquire much into Mark's sonar system, though I am impressed. Even so, I confess an aversion to so much information, because I like to keep active with the rods, immersing my senses in the water, rather than referring to representations. I do use a simple portable graph and it's essential to positioning on the drops at a remove from the shoreline, though for what it's worth, my wife criticizes me on this as inauthentic. Mark's unit is basically a computer with full menu options, and if I'm not incorrect, it scans the bottom to a radial distance of 60 feet, when that option is chosen, which I did select by pushing menu buttons to check it out, although I didn't actively get interested in so many other details and regret not doing so. 

I can't remember a single Lake Hopatcong October or November outing--besides a November 17 and possibly an October 5, if that wasn't actually late September, when my son and I, or a friend and I, didn't catch at least one walleye. We've done this since 2007. I thought Mark's fish from at least 20 feet of water on a drop out in the main lake--I can't be fully certain the cast didn't go shallower--was a walleye, though maybe a bullhead, but it turned out to be a pickerel on a herring. Just about where I jigged a pickerel on a Binsky with Rick last week. Mark had also caught another pickerel on a crankbait from about 18 feet of water, that depth I'm sure of, though his crankbait would have run no deeper than seven feet or so. He also hooked a sunfish on a nightcrawler there, attacked by a musky! In awe, he saw the gill plates flush, and the full body. At the end of the outing, I suggested we try a section of Lee's Cove--a boathouse and a decaying dock--where myself and others have caught largemouths and a smallmouth on occasion in the past. Mark caught a largemouth on a Senko weighted by a slip sinker.

My catch amounted to two yellow perch and an 18 3/4-inch hybrid striped bass, the first hybrid Mark has witnessed. Unlike the other occasions when hybrids have been caught during the fall--those much fewer than walleye catches--this one was the only taker. It always seems when one hits, more follow, as the bass travel in pods and schools, but though I kept busy with the set lines on the same drop for another hour or so, nothing more happened.  

Sorry I didn't find a way to set this upright. After we docked at 1 p.m., Mark tried Brady Bridge from shore and caught this largemouth. This man seeks out fish with a keenly avid sense for where they await.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2018/10/relaxed-beside-island-ordinary-life.html

Dam Situation

I regret not pumping a little more "water" into my recent post on the Burnt Mills Dam removal, because I've been interested in this eventuality for years now, as the post linked to below shows. Then, in 2016, I ended the post on a mysterious note, but after 10 years of intense river fishing and photography, blogging a great deal about it, I make the point now about the danger of overdoing it with so many other demands on my time, largely amounting to my son in college. I really do feel, though, as if I "let the river down" by not having anything to say in this recent post on the Lamington I mention, but a report.

Such overconfidence in the 2016 post that I would not let the river down. And I was nervous about Election Day right around the corner. Unlike the liberals I knew, all of whom denied that Trump could get elected, I felt certain, as I wrote that post, that he would. "The Broken Dam about to Go."

Read the post I've linked you to, if you will. If you have already, I've given it a little context as a refresher. It's redeeming to follow up this way on the 10-13-19 post about the dam removal.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2016/10/strong-lamington-river-flow-and-broken.html

State's Algae Agenda a Bad Blow

Rick told me his hat is good for keeping rain off him. My camera proves to be weather-resistant, too.

My brother Rick and I looked forward to this trip for a long while. My brother-in-law Jim planned on coming, but changed plans.

Early on, our set lines yielded only a bullhead for Rick, as I let him have the first take. Line moved off slowly, and so I thought it could be a walleye. As always, we marked plenty of fish on the sonar graph, but like most times--every fall since 2007--these fish we see electronically don't hit. We put live bait and jigs right in among them and they don't hit. Rick watched his jig on the sonar screen, right next to fish. I've been party to few exceptions, but one of them, in 2012, resulted in a catch of about 75 hybrid striped bass for Marty Roberts, all of them released. I don't know why walleye are predictable and the stripers are not. We invariably catch at least one walleye, but never more than four. Also, we catch the walleye relatively blindly. It's not fish on the screen we target. We either set lines along drop-offs by casting away from an anchored boat, or catch them by methodically casting jigs or otherwise drifting the boat with the breeze while jigging along the drop regardless of fish showing up on the graph, the sonar used to keep in line with the drop-off, some of these deep-water spots well out away from shore. (Most of the stripers I've caught have come this way, too.)

The sun having come up just barely over the horizon, we moved to a reliable spot behind an island. Often, a walleye is in the boat before sunrise, but today I hoped I would see line slowly curl off the spool where trees blocked sunlight. It happened, but the fish amounted to three white perch about eight or nine inches long, and a yellow perch. Unfortunately, Dow's Boat Rentals has only small two- or two-and-a-half-inch herring right now. That's all Joe's getting in his nets. I like big four- or five-inch herring, and I think the larger gamefish do, too. We decided to put all the set rods out of the way in the front of the boat and jig instead, so I pulled anchor and began a process of using the electric motor to position, keeping pretty much to the drop-off, venturing back out into the main lake. We missed a few hits. They could have been perch or crappie, but walleye hit subtly, too.

We felt more intensity fishing this way, the method relying on mental concentration, but I grew tired of it and decided to set lines again in the main lake. By then, the sky was completely overcast. I will be honest in spite of myself, because I can seem as silly as a psychic with my ability to home in on fish by hunches, but I felt it was high time to hook up, and setting lines was the ticket. I guess it took 15 minutes. I saw line peeling from the spool quickly, and excitedly said, "Hybrid!" I grabbed the rod and set the hook. That little walleye took line faster than any other we've caught. Later, while driving home, I felt I should have handed the rod to Rick, but I hadn't reflected. In a peculiar sense, it was as if the fish was mine for finding it, but more to the point, it was a little walleye, and I still have hopes that Rick will catch larger.

It's so hard to find time.

Soon thereafter, the anchor came loose, the breeze carrying the boat, set lines dragging, and though we repositioned along the drop, at the top of it, I never felt right about the spot. Why's that? I didn't know. We cast jigs and a Binsky while waiting endlessly on the set lines, rain falling steadily, our rain jackets and rain pants on, and I caught a pickerel on a Binsky. A pickerel from deep water, odd for this species always associated with weeds. Mostly, my bad feeling for this spot involved an uncertainty of just how deep where, but that's usually the case, if maybe a little better informed. Two p.m. neared, when we would leave, and I decided we would give a spot further along the drop 15 minutes, but nothing happened.

I introduced Rick to Laurie on our way out. I told her I hope they don't shut down. Earlier, I had introduced Rick to Joe, who told us algae blooms like this past summer's happen every summer when rain washes too much nitrate into the lakes. He's known them since he was a boy, and I find as particularly pointed evidence that they're no big deal Joe's having worked all summer on the lake through the advisory, pulling nets bare-handed, getting his arms soaked every night, never developing a rash. The state has authority. Everyone certainly knows that. But that's not to say the state is always right. Authority is often, if not usually, wrong. We the people have a voice in the state, and in this case of Lake Hopatcong's demise, I think that voice by and large went very wrong. To this day, Dow's business is down--because people are afraid of the lake. Pathetic.

Joe told us Dow's may shut down next year. That's up to us. (Will we be patrons?) I reminded him that during the last ice season, business was great. He enthusiastically agreed that was true when I was there in February, then said, "But we can't count on it anymore. If we could, that alone would carry the business. Four or five weeks won't do." It's a double whammy. The overblown reaction to algae, and the very real threat of climate change already here and getting much worse quickly. At least for the time being, ice fishing still exists on Lake Hopatcong, but not as it used to.

If Dow's goes, that's it for herring bait in New Jersey. Joe is--far and away--the lead supplier. Who else in today's age will step in and fill the market demand? I've said it before, without word, we anglers have no political voice, and our endeavors on the water would swiftly be outlawed, the voice of animal "rights" theorists at universities like Princeton, for one example, motivating activists to move in directly and take over. Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer, is an intellectual founder of the animal rights movement. The movement doesn't win because we have verbal defenses. But deeds are important, too, and to see herring disappear from bait shops would be a sad farewell. A vital nerve lost.

The dock was dry when we left it for the open lake.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/10/lake-hopatcong-hybrid-stripers-strike.html