Let Us Live Our Lives

One of my Facebook friends posted last night an image of Round Valley launch area barricaded off.

I commented, as it occurred to me this wholesale legislation is lazy. Instead of lawmakers working to come up with plans to limit state and county parks use, they just shut them down. At Round Valley, for one example, the least that could be done is have a Ranger on duty, making sure anymore than one man in a boat is an immediate family member. Why on Earth not? If the law givers would do their job by coming up with workable solutions, not everyone would happy as the result, perhaps. But go ahead. Punish the spoiled brats who can't keep their distance.

And keep Rangers in work. Let us live our lives.

The Encroachment on Open Space

We push back because that's our place. We don't simply agree with the rules, though we observe them. No civilization is on record in which every individual agreed. That would be the Borg. From Star Trek. And not even that, because although resistance was said to be futile, the Enterprise crew won out.

Now Natirar is closed, also. Trish had said earlier the county parks will probably follow the Governor. She also pointed out the park was crowded. Any of us knows that getting too close may mean death these days.

But we must get outdoors. Immune systems depend on sunlight. Vitamin D pills will help, but they are substitutes, and a substitute cannot serve full measure. Being in sunlight-- or even under clouds-- is healthy in more ways than Vitamin D alone.

Do not depend on a "normal" immune system. Boost it even further. Get worked up outdoors, and the abundance of your surroundings is literally infectious, but the only disease you may suffer--maybe not--is mania. And you can find literature documenting superhuman feats of manics. One of those superhuman qualities is heightened immunity.

I once positioned my 17 1/2-foot fiberglass boat--very heavy--so the bow was raised very high. I got underneath to paint the bottom when the supports broke. I actually caught that boat and slowly put it down. Two friends witnessed. I saw their eyes actually bugging out. It was if they could not believe what they saw. Not a word was spoken about it.

The brain has physical power, too. And a manic's brain is north of normal 10% usage.

Trout on Anything

We slaughtered them at the Zoo this afternoon. It got ugly. A small number of fish caught and released dead on bottom. More than the dead are hitting eggs and lures again. Everyone there caught trout. Almost all of the dozen or so others besides the three of us caught many. Little plastic worms worked. Fake eggs worked. Trout magnets. Salmon eggs. I watched Mark Licht fish a trout magnet under a center-pin float and catch one.

One of my eggs got in front of a trout as big as the steelhead I caught when last at the Salmon River, but it didn't take. The largest I caught fell a little short of 14 inches. I saw no other larger caught.

Mark and I had planned on fishing the Musconetcong at Stephen's State Park. I got a phone call from him early this afternoon, when he told me effective at 2 pm, Governor Murphy will have closed all state parks. We planned on another river spot instead. Before Mark phoned again, a nice, high mood felt appropriate in the sunlight as I began loading the Honda. Soon I learned he was right over here at the Zoo about a quarter mile from where I sat, catching trout steadily. I told him we would meet him there in 15 minutes.

The spot on the Musconetcong we would have fished is about an hour away. Instead, we had a grand time right near my home, saving my son and I about two hours' travel time when I have a lot to get done. That faraway spot--and we all know about faraway places--is worth another time.  Today my son and I fished about two-and-a-half hours. I actually stood in the river halfway up to my knees a good part of the time, wet-wading in early April, and the water didn't feel numbing at all. Between the three of us, we probably caught more than 90 rainbow trout.

 Mark impressed me as a Master of the center-pin. In any case, you can see how the method is perfect for floating a fake egg right along that visible seam, where he caught rainbow after rainbow.  Mark's last words today, after I complimented him on some aspect of his method, "I think of this as practice for the steelheads!" The center-pin is extremely effective on the Salmon River.

Musconetcong

Pickerel, Mostly

We did throw plugs and spinners to begin with, but I thought the water temperature was in the upper 40's, and I never bothered to set up the graph with its temp display until after nearly two hours, the water at 55. Matt had just caught his second pickerel, on a Mepp's, size 3, I think. We drifted over 10 feet of water, working shiners deep, when he paused his retrieve to tend his other line. That's when the pickerel hit, a small one of maybe 17 inches.

I had caught one over 20 inches, maybe 21 or little longer, just as we began drifting, Brian having caught a little one by paddling backwards and keeping a bobber out. At the time, we fished the mouth of a tiny cove that looked promising. Matt had caught one over 20, and I had caught another of about 18 inches drifting, before Matt's spinner and the thermometer enlightened us.

Brian ended up catching three pickerel and a yellow perch of about 13 inches. He persisted with shiners, and after I caught a little 16-inch pickerel on a size 6 Mepp's Aglia in shallows near shore, Matt and I paddled towards the island to get out of the wind and cast spinners. Brian called out that he had one on, and we turned to watch saw him hook up and the red canoe begin to get towed upwind. There are bass in the lake of at least six pounds, I'm sure, maybe larger. He lost that one.

Later, he described to me how really big bass of five pounds or better often don't move when hooked. They run only when added pressure provokes them. That's what this fish did.

Matt and I found bass on a flat downwind of the island where the temperature was a full degree warmer. I lost one, then caught the one photographed. Matt suggested we fish a shoreline of the island where a lot of overhanging brush is obvious habitat, and I promptly began paddling with him. Within a few minutes, he had his big one on.

Getting that fish netted was just a little testy.  The moment I first saw it, I felt sure it was a bigger pickerel than any I have caught, and once it was aboard, I estimated it at 25 inches before I reached for the tape measure. Matt measured it at 25. My wide-angle Tokina would have made it look bigger, but the photo is fine as I see it.

My biggest pickerel was a 24 1/4-incher I caught in the dark at Lake Musconetcong. I've caught three or four others about that size, including one through the ice of Hopatcong I didn't actually measure, but as I remember that fish, it wasn't quite as long as Matt's.

I fought another pickerel when Brian phoned. After I released that fish, I called back and he told us he was headed in.

Get Them Through the Ice

Round Valley Reservoir Fed by a Stream

The official literature says Round Valley Reservoir is not stream fed, but this is not rain or snow runoff.

Only low water reveals it. Normally, the reservoir is fed under it's surface from the pond. Best I can guess, the brook that ran through the valley, now watered over, had its source in groundwater wetlands where the pond is now.

I forget the name of that creek, but as little as it was, holes harbored smallmouth bass. The filling reservoir became loaded with the bass quickly, never stocked by the state or any other official agency.

Prescott Brook, I now remember.

Didn't fish today.

And by the way, you can fish trout catch & release anywhere in the state beginning tomorrow.


About the Eels

How to Build a Time Machine

We began by trolling spinners in close to the bank that drops off steeply. We passed over a few weedbeds that could have held pickerel. "Do salmon swim this close?" Matt asked. I'm no expert and haven't boated a salmon yet, but I've heard they do. I'm sure we passed over some pickerel and bass.

We tried further out, continuing to troll at the same slow speed. A Mepp's size 6 with reflective tape on the blade and a quarter-ounce Rooster Tail. The second setting on my Minn Kota 55 Enduro. As we approached our favorite weedy flat for buzzbaiting, I thought of riding over it, but when I moved us over the edge, found the water too shallow for comfort. A kayaker cast something nearby. We continued on across the lake to the opposite shoreline. Curving back towards that flat, I noticed the kayaker, now in the middle of that flat, had a fish. I saw him lift it at the side of his boat and lost sight of it when Matt said, "He lost it." We positioned at the edge and cast our spinners over the weeds, beginning to get hung up on occasion. I kept my eye on the kayaker, determining that he threw a spinner also. When we got close enough, I asked if it were a pickerel.

"Bit me off," he said.

"Ah, that sucks!"

He retrieved that spinner so slowly I thought of the homemade spinners I've run out of. I built them with minimal weight on the wire for a body so they could be retrieved very slowly at shallow depth. I told Matt just the other day about Jann's Netcraft, and the conversation we had convinced me that I should invest in components and build some more. They're easy to make. And if I had a couple today, we could have fished that flat more effectively. Spinners on the market are standardized. In especially shallow water, you'll retrieve them perhaps three times as fast.

I had been thinking especially the big pickerel, along with bass, sit on the deep edge of residual weeds, so I as I reached for my box of plugs, I had two things in mind. An off-color plug, and one of my Storm Hot'N Tot chrome finish plugs with the big metal lip. Proven for pickerel and bass on the troll here, but the idea today was to fish them slowly. Both plugs would ride at about the same depth. Instead, I changed my mind at the last instant, and pulled two Hot 'N Tots, thinking all that flash in this clear water would appeal especially to pickerel. We trolled them in close where deep, and out in the middle. "Especially a big salmon will hit them, too," I said.

Eventually, we worked back into a deep cove, where it gets very shallow near reeds, a marvelous looking spot for an 85-degree late March afternoon when evening settles in and its still very warm. I cast the plug against banks that drop off cliff-like, and noticed how garish the plug appeared in that super-clear water, reflecting sunlight. Later, I said to Matt, "A fish might see that and say, 'What the f@#$ is that!' and bolt the other way."

I thought of my off-color plug and how wise it would have been just to try it.

In the summer, the fish are all over that chrome, but with water temperature in the 40's today, I had my doubts after what I saw.

We fished three hours. Comfortably. It wasn't warm out, but not bad. We got back to Brian's house where I keep my canoes with plenty of light left, and hung outdoors together for about an hour, talking. Me, Matt, Brian, Carolyn, Sadie, and Juno. Two black Labradors, the latter. Brian asked Matt if he ever read the book he asked me to suggest to him. Matt remembered instantly, but yet intends to read How to Build a Time Machine.

Wawayanda

Trout on Salmon Eggs

Well, my friends, the last I wrote you, I thought I had been crazy when I wrote you earlier. Now maybe none of us are so sure I was. 

I hope none of us dies. I'm watching Pence on TV. Plenty of younger people without underlying conditions are dying. Contrary to what he said.

I've lived a full life. If I'm gone soon, the blog will stay up, so long as any of my family remains to keep it up. Not that I quite believe I'm going to die. 

Matt and I got out for the recently stocked trout. On the way to the South Branch in Califon, we saw a pond neither of us had noticed before. I pulled over, turned around; we checked it out because it seemed as if it might be public. It is.

Sometime soon, maybe.

Matt's photographed fishing what I consider the main hole of the area. When we first arrived, someone fly-fished there, so we drove on to let him be. I found that my favorite sluice is now posted and fenced in. I'm glad Mike Maxwell and I enjoyed excellent fishing there in 2017. That was the best microlight action I've had in many years.

We went back to the hole and found it empty. Fished maybe 15 minutes, no hits, so we concluded the river here hadn't got stocked. Got some photos of three mergansers. A second male came and challenged the other.

First casts at the North Branch Raritan Zoo got hit. Mine, and Matt's. Then three youngsters approached. We told them we had just begun. One of them, also casting a single salmon egg with minimal weight, hooked up immediately in shallows just upstream. Then he caught another. I landed a rainbow about 11 inches long a moment later. Matt was missing hits and me too, but the hits were slowing. After all, the river was hit hard all day and maybe yesterday. One of the youngsters went to another favorite spot of mine not far downsteam. He caught one. The other two went down there with him. All three of these guys caught trout left and right fishing salmon eggs lie we do. One of them 16 inches. I had my ass handed to me. I had waited on the initial spot too long, instead of moving.

I'm the guy who's writing the book on fishing salmon eggs.

I went further down, down below the bridges to a sluice that often produces. I was angry at myself and wanted to cool off. A song sparrow helped. The delicate beauty of its music. I got hit once and that's all. 

I felt good about those youngsters, Matt's age, maybe two years younger. Getting out and fishing with excellent craft. The only things I disliked, and I disliked them intensely, included the good ole' boy language they spoke. I guessed they watch fishing shows on TV. (I never watch them.) You don't have to make yourself into a yokel to fish well. I can't deny they fished well, though.

Except for chumming with corn. That results in fed-up trout. And it's possible corn kills some. 

Opening Day