Restoration of White Cedar

White cedar used to be abundant in New Jersey, but nineteenth century logging reduced the forests in the Pinelands and even in the Meadowlands. Where Fred Matero and I fish striped bass at DeKorte Park with the Manhattan skyscape in full view, we've lost swimbaits on white cedar stumps on the flats. 

Fish & Wildlife

River Slow for Smallmouths

Several weeks ago, John told me he would have today off. I didn't rule us out going for smallmouth bass, just in case plans changed, as they did. 

Yesterday, Trish and I went to Island Beach State Park, and at Murphy's Hook House, I learned the surf would be too rough to fish, but I bought a pint of killies for the smallmouths, also looking ahead to smallmouths at Lake Hopatcong a month from now. (I might be able to keep them alive with an aerator.)

We have chilly nights recently, early this morning no exception, but I expected the bass to be all over the killies. I started out throwing a Rapala, because they're often good this time of year. I gave up on the plug quickly and confidently put a killie out on a few of my favorite spots, nothing happening.

So it was going to be a slow evening.

I lay a killie against the far bank and felt the line tighten--a swing and a miss. John fished from shore. He would later tell me he would have gone in up to his waist if I got into bass, but that otherwise, he didn't want to soil his $30,000.00 Nissan Z. 

I baited up again and took the same cast, felt a tap, tightened the line, set the hook, and began fighting a good bass I thought might weigh two pounds. It came off deep down in the hole.

I didn't want to get skunked, but I already felt parted from this my favorite stretch. I don't know if it's been fished out, or if the shock of these chilly nights turned the bass off. The water was pretty cold. I wouldn't have been comfortable without my waders. I am thinking, though, of finding another river spot for short forays like this evening's.

I did manage to catch a smallmouth not much larger than 10 inches, but besides those other two hits, that's all we got tonight. 

Almost Four Pounds

 

Water Clarity Borderline for Plugs

It's been almost a year since I last fished with Oliver Shapiro, though it doesn't seem as long. During that outing, he spoke of an essay about how fishing slows time, an idea serving as an antidote to how the years seem to wing by as we get older. That much said, both Oliver and myself look forward to retirement. I can't wait for the next five years to pass, as I hope to retire in 2025, but part of me seems wiser than my eagerness. It keeps telling me to appreciate the time I have right now. No matter that I would rather not participate in the hurly burly of a supermarket. That part of me knows I would rather do that than be dead. The wonder of the Great Beyond aside, the point of living can be to do it well, even when it seems as if rewards are slim.

Like pike. I paid keen attention when one of them came after Oliver's jerkbait. By the commotion at the surface, I felt sure it was a pike, though Oliver hadn't actually seen the fish to make a positive identification. Largemouths exist in the river, too.

It was off-color, but not as bad as it gets. We tried a spot new to me, though Oliver had scouted it once about 10 years ago. Trails took us well upstream, and though we found fish as the photo shows, nothing came at our plugs as the pike attacked during the previous two outings I took this year. (The first was far and away the best.)

One comes here with an expectation of "river monsters" like those represented in photos posted on Facebook, but reality offers the best reward. No doubt plenty of big fish exist, but it seems clear that only a very few anglers, if even that many, catch them well over 30 inches regularly. I have no plans to keep treading the mud until I start catching them myself. Pike fascinate me, but I'm committed to my canoes and other species as well. On the previous outing, a big pike probably over 30 inches did come after my plug, and the way the water moved around and over its body reminds me of the poet Charles Baudelaire when he wrote of "the wing of madness" clipping him.

Early Season Pike

Bars Don't Work for Me as Fishing Can

We got out on the reservoir in the middle of the afternoon, struggling against a fairly strong headwind, riding towards the back. I was looking for a line of submerged boulders we had once fished when the reservoir was full, expecting to see it somewhere up on the grass-covered shore. We did see a point not far beyond where Fred cut the engine and we began drifting.

I cast a tube jig, and besides getting one tap that might have been a sunfish, the nine to 24 feet of water we fished seemed completely barren. After a foreboding half hour or so, we motored to that point, where to my surprise we found that line of boulders I had looked for. I cast the jig towards the bank and hooked up a few seconds later. A smallmouth about a foot long leapt and threw the hook.

Soon we anchored near the point, boulders under the boat and to the left and right, along with some stumps and narrow tree trunks. I felt curious about the three- to four-inch diameter of those trunks, because they've been down deep under the surface for many decades now, and they haven't decomposed. Part of the reason they're still there, perhaps, is due to the reservoir's low fertility--less organic breakdown.

We fished there for what felt like many hours, picking away at the bass. Small ones. One of Fred's smallmouths was 13 inches. I had said, "You would think all of the bass in the reservoir would come here, there's so much dead water." Shortly thereafter, action picked up.

But that's not the only spot. It's a really good rocky spot, but I remembered the last time Fred and I fished here from his boat, in 2015. Near one of the towers, I had noticed weedbeds we didn't have time to fish that day. This evening, as we approached the spot, we noticed we would be out of the wind. That calm surface itself felt inviting, because it was a break in the general pattern of choppy surface. It seems to make no sense that calm surface on a reservoir otherwise riled up would make any difference to the fish, but that's not how the situation felt to me. 

On my first cast with a Senko, I caught the largemouth in the photograph above, good-sized for bass here. (Click on the link below for information on the unusual lack of sizable bass.) I cast where it appeared the weedline ends about 12 to 14 feet deep. Soon Fred caught a nice smallmouth. Then he tied on a topwater plug, catching a largemouth as dusk fell. (He also caught a redbreast sunfish and rock bass on the PopR.)

All told, we put 14 fish in the boat. Four smallmouths apiece. Two largemouths apiece. A rocky spot. A weedy spot.

For me, the best part of the day was fishing while anchored on the rocks. We talked more than we usually do, because we weren't involved in navigation. Just casting and slow retrieves. We got out of ourselves. At least I did, and Fred wasn't off somewhere else. Some people do that best at a bar, but bars just don't work for me as fishing can. 

                                                     Population Survey

 

Two River Smallmouths

 

Going on 10 years since I last fished here. Matt and I caught little that day, but previous outings here had resulted in an 18 1/2-inch largemouth and smallmouths almost as big. Today we came with Matt's Uncle Rick and his cousin Kyle. A family reunion precious as those are, everyone involved not so sure when the next one will work out as each of us go our own ways. I first fished here in 1977 or 1978. By serendipity, Matt & I arrived here with a Cub Scout friend of his and parent after an event further north. That was 2007 or so. 

The place always offers the possibility of a big fish. One of the bass that took a live killiefish from me might have been one of them. (I kept leftover killies from fluke fishing yesterday.) 

Flat shallow water overlooked by Rick & Kyle as they made their way downstream yielded the only two smallmouths we caught. I saw the edge between visible bottom and some weeds, and I decided to wade as far out as I would find possible, which wasn't very far as appearances deceive. Then I let current drift a killie through that dark water near the edge where things become visible. A smallmouth took the bait on my first or second cast. 

And others did, too.

In general, we tried six spots, all of which, besides two of them, have yielded bass and one pickerel over the years. Today, that edge just beyond the flat offered us the only action.

There's a presence in that whole area encompassing the spots we tried that I encounter everywhere else I fish. As much as I'm out to sink a hook into a fish's jaw, I'm out to let the uniqueness of the place I fish pull me into its gullet. There's a tension, a tenacity about the gravity of a place as it tries to claim any condition that colors it--as its own. It does so with some degree of absolute success, and yet there's something sad about any place on this Earth, because anywhere you go not only belongs to the whole planet--the whole planet belongs to something larger.

Smallmouths

One Fluke Island Beach

 

Island Beach crowded with vehicles, my family still had plenty of room. 

Surf was moderately rough. Enough for great belly surfing and too much to use my five-and-a-half-foot St. Croix and split-shot weighted killies. I used my eight-foot Tica and a two-ounce bank sinker. Caught one fluke that way.

A Little Fly Casting

 

My family hiked two-and-a-half miles along the river with a friend this morning. Sadie came along and so did Michael's dog, Quincy, who is 13-years-old if I remember rightly. Sadie is almost 11. Both took their time but were quicker than I expected.

Afterwards, Matt and I fly fished a nearby stretch for smallmouths. The river is in beautiful shape. The water is clear and cool. Not at all bath-water warm. So clear that with sunlight on it, bass had made themselves scarce.

We fished subsurface for a half hour at most, caught nothing, but the experience made me look ahead to late September or October. Hope to be back when the light is low, the temperature not too cold, and--I hope--the river is clear.

Leech/Worm Fly We Used