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

 

Something More than Us Creates Our Connection

I'm temperamentally suited to using a Senko-type worm. That paid off yesterday, as I caught three bass, two of them pretty nice ones. No northern pike caught, though one about 22 to 24 inches followed my plug to the squareback on my first cast. Brenden caught two yellow perch and a small pickerel. 

It's odd to favor Senkos here. I've never had any discomfort pitching a jerkbait the entire outing on other occasions while on foot, but from the low vantage of being seated in the canoe, it got tedious and awkward for me. Brenden threw a large spinner for the most part.

The invisibility of pike impressed us as strange. Wood in the water, some pads--cover wasn't everywhere, though common. You'd think we'd see some nervous water and fish. Brenden theorized that for whatever reason, the pike were down in the eight- to 12-foot depths. He thought that would more likely be the case in the summer, though. Water was 69 degrees. Besides, on the way in after sundown, I trolled a sinking jerkbait through that deep water and never got hit.

I described the smallest as an "average stream bass," the first one I caught, which hit next to some sticks in the water, shallow. The second one, maybe 14 inches but very heavy-bodied, hit hard & fast next to a fallen tree's shallow end. Once hooked, it ran so fast out into the depths that I thought it was a pike. The third came when 60 feet or so of muddy bank between cover interested me, as if a bass would move along it. My third or fourth cast, I felt my Yum Dinger get picked up in the usual way on a slow, deep retrieve. It leapt twice, maybe 15 inches or so. 

The Passaic stretches some eight-and-a-half miles between access points, but Brenden later pointed out that had we gone far enough, we might have come to trees in the water forbidding passage. Not only that. From the other side, there could be trees blocking passage further upriver yet, effectively creating an inaccessible flow. Unless you were to bushwhack, perhaps necessarily with a machete, or when the river is low enough, hike the mud at the edge you might sink into. 

There's bass back there for sure. And pike. We got well beyond the sound of traffic on I-80. I felt the weight of my concerns back home lifted off me. The surroundings fascinated me as a whole other system of shared interaction. The yellow of turning leaves signaling the inevitable passage coming of the rest of them. A flock of grackles fed themselves along the bank to our left, while an American egret alighted high up on the dead branch of a tree in the water, overlooking us and the flock I had just equated with Hitchcock. 

"The devil to the left of us and an angel giving us guard," Brenden said the like.

"Yeah," I said.

His words gave the scene transcendence. Even if we alone bestow such power on an environment, it no less moves us as something other. How can it be "we" without implying that something more than us creates our connection?

September Pike

 

Live-Lining Killies and Fishing Nightcrawler Unweighted Smallmouths

The advantage of catching fish nearby is the blessing they bestow on home. You would never think of it from an attitude of ingratitude, but if you fish hard, you owe it to yourself to allow the feeling. The compensation is the least you deserve after all the effort you put in.

Having to drive only 18 miles round trip is easy. With Matt and Brenden the other day, I drove 110. No complaint. I like a long trip. And I enjoy the rough and tumble of car-topping a big, heavy canoe on a little Honda Civic. But to have it easy, too, is like breathing freely. 

I prefer catching my smallmouths on lures. If I really preferred live bait, I'd use it more often than I do, but after trying to catch fluke on killies, I like to bring the remainder in the bucket home for the bass. Yesterday, I also had a couple of containers of nightcrawlers leftover from fishing the Delaware with Brian Peterson and his daughter Kelsey. I ended up catching the first and smaller bass on an unweighted nightcrawler. I also caught a 15 1/2-incher, on a killie I live-lined without weight.

I loosened the drag as I fought the big one because I feared the knot would pop. I had no particular reason to fear that, but the fish fought very hard. I use six-pound mono on the rivers when I'm fishing the bass. (Last December I caught a 4.23-pound rainbow trout on four-pound test.) The odd thing is that I did not honor my fear, because I did nothing about it, once I had landed and released the bass. I behaved as if my fear had been unrealistic.

Don't we often doubt ourselves insidiously like that? So insidiously we let it go entirely...while the object of our fear works its way out entirely without our knowing. Or until, in the final moments of the eventuality, it occurs to us once more, emerging from the forgotten background. We really have more control over things than we credit ourselves for, if we would just take that control.

Having waded upstream and sat on the concrete ledge of an old bridge abutment, I found a Senko that had to have been left behind recently, because not taken by flood water. I had seen lots of boot prints downstream, and I thought of how hammered these bass must be. These bass. I had another one on but when I set the hook, I got no grab. Soon though, I had a fairly nice one hooked up. I had fought the fish until I got it close to me, a bass of about 12 inches, when I thought of the knot popping again. Seconds later--it popped. Right in front of me. Almost at my feet. 

Upstream

 

Weedless Frog and Mouse September Algae Scum

We eased the squareback into shadows of the western shore. The sun had set after a breeze had bothered us all day. Calm surface meant topwaters would probably yield, but we would have to persist against the nothing of most casts. Brenden pedaled his kayak through 12- or 14-foot depths, along an outside weedline where he's caught muskies. A boat to our right a hundred yards or so had two guys aboard throwing big, heavy spinners slapping and plunging through the surface, sounding off like bass hitting plugs. Brenden said, "Maybe the fish in the depths will hit plugs now," and pedaled away. It was the last we spoke until we loaded to go.

Lots of fish suspending over depths of 20 feet or more had confused me. They didn't hit anything, and I was ready now to focus in a singular way. Before Brenden had spoken his last words, he said something I don't remember, but when I replied, I had shifted my attention to his words, away from my Baby Torpedo, though I kept working it slowly. Something sizeable struck. I missed it, but the odd thing was the fish remaining there at the surface and tailing for a moment...which looked like the fins of a little musky of 18 or 20 inches, not a bass. Whatever the fish was, my distraction didn't deter the growing absorption of my attention in the process of enticing hits. I soon caught a little bass of about eight inches, and I fished as if every cast thereafter could do better. 

Fish surprise you like that apparent musky surprised me. It never ends. You never get used to situations that work out when you feel nothing will. Although reason tells you that no matter how pounded the water, no matter how many lures the fish see, conditions will allow the native predation of a few of them to overcome that resistance they develop--although reason is really on your side, that default pessimism everyone seems to feel in this or that way does make you think nothing's going to happen. Like fishing open water during January. But it's not January, just a tough day during a month that can be tough when it comes to catching fish, but not that tough. Unless you're comparing it to ice fishing, perhaps, since ice fishing can result in a lot of fish caught. 

Last September Brenden and I fished Tilcon Lake, and I caught only three fish. I don't remember off hand how many Brenden caught, but it wasn't many. I think I entitled the blog post "Tough September Outing." September has been tough on other occasions, too, but the water remains mild, and the fish are beginning to chase fish forage; the fish we marked in the depths were on clouds of fish forage of some description we haven't been able to make out. To the best of our knowledge, the lake has no alewives, but we might be mistaken.

In any event, I put those deep water fish out of mind and concentrated on my Torpedo. Matt continued to toss the Hula Popper he had caught a bass on earlier. We worked depths anywhere from about five feet down to eight- and 10-foot depths, weeds straggling up to the surface but not particularly thick. I had been thinking about the classic situation Mike Maxwell and I encountered on Mountain Lake a day or two before my son graduated high school. Minutes later, I saw nervous water similar to what began the romp I enjoyed and Mike witnessed. Then something carried the situation up to a whole other level when a fish positively broke water with a sizeable splash. We edged over.

Not too much later, I had the fish on. Matt and I are sure it was the one that had splashed. Only for a second or two I had it, when I judged it probably weighed about a pound-and-a-half. Matt switched to a weedless frog, and I praised his move. Within a minute or so, something really nice-sized erupted from under algae scum, really exploded on that frog, but Matt missed the hit. I grabbed my box of topwaters and found a soft plastic, weedless mouse. 

Matt gave up on trying to tempt that fish to come back, and hooked the next fish that blew up well to the right of it. It proved to be a bass of at least 17 1/2 inches, a chunky fish of nearly three pounds. After photographing his fish, I worked the scum until a bass broke through the algae two feet into the air, my mouse in it's mouth, and I set the hooks hard. My bass would have measured about 16 inches. Photographed, I released it and freed myself up for more action, which came in the form of a great strike near where Matt had lost the big one. Once I felt the fish's weight, I set the hooks. Hard! Mine proved to be a bass of at least 18 inches. It could have been one of those I underestimate and should have measured. Last time I fished here, in June, I measured one at 19 3/4 inches that looks no larger in the photo.  

Our commitment to slowing down and fishing only one way--topwater--had paid off and saved a day that otherwise was a tough one. Above all else, it was Matt's idea that broke through. Besides the bass themselves.    

Better than 18 inches?

Brenden caught a nice one of about two pounds or better on a Senko-type worm from right against the bank. Later, he caught one on Whopper Plopper of better than a pound.

First fish of the day. My little bass on a Yum Dinger from 10-foot weeds.

Matt's bass on a Hula Popper from right near the bank.

\

Matt's Hula Popper bass.

Little bass I caught on a Baby Torpedo shortly before Matt began throwing the weedless frog.

My 16-inch bass caught on a weedless mouse.

Mountain Lake

 

Heavy Northeast Wind Solidity Underfoot

The jetty has a way of returning you to solidity underfoot. It's just that if you take one wrong step, the crevice you fall into will break bones. I've been out there with Fred a number of times now, and every time, I've thought of my job. Yesterday, it bothered me little. Almost not at all. I didn't feel as if my time away from it was too short. 

The interesting thing is, I remember Fred telling me how many days he has to retirement. Each time we fished together, which used to be more frequent when he lived in Bernardsville. I remember that number over a thousand. And then, almost four years ago, it was done, and Fred moved with his wife to the vicinity of Long Beach Island. It seemed to happen so fast, while day to day reality plods along towards my goal as yet.

It's my turn now. And with April coming fast (in some sense, but was is that, really?), soon four years will have passed since I retired. I guess I've reached the point where it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I have to go in in the morning, because so few of them stretch between now and then. Even though it's a matter of some 210 days, which can feel like a lot at any given moment, there's a level in an older person's mind that travels between life events in an instant. It seems impossible to understand how actual time moves fast, when a second remains a second, an hour an hour, but 40 years since when I was 23 doesn't seem very long ago. It could be argued that I'm referring to a superficial level of memory, though, and that if I took the time to really get deep into recollection, vastness would emerge, and with it, a greater sense of time's length. 

Will I fish more, I think so. But between you & me, what matters most is that I keep delivering quality blog posts. I fully intend to keep publishing as much as I do now in magazines, too. 

I thought I'd have the trout book all finished before I would leave work, but that's OK. Haven't touched it in about two years, but I've worked on it since then in my head, so I know the time away is productive. I committed to a big writing project at the beginning of summer I knew would take me away from getting the new website up, but it led me to an even better idea to work on in a year or two or more. A memoir on the absolute need of civilization to have its first principle in nature, and the role of certain individuals who revitalize possibilities by going deep into nature, namely my own role in doing that, having spent 13 years digging clams...unearthing the mind's depths. It is the mind that makes life worth living by linking to possibilities. The liberal persuasion may be the postmodern denial of nature as existing on its own, as if it's a "construction of human society," but nature needs no defense, standing absolutely on its own. It's we who need to recognize its majesty, rather than to imagine we can elevate one of us to that status politically. (What a joke.)

About yesterday, the best part involved my getting an inevitable wind knot in my new PowerPro black slick braid, and having mentioned it to Fred before I would cut that expensive line, his volunteering to untangle it.

"You can't untangle that."

"I can so." 

And a few minutes later, I was fishing the whole length of what's left of it again. I had cut it I think three times during recent outings. 

Again, I got a wind knot. This time, I untangled it. And then once more again, and I untangled it, so I'm confident I can maintain my expensive PowerPro without wasting it.

Wind hauled water out of the Northeast and dumped it on the rocks. After it fell towards low tide, I could finally take my camera out without exposing it to spray, but even then I had to be very careful, as most spots among the rocks were still subject to salty mistiness. 

I fished only Gulp! Jerk Shads on jigs for fluke. Fred tried Fish Bites twister tails and something that looked just like a Jerk Shad. After I caught two fluke, one about 14 inches, another 16, I was told by a couple of guys that the bite was early in the morning when one guy had a four- or five-pounder on the rocks. Fred ended up with one right about 18 inches. We saw one of about 22 inches caught. That spot does get pounded, but so far, we've always caught fluke. 

Fishing the inlet side was difficult with the big swells, heavy tidal current, and spray, but we caught a few tog up to about 12 inches, lots of little seabass. Mole crabs, also called sand fleas. Fred had raked the bait out of the surf. 

Guy's got a short.

Inlet Three Years Ago

 

South Branch Raritan River Wading Attempt

I spoke to a friend recently who suggested an area of the South Branch upstream of one of the bridges. I asked if it's accessible by any pullover nearby. No, Brenden and I would have to wade up.

I stepped out the front door, still dark out, with lure bag, camera, and rod in hand, noticing that raindrop patterns had just begun to collect on the pavement. I took the stuff to my car, getting mildly pelted. A little light rain didn't alarm me, but I checked the weather. Soon, I got a text from Brenden saying it was pouring where he was in Stirling, though not raining in Hillsborough. 

We started wading in relative darkness, relative light. I had put my wallet and keys in my lure bag, expecting to reach waste level. Once, I stepped awkwardly on a rock. When you're really young, not just relatively young as I am now, you don't make missteps like that. You might be able to dance on rocks. I used to. 

They don't make me nervous now. They sometimes put me off a little, though. But we forged on as if we would reach that spot in the distance. We got fairly far. Above a section where the river divides into two, three or four flows. Facing the full width of the lower South Branch, I felt my antennae go on alert. The water was well up on my thighs, the bottom of my lure bag almost touching it. Lots of weeds on gravelly bottom. Some of that stuff at the surface. Where I bombed my Baby Torpedo on six-pound mono, and those casts were long, I couldn't tell just how deep, but deeper. Brenden had crossed some land downstream and taken interest in the flow furthest to my left looking downstream. Maybe he was catching bass.

Immediately, my plug started taking interest from sunfish. A couple hits I thought might have been bass, and then, finally, I caught a smallmouth of about 10 inches, feeling that satisfaction of having made a real effort for a real result. That little bass had leapt three times, as high as three feet. Had to be some depth out there for it to gather the power from below to go that high. 

Brenden caught up to me. He put a Whopper Plopper on. I told him about the big bass I had watched chase something against the trunk of a tree in the water along the shoreline to our left. I had repositioned so I might land a cast there, but Brenden's plug is a lot heavier and he made the mark perfectly. But nothing happened. 

I had caught my bass three or four minutes before it began raining. The water felt good, and while Brenden said something about maybe if the sun came out, the bass would hit better, I said, "I like the conditions just as they are. I just want to be on the bass." 

The one I caught was going to do it for the day for me. We couldn't move upstream any further. Too deep. The overgrowth along the shorelines too thick to break a trail. And I don't think we could have crossed over on the right, anyway, too deep. 

When we got back to the bridge, we fished on downstream maybe a couple hundred yards, but the water was shallower. My plug only interested a sunfish, and Brenden's Whopper Plopper--nothing.

We decided to try the confluence downstream, but the North Branch was off color there. Rather than staying out another hour or two, I was ready to go home and get a lot done. Brenden later texted me from a different spot, having caught seven smallmouths on a Rapala. 

Natirar

 

 

Outsmarting Pressured Fish Because We Enjoy It

 

Flashback to Belvidere July 12th. Mark Licht unhooks a rainbow trout caught while fishing smallmouths.

Writing to let you know I might have done it once before, but I'm not going to go for more than a week without posting, if I can help it. Did plan on fishing the Raritan today, but I'm busy with a writing project I've got to get done as soon as I can. 

Off on Monday, I'm thinking I'll get over to the lower South Branch. Noel Sell gave me a call today. We talked at least 15 minutes, good talk, and he gave me a clue as to where to try. Now living in Pennsylvania, he's very happy with the people over there, who will "bend over backwards to help you. In New Jersey, they screw you and take your money." 

Speaking from my own experience, I love New Jersey, which is not to say I'm blind to its flaws. Anyone who reads my blog knows that, but not because I resent those flaws. Resentment is always directed upward against a superior, be it an individual or a group. Restrain resentment and you don't need to bother with self-aggrandizement to stand straight. Rather than gripe and get sour, I just lay out problems like fishing pressure--frequently lay them out--for what they are. We who fish in New Jersey play the game of outsmarting pressured fish because we enjoy it, not because it "should" be otherwise, even if, on occasion, like the previous post expresses, we feel put off by how difficult it really can be to go without an easy catch rate.

Someone I worked with at Fiddler's Elbow Country Club told me, "In New Jersey, you have to work for the fish." It's nice when sometimes the action is fast. But on the other hand, my catch of four smallmouths on the Raritan late this past July was very satisfying.

Just want to let you know the book on microlight method for trout is still in the works. Hope all of you read it and get the word out, not because I need to get rich, but because the quality of the book is something anglers who enjoy reading will appreciate. I've taken about two years' hiatus from working on it, but once I get the new website up, I can turn back to completing the finish, and then seeking the book's publication. 

I keep getting sidetracked by other writing projects. Even the monthly article I do for New Jersey Federated Sportsmen's News takes some repeated effort over the course of four or five days, maybe a week. I will reread a 1200-word piece entire, just to tweak a word or mark of punctuation. The editor's final copy is perfect, after he asks me for a proof-read. 

That's it for now. Hope I fish on Monday.