Delaware River Lambertville Wing Dam Smallmouth Bass

Brian Cronk spoke enthusiastically about the Delaware River's Lambertville Wing Dam being especially good for fishing this time of year, after I told him my wife and I were going to stay in Yardley for some of the time one of our bathrooms is getting remodeled. I got in touch with someone who fishes the river, but when I tried to confirm his being there, I got no reply. So I reached out to Brian, who arranged for his friend Paul to meet me. The two of them fished together during their teens, having known each other since middle school. I texted Paul and we made plans for Thursday at 5:15 pm. 

On Tuesday, I tried to find access on the Pennsylvania side first. Looks like the only access is for people who live in the townhouse development(s), a big change from years back when anyone could walk out there. Around 1978, I caught a 15-inch smallmouth from the Pennsylvania side. 

I drove across to Lambertville from New Hope and found parking where I saw another fisherman get out of his car. I got to the river there, but almost a quarter mile upstream of the dam. With all my heavy stuff, I decided to fish for a half hour or 45 minutes from where I stood. Nothing. Although the water had some depth. 

When I returned to my car, I checked on the sign where I had entered the lot. The threat of getting towed meant I wasn't coming back. I had already driven south to where a lot exists by the canal, and you can walk the tow path. That's where I decided I'd return after having scaled down on my equipment. I soon told Paul I'd meet him there and to go light. 

The hike was a good mile. A little longer than I had thought. I asked a couple of guys making their way out at about the time we had arrived, about the fishing. No one had caught anything, so I understood I had to fish more intensively. Rather than immediately setting about at retrieving a jig in water too slow to maneuver it through drifts, I cut my Ned rig off the fluorocarbon leader and tied on a Yum Dinger rigged Wacky. And instead of marching out to the end of the dam, I fished the shoreline by leaving the dam and walking upstream, but I got hung up so much, finally breaking off, that I decided to focus on the first 75 feet or so of the upstream side of the dam where water was slow, not very deep, and unappealing. "Smallmouth might spawn here," I told Paul. 

Besides, it was the kind of "nothing happening" spot every one else might feel contempt for.

I cast far enough that I could plumb some depth at first, Paul fishing not too distant on my left, and then I finished retrieves by fluttering those ends of the worm, making sure not to get hung up in the rocks. That's what worked. And while I was surprised at having a pretty good fish on, as if nothing gets caught here, a better part of me understood I had laid out a plan and it had worked. There's plenty of bass in the river.

I quickly measured it. It's the second fish I've caught from the wing dam. One smallmouth at 15 inches from Pennsylvania. One smallmouth at 15 inches from New Jersey. 

Paul took a couple of good hits. He worked an unweighted plastic swim bait on an inset hook, by what I could tell. I had a small fish on for a second and got pegged by another that felt better than a sunfish or rock bass. I fished the fast current on the downstream side of the dam with the Ned rig to get that interest, where depth might have been five or six feet. Shouldn't have been surprising there were some fish in that flow, but I wouldn't stay there for the rest of the evening.

Instead, I fished the upstream side on out towards the river's center, watching the speed of the current increase as I went, aware that I no longer fished where bass might spawn. Not that I was aware the females had spawned and the bucks guarded beds, but the bass I caught, though chunky, didn't seem to bulge with eggs. It likely was a female at that length, though perhaps not. It does seem likely the females have spawned by now, though, and if so, some of them probably remain fairly near areas where they released eggs. 

We fished less than two hours. Didn't stay out to dark itself, though fairly well into dusk. Paul has endless fishing stories to tell. It was great catching up on fishing in the Mercer County area where I grew up, as we walked in and walked out. My favorite of his stories is about Prospertown Lake, which actually is in Monmouth next to Mercer. I fished the lake in my teens. He fought the biggest bass he had ever hooked, and he's caught six pounders. He says the bass was eight pounds. It rose towards the surface and he thrust his rod tip down underneath that surface. No matter. The great bass leapt, shook his head, and threw the lure. He told me what that lure was. I believe a Zoom swimbait, but I forget.  

  

Paul

Jersey side of the wing dam. Current goes between the wings from both sides of the river.

Delaware River Smallmouths

 

Don't Get Stuck Judging an Issue

Brenden fishes wood in the water.

What began for me as a grind I feared would reduce me to a quivering mass of pain and nerves, turned out to be an interesting outing. I had no seat cushion and my upper and lower back tightened, paining me. Problems like that tend to find resolution if you keep at it. I wasn't going to give up, but early on I believed I was stuck, though we would motor at least two miles upriver. Some people feel that after retiring, it's time to back off from active living and wind down, but I still feel youthful within. You can tell I do from the way I talk and write. So long as I'm lively where it matters first and foremost, I'm able to express that physically, too. 

As we progressed through the first hour or two, most of my casts disappointed me, too, which felt alienating, as if I had lost an important part of myself. It was just misplaced. I place a lot of pride in casting accuracy and I wasn't hitting targets. Getting snagged a lot, too.

That proved to be the way out of my malaise. The work it took to keep getting unsnagged began to feel like play, and not only did my back loosen up and begin to feel a hundred percent more comfortable than it had felt, my casting accuracy got right on target. Both rods. The Yum Dinger and the Chatterbait.

I had even feared I wouldn't be using the squareback much longer, which impresses me now as just laughable. Back when we met at Cronk's house, we secured the front of the canoe with a rope. We had the hood of my car opened, having tied the rope at two ends to metal inside; we let that rope go loose, and I dropped the hood on it, which made it tight at both ends. 

"When you stand back from a problem, it can seem unsolvable," I said, commenting on how loosening the rope had seemed hit or miss regarding how dropping the hood on it would turn out. "But proceed with it concretely, and it can be easy."

Same with my back and casting accuracy. Just took longer. But the point is, the mind can play all sorts of tricks on you, and if you don't persist at a problem by getting closer to the substance of it, rather than standing back and playing the judge, you can fail to solve it. It's always substance that frees you. You get into it, and then it's as if the problem solves itself. 

It's the same with writing, too. If my blog posts served as no more than generic recaps of fishing outings, no one would bother reading such thin gruel. It's easy to say, "We got skunked on the Passaic," and pretty much leave it at that. But besides using that state of affairs to make a point of the issue, I wouldn't otherwise have even needed to say we got skunked in this post. 

By digging in, stuff emerges on its own that makes my time worthwhile as well as yours. It's interesting because engagement results from reading a writer who messes around with a text until it flows together as a single unit. There might be a few glitches, but then again, I usually go back and read them, making any corrections where I see need. 

There's a chemistry involved in writing. Just as there is in fishing. It's always a little different as the subject matter or situation varies, but it gets switched on by making the effort. Or just loosened up and allowed to react.

   

On the way upstream, Brenden did get a swipe from a pickerel. I saw the boil. The two of us after big pike, that feels a little presumptuous now as twice we've motored (electric) upstream for them and have seen only a rather small one follow a plug to the squareback. I caught three largemouths and Brenden caught a pickerel and a perch when we fished here in September. I've caught pike from shore elsewhere along the river on multiple occasions, but my biggest so far is only about 22 inches. Brenden's caught them 34 1/2 inches and 36 inches from shore. Lots of smaller from his kayak.

We didn't only fish tight to visible cover. (We fished wood in the water. Pads. I used a weedless mouse.) But because the current cuts against the bank in many places, some of which involve slack and eddies with some depth, I believed I fished possible holding water there. The current, by the way, flowed considerably heavier than I remember from September last year, and I didn't like that, though I adjusted to it, including my ability to position the canoe. 

We also checked muddy shallows. For example, where the river bends in various places, there's a shallow flat like a wide point where the current is slack. I really wonder where bass spawn, there's so much soft mud. Water temperature was 64, 65. The main river channel here is generally 10 or 12 feet deep.  

Watching and listening to birds got interesting. I don't say that only as humorous irony. Lots of wood ducks. A redtail hawk examining the river by flying in tight circles just over our heads. Red-bellied woodpecker. The call of either a pileated woodpecker or flicker. Blue jays. Mallards. A species I don't remember having seen before and couldn't identify. We saw five or six muskrats. A beaver. 

The trees are light green, except for a very few still displaying red florets. Loads of pollen in the air, and lots of stuff on the river surface, even though, at least when we began, the breeze was very light.   

Home sweet home.

I keep noticing loss of access. The sign wasn't there when we came here in September last year. I don't believe it's constitutional to hamper access to public water. Unless, of course, it's an issue of private land. The Passaic River is not owned by a township, lol.

September

Always Good to See a Fly Rod Catch Stocked Trout

Back at it in Millington, I have to say the Passaic River really didn't disappoint, even though the lack of water clarity turned me off. Tannic when I came last year, the tannic quality there again today had somehow got stained a little by mud, even though it hasn't rained in a awhile. 

I began fishing with my red salmon eggs, but I had only a dozen or so left in the jar. I caught three recently stocked rainbows on those, missing hits from others, and then I climbed the embankment, crossed the road, and got more from my trunk.

They hadn't been salted. Three in a row departed from the hook on the cast. I thought I had salted all my eggs, and since that was the last of red ones I brought along, I switched to those off-white pale eggs I normally prefer. 

I caught a couple more trout when Brenden Kuprel showed up unexpectedly, introducing me to his cousin who had also come along. They took station downstream within distance of talking by raising the voice. We talked just a little about Shop Rite where Brenden and I both used to work, and where Brenden still does work as a manager. 

I wanted to get underneath the bridge, but when a father and daughter abandoned the spot right about when Brenden and his cousin showed, the guy who fly fished downstream took it. (Brenden and his cousin took position where the fly fisher had.) 

I said to the fly fisher, after watching him catch his second trout, "Always good to see someone doing well with a fly rod."

"I do better with the fly rod than with a spinning rod," he told me. Just before he had hooked his first trout, I asked him if he were using nymphs. "Yes." 

Downstream I watched Brenden catch a few on his Berkley Powerbait trout worm under a float. I had caught a couple more and lost another almost at my feet when I decided to go. After I would lose the last pale egg on my hook, which proved to be a very stubborn, perfectly salted egg. Staying on that hook as if destined to serve. 

And indeed. It amounted to one more rainbow for me. 

Millington Gorge

 

Trolling the Mepp's Aglia

Brian told me Clinton Reservoir's water temp reached 48 on Tuesday. The weather can be considerably cooler up near West Milford than in the Dover area, let alone Bedminster. I wonder how cold it was last night. 

Getting the boat off the trailer, I waded above my knees barefoot. Numbed quickly, it was only painful at first. I still had some feeling on the underside of my feet. I felt the point of a piece of glass--it must have been lodged in-between stone--on the bottom of that right foot. The glass wasn't lengthy enough to penetrate the skin.

We trolled here a couple of years ago, catching smallmouths. It's a mystery to me why we haven't caught more trout. I used a Mepp's Aglia Long size 6 almost all day today, almost the full four hours, and I doubt a trout would feel it's too big, but maybe that's why. I don't know.

We had trolled up along a shoreline where we've caught a few in the past. After we turned the corner of a point, my antennae twiggled. I don't always anticipate a catch, especially when cold water makes them difficult. But often, I do. I envisaged myself getting my Aglia right down near bottom among rocks, having asked Brian about depth. We had seven or eight feet, and that felt just right. I was on setting two or three of the 55-pound thrust Minn-Kota. (Brian always has me run it, which is OK. I have a boater's certificate.)

I thought I had hooked a trout, the way the fish zigzagged quickly. I soon had a smallmouth about 15 inches long in the boat. 

"I knew what I was doing," I said. I didn't tell Brian I had felt I was about to hookup.

Near an island, we stopped trolling. We cast a rocky flat with water as shallow as a foot or two, most of it five or six feet. Clear water. I made out rocks as deep as eight feet. I figured that with the abundant sunshine, those rocks would warm a little. 

Apparently nothing was there.

We've done better during the early season along the opposite shoreline. Brian trolled crankbaits, and although the shoreline does not drop off nearly as steeply, and he got snagged more than a few times, he was able to fish them. My Aglia produced once more, another 15-incher. I didn't anticipate the fish directly as I had the other, but I saw a stickup above the surface ahead, which did pique my interest. I took note of the bass having hit just yards ahead of it.

Today was a much-needed release from so much nonsense my brain keeps me struggling with. Working at the Supermarket wasn't bad. It's much better to hold a job than to live in a dystopian world after civilization collapses. If anyone can live in such a world. When the electrical grid permanently fails, won't the numerous nuclear power plants in America melt down, killing all life on the continent? And yet the supermarket did cause me stress. Extreme stress for the first four years or so. Such stress can enlarge the amygdala, which means all sorts of overkill continues to stress the brain. 

On the reservoir today, I got relief from all that.

Near the end of our outing, I heard my phone ping repeatedly, thinking that must be my son. He often pings rapidly. About three minutes later, one last ping.

We beached and I checked my phone. No. The fast series of pings had been from Brian sending me photos he took with his phone. But the ping that came three minutes later--from my son! I stood there wrapped in a moment of awe. Did my thinking of Matt prompt him to send me the message? He almost never messages me, though it is true that when he does, he often sends a few in quick succession. 

He's working on nuclear fusion at UCLA. If we can power the grid by (clean) fusion power, we'll have solved the energy problem.

We had noticed a couple of guys in a bass boat. With Brian's boat on the trailer, they passed by the ramp, asking had we caught any. They had caught one smallmouth. I asked if they had a water temp.

"It's 51 up here and 49 in the back!" 

 

Spinners

 

Water Slightly Stained, Pinkish Red Egg Made the Difference

I made up my mind to switch out my favorite pale eggs for pinkish red, since the water had something of an opaque quality, not running too high, but a little stained. I had caught one rainbow and missed another hit. It seemed to take forever to lose the pale egg on my hook, after I had decided to switch. Cast after cast. Today is Tuesday, and the South Branch Raritan Brenden and I fished got stocked. I figured they didn't stock many, but my judgment, I was about to learn, was a little skewed. 

Brenden had missed a hit and caught one on his Berkley worm--think it's Berkley--under a float. My red egg got hit on the first cast. Hits followed, almost every cast. I played two trout and lost them at the net. On my microlight rod and two-pound test--yes, Berkley Trilene XL, clear--every one of them takes runs. I caught another. Action halted after that, but I enjoyed having had some. Brenden had said about his worm under the float, "They're just knocking into it. They won't commit." 

The casts and the drifts I managed to get on that light tackle impressed me, given that wind gusts seemed to reach 40 mph. We heard a big dead branch above us crack, and we heard a tree trunk snap and watched the big tree fall downstream, everyone fishing in the vicinity awed by that event. I used the same snap swivel I had used at the North Branch almost a week ago, and I added two broken swivels to it before Brenden and I departed Bedminster. He had met me in the lot at my condo. If the air calmed, I would have removed those snaps, because even though the river seemed to flow a little high, the pace of the water would have allowed less weight.

As we continued to fish, we watched a couple of guys on the other side of the river and downstream of the bridge (we waded in the river upstream) catch a lot of trout. While Brenden and I slogged away after the trout stopped hitting, those two guys left. I guess Brenden and I had the same idea as we witnessed that happen.

"I'm going to go fish where those two guys left," Brenden said.

"So am I."

Climbing down the bank wasn't a breeze for me. I felt awkward at it. I don't know what happens as you get older, but it has to do with balance somehow. I feel like a young man, but then I'm confronted with a challenge like getting down to the river there, and it's stymying. When I'm writing, there seems to be zero difference between now and when I was younger, except that I'm even more skilled than I used to be. Life is kind of odd in the way that you can witness your own physical decline in a detached way that feels youthful. It's as if that decline is silly. And if medicine is allowed to continue to develop--if we don't become an authoritarian society and destroy progress--it's possible aging will be reversed. 

Earlier on, I had dropped my Egg Lug into the river when I pulled a stringer from my wader pocket. I reached for it with my net, soaking my right arm in the process. That contributed to my developing the shivers. Temp at 64 when we first descended upon the river, it had fallen to 56 when we left. I did have a light jacket on but shook in the heavy wind gusts. 

Not lasting very long at our second spot, I never got hit once, anyhow, but Brenden did catch one. I had planned to stay out to sunset, but the chill was enough. We fished two hours from the opener at 5 p.m.

Worm Under Float vs Salmon Eggs

 

Cold April Weather for a Catch

Temperatures in the 50's would have felt better; 44 degrees was cold. Our hands couldn't take it for too long. I recall many outings on the rivers fishing for winter trout when my hands didn't get cold, but in that breeze out there beside Oak Ridge Reservoir, they suffered today.

The water's way down. We tried a spot below what would have been a steep, gravelly drop off, and Brian got hit hard. He used what looked like a quarter-ounce jighead, giving it body by use of a three- or four-inch Keitech. 

I was casting a Binsky when Brian hiked up as the water flows. Something like 600 yards. He took position on the end of a smallish point and cast. I switched to a 16th ounce jig and Z-Man Slimswimz paddletail. I fished it as assiduously as I could, shooting a glance over at Brian on occasion. I knew a real possibility of hooking a smallmouth here where Brian had missed one existed. My being sure the water was plenty cold, because a couple of recent nights have dipped into the 20's, didn't exclude that possibility.

I started to think that if Brian were to catch one, I should be there with the camera. Besides, perhaps he and I would catch up a little by way of conversation. I didn't like the feel of the weather. It put a dank feel on my every move, but if we would head in early...not just yet.

The walk felt pleasant with my black Lab, Loki, accompanying me. I kept my eyes on the ground, looking for whatever might turn up. Old beer cans. Coke. Beer bottles. Loki found a fish vertebra about a foot long. Shortly after I arrived, Brian told me he was about ready to leave. I felt relieved. 

"I missed a few hits," he said, adding, "I had to switch out my Keitech because the fish tore it up."

I fished my jig slowly on bottom.

"This might be really nice when it's calm on a summer evening," I said.

"Yeah, topwater." 

I understood it wasn't going to be an afternoon of much said between us. The weather felt too uncomfortable. 

I don't use Keitech, but I've heard it from Brenden Kuprel, also, that they don't last, but I began feeling perhaps I should have used a larger jig and plastic combination. Brian began making his way back in the direction of our vehicles.

"Fish on," he said. A sudden change in the feeling of things. 

I saw his rod bending. A good-sized smallmouth leapt. The struggle seemed a little testy as a good fish often does. Soon, he dragged one that probably would have measured at least 17 inches up onto the mud, making it less than a good subject for photography. I gripped it by the lower jaw and washed it off at the water's edge.

Back home, I found I had driven 94 miles. You never know; it's possible I'll ride all that way, fish topwater through a perfect summer evening and never get hit. 

Clinton Reservoir 

Trout Stocking First Week After Opening Day May be Lightweight

                                                                                     

Relatively opaque water, given how clear it can be, but not stained, ran higher than I had expected after three days since rain. I got into a nice spot right at 5:00 p.m., figuring fish should be there and would hit. I cast tentatively, and as the egg drifted downriver with the help of several snap swivels attached to a snap for weight, I suddenly doubted anything would happen. And nothing did until I got a solid tap about 10 casts later. 

After four more takes of the like, besides once getting slammed and having the trout on for a second, drag screeching, I made my way upstream some 10 yards, working my body through tight spaces between tree trunks and a wooden fence. The trunks have dormant poison ivy vines strung on them. Walking on rocks on a bank sloping at a 45-degree angle, making sure my left knee didn't give out, avoiding the consequence of getting pitched into the river, that, I thought, wouldn't be so bad. It would be the loss my mobile device. That left knee had been operated on some 14 years ago, and it's not getting better. I felt surprised to see the same woman who had hooked the breeder last time. I said hi and made a cast. Then a few more. I missed another hit. She said, "Do you think they restocked?"

"I think they did, just didn't put many fish in."

"I don't think so." 

I'm sure the river was stocked, although the trout, for the most part, weren't committing to the eggs but managing to steal them from my hook. There were others fishing downstream and I hadn't seen a single trout caught. I continued fishing near the exit bridge, the bridge upstream of the former AT&T entry bridge where the trout get stocked, but I got only one more tap.  

I went downstream. There I found the water was a lot slower than I would have expected, given the power of the flow above. I downsized to a single size 14 Eagle Claw snap swivel for weight. Soon I hooked up and fought an average rainbow to the bank. I was standing about six feet high over the edge of the water, and I wasn't interested in climbing down to get the trout, so before I would have pulled it up on rocks, I hoped it would lose the hook and be on it's way, which happened a second later when the trout was about a foot from the dry edge. 

Now. I figured I might have some action. I didn't think ahead of how much I would have to work for it. At my age, it's not as easy; it's rather difficult, but if you're going to suffer for the fish, you'll get some satisfaction in return, even if you go home with some kinks to work out over long hours ahead. 

I paid keen attention to just where my egg was touching down, and I missed more of the same kind of hits right at the end of my rather short and definitely slow drifts. I set the hook on one of them and got repaid with a distinct visual of rainbow colors before the trout quickly disappeared under the cover of that less-than-clear water. Soon, I hooked another, and I played it, drag screeching repeatedly, before I got the trout--average sized--against the bank. And then I lifted it out of the water, which made me wonder if I could lift it all the way up to where I stood. Would my knots to two-pound-test Berkley XL hold? Snap swivel to mainline, hook to leader, overhand loop of leader to slip onto the snap. The knots held as I continued to lift, but the hook pulled free, the trout dropping back into the water and shooting away. 

I missed perhaps a few more hits. I had to repeatedly cast, working for these fish. I was deeply into the flow of the action and enjoying it with focused intent. When hits stopped coming to the right of me, I cast a little further upstream. I found there were trout there too, just not many. Downstream further yet, on the other side of the entry bridge, some eight or nine men fished fast water with just enough depth to hold a fairly large number of trout, although there were not too many there today. I saw one trout get caught. The only one I saw caught by anyone else the entire time out. I had only minutes left, though, having signed on for a Zoom photographer's meetup at 7 p.m. I hooked another, playing it with the same give of the drag, and once again, hoisted a trout towards me, the hook pulling out. Convenient catch and release. I tried just a few more casts, once feeling a cadence of taps...so compelling...before I set the hook on nothing. 

Someone who had been fishing downstream and caught nothing told me it was the same lack of action at the South Branch yesterday. (The South Branch is stocked on Tuesdays.) Possibly that has to do with Opening Day having been only days ago, still a fair number of trout in the streams. 

I headed home to meet up with my friends. 

Fishing Salmon Eggs