Contemplation and Fishing

Contemplation is what it's all about. To "fish" for something, anything--an idea, a lost set of keys, or a walleye--is to probe with the mind in a way that, at its best, is certain by the intensity of focus or concentration, yet is uncertain about the prospect of outcome or result. 

Seasoned anglers know enough about their favorite waters, and the conditions confronting them on a given outing, to be able to judge results closely beforehand. But cast by cast, fishing is fishing, not catching, never a set routine provided for by all the components like a machine process. Fishing is the opposite of routine, unless corrupted by too many preoccupations. 

We always go about fishing in certain ways, but if we do not create variations on the themes of conditions we face, we are blind to what the fish, in effect, demand of us in order to catch them. The better we get at predicting results does not make angling less an art; every exception is grace and epiphany, and surprises do not and cannot happen all the time to those of us familiar enough with waters to have a general grasp. Nevertheless, to fail to enter mystery and engagement with every outing is a negative paradox. Instead of feeling attuned and prepared for action, mentally we come short of where we really are. We fail to come out from behind the wall of concerns that close us off from the present. As if we know better, we condescend to our own approach, and we miss out while vaguely feeling beat. 

In my life, I don't get out and fish as much as some do. I tend to fish the most in the spring and summer, quite a bit in early fall. I manage to get out at least once every month and ice fish with an ardor I try not to miss on any occasion I do it. I've fished over a hundred days this year, if mostly I spent perhaps an hour total on a given day. I will enjoy some lunch excursions this month and in December. Last week I tried Round Valley for rainbows (I used an egg sac) and I will again a few times at least before the year's out, I suppose. With the advent of ice fishing, I hope to get out on black ice. In total, I may get out five times. Last year I managed seven. But I'm very busy with writing pursuits; constantly I strike a balance.

It's not at all that fishing isn't good this time of year. The Long Branch surf at night last week yielded only a fluke on a teaser ahead of a paddletail, while I lost a small striper of perhaps five pounds. Earlier in the week and the previous, the fishing had been fantastic at the shore. Long Branch is only about an hour and 15 minutes away. The Delaware is good for walleyes, even smallmouth bass now. Hopatcong for walleyes and hybrids. The Pequest River and other trout streams produce very well for those who put in the time. 

Fishing is good in New Jersey year round. But never forget to be good for fishing.

I have friends who wish I just wrote poetry and fiction, because that's what they value and don't quite understand fishing and the practicality. Being able to tie a knot is absolutely essential, like myriad doings, some of which amount to the difference between life and death. We tie knots, for that example, in order to fish. And yet fishing, in essential, is about contemplation, because to fish for something is to mentally apprehend coming up with what we want to know. 

Contemplation involves poetry and the other arts. The quality of poetic contemplation is different from that of anticipating the presence of a trout, but in the way of merging mind, feeling and physical movement of the object, it can be identical. 

And yet another way to consider it leans towards a technical interpretation: a sort of mental browser exists that draws information together in one's mental field that I think--in general--works the same for both fishing and poetry within a spectrum of possibilities mutually exclusive in other respects, of course. Results yield similar qualities: emotional communion and wonder. But if poetry and fishing were very closely similar altogether--why would I bother doing both?

When I write poetry or compose ideas in my notebooks, I normally do it in my study--a well organized study with art and photographs on the walls, etc. But this practice can never suffice alone for me. I need to get out and be in physical contact with this earth and the water that covers most of 

it. Fishing is this experience like nothing else.  

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Third and Last Day for Us on Salmon River this Year

Passing through the kitchen on our way out the front door of the Steelhead Lodge this morning at 5:50 a.m., my son, Matt, and I had the good fortune of running into James Kirtland, captain of the Row Jimmy drift boat on the Salmon River. He insisted that we follow him and his client to Whitakers Sporting Goods, where he picked out three packs of beads, and instructed me to select yellow for low light, tan after the sun came up, as well as the pink-purple, "They don't see a lot in this color."

James put us on fish upstream of the 2A bridge. This passage of moving water is almost exactly like that we fished with Eric Geary, Row Jimmy just ahead of us, on Friday, catching about 10 steelhead between three boats. I know steelhead were there this morning because I had two on, saw several more leap, and witnessed one caught. It's generally understood among Salmon River fishermen that to have a fish on doesn't count for nothing. After all, "Fish on!!" is the common battle cry.

We fished about three hours. Just as Matt and I began to head upriver, James had asked to see my float set-up. It would have passed--five-pound test Drennen leader and all--if my split shots had been lead, not tin. "They're shiny," James said. He also expressed particular concern about the relative lightness of weight. I confess that yesterday I felt concerned myself. But I dropped the rig in front of me a number of times in the current to see how it behaved, and it seemed OK. Nonetheless, I took the shiny, expensive tin off, and put dull, heavy lead in place of it. Again I tested the rig several times and it rode about right down at bottom level, with the bead riding out ahead of the weighted line above the 15-inch or so leader attached to a micro-swivel.

It was a great trip. Now back in New Jersey, we've had a steelhead dinner and much of the putting away of gear is done. I had felt that if we caught a steelhead apiece on Friday, I'd be happy. I sort of felt maybe I'd catch two; this seemed the expected, but I also doubted this. And after all, we had great weather the other day on Friday to make this better than expected catch of five between my son and I--30's, intermittant snow, sleet, and cloud variations, strong breezes. That's proper weather on a steelhead river. The bluebird Saturday and easy sunrise this morning made the fish timid.

I think it's never luck. It only seems luck. It's being. Each of us is individual and hits it differently--there's really no shared standard between us all to judge luck at bottom, despite all of the objectivity of conditions and skills which generally we interpret to make expectations and confirm them after an outing is done. And yet, the world's being is different in relation to each of us, and the quality of individual involvement, regardless of skill, can have a lot to do with success or lack of it.

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Steelhead Success on Salmon River

This steelhead's my 9-pound, 3-ounce wonder.

What a trout! My son, Matt's first steelhead at 5 pounds, 7 ounces, 25 3/8th inches. This fish, fought on five-pound test, headed straight down the Salmon River at top speed, and had gained more than a hundred yards, we estimated, before we saw it break water and then stop. I was surprised how soon Matt got it boatside by pumping the rod and reeling in the tension relief. Without the 10-foot noodle rods to absorb shock and give flex power, line of low breaking strength would have little, if any, chance on these fish.

Once I had the knack, Eric Geary, our SWAT (Salmon, Walleyes, and Trout) Fishing guide, taught me--keeping that line tight against the float as it drifted, and setting the hook quick--I had my first steelhead of the trip, 5 pounds, 1 ounce. Matt was into another, much larger, soon after my struggle had weakened my right arm considerably; I'm not making that up. We knew it was big because we saw it twist at the surface with the sort of deliberateness you see giant snakes exercise on their prey.

He played it for several minutes, the hook pulled, and he reported that he never saw the float disappear with this fish. It simply struck like a lion runs over its kill with accelerating power. Those may seem dramatic words for an eight or nine-pound trout taking a 10-mm bead with a small hook two inches below it, but they typically take these simple lures, which resemble the salmon eggs they feed on, take them firmly. If they eject the offering just as quick, having chomped upon hard plastic, they also sometimes swallow from the advantage of a powerful rush.

All three of my hook-ups using a bead came quicker than conscious intention. When I hooked my 9 pound, 3 ounce trout, 30 3/8th-inches, I reacted as soon as the float went down, without that lag of consciously judging it had. Zen. You have to be instantaneous unless the trout just ploughs into the hook. Most times you see the float go down, it's too late. I missed at least 20 hits. Besides two I caught, and another about 17 inches quickly released, I caught one of about five-and-a-half pounds on a jointed Rapala, also quickly put back. We're allowed one fish per man.

I'm pretty sure I fought my big one a full 15 minutes or more on that five-pound test. The fight felt greater than largest king salmon last year of 20 pounds, 12 ounces on 12-pound test. The steelhead took a couple of strong runs, but never high tailed it downriver as Matt's smaller trout did. It held it's own in mid river, very difficult to pump in and finally have netted. Eric, who has done this for 30 years, made, I think, five netting attempts before we finally had the fish. I breathed relief. Every time that fish got away from the net, I knew it added to the stakes and drama. I was grateful for the catch.

Once our photo taking was over and things settled down, Eric told me the hook attached to that fish "by the skin of the teeth."

"If you had relaxed the tension on that fish, it would have been gone."

Seaside Park K Street Striper Pursuit and Some Mysteries at Ocean's Edge

Cold front conditions persisted today, although temperatures rose into the 50's. I arrived at Seaside Park K Street at 2:30 to find the surf rough with waves breaking far out, beyond casting reach, as high tide approached. It didn't feel right at all. Within minutes I got the scoop from an elder angler who seemed to have got it from everyone else a half mile down the beach--no fish at all. I fished until 5:19 after sunset, had no hits, nor did anyone else in sight.

Fished an Ava 17 with teaser fairly persistently, but not as hard as I would have if I suspected fish would move in. I set up my bait rod--an 11 foot heavy duty outfit--right at the edge of the bar and the inside sluice. Most of my casting the fish finder rig and five ounce pyramid sinker was short and directly to that deep sluice into which the beach banks sharply. I couldn't cast over the furthest breakers with either bait or the Ava. Had I got five yards further into the surf wading, I still wouldn't have the reach to whip weight over them, and I didn't try--especially avoided where the beach slopes sharply--since my right knee is still very bad and threatened to give out with unstable sand underfoot and jarring heaves of surf wash.

The most fun was snapping about 50 photos. But the contemplative moods I visited along the way for those three hours satisfied the most. I wish I had the time to upload my memories of them and share them with you. I do recall recognizing at one point that even when grand ranges of ideation are present in mind, the reality is subtle, and it's difficult to retain a grasp of what had been thought. This is because such thinking is primarily intuitive and almost subliminal--you're always aware of a great deal that does not quite cross the threshold into consciousness. And that's the beauty of it, not that you are a computer that doesn't function well enough, but that you can become aware in ways a computer can never even approximate--it can only store and organize information--and best of all the mysteries seem to have a life of their own and do not throw themselves upon you. But they are related to you. They will return some other time, and you may become more clear about something in your life than ever before.

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Nice Crappie, Hybrid Stripers: Lake Hopatcong Cold Front

Walleye weather, no, not with no clouds at all above, from shortly after 9:00 until 4:15. We struggled under as much angling adversity as a cold front ever gives, except that temperatures weren't terribly cold--36 when we began and about 50 for the high. As we raced out of Woodport on Lake Hopatcong, I knew the 45 degree water temperature was due to the shallows--six, eight, about 10 feet at most--of the entire Woodport acreage. I was curious how much warmer the water in the deep points region remained, and relieved to find it at 51. Perhaps a greater relief came in the form of relative calm compared to the weather forecast. We had brisk breezes for short periods of time, but even longer periods of complete calm. So motionless the boat would remain that instead of jigging in place, I casted the Rapala ice jig, and Gotch jigger, to work it back along the bottom through intervals.

My friend Joe Landolfi caught the first fish after two hours or so, a good sized crappie from the Great Cove side of Chestnut Point, 34 feet deep on the bottom, Gotcha jigger. We raced here and there before I caught a yellow perch by one of those casting maneuvers, Rapala ice jig, three inch. No big deal with that, but a dash of interest. I can't remember for certain, but believe Joe's hybrid came off Elba Point. Think I remember noting that I finally witnessed a fish here, having never before, but having tried a number of times. Gotcha jigger, 40 feet deep. I jigged up another crappie on same at Pickerel Point, 38 feet deep, an 11 incher. Both of the crappies came to the surface with their eyes bulging out as if they had the bends, but are these depths sufficient for that? We've never noticed walleyes or hybrids with the same condition. Finally I hooked my hybrid in 40 feet of water at Sharps Rock, Gotcha. These weren't the big beauties which frequently enough make dreams real on Hopatcong. Both were about an ounce or two over two pounds, and a half to an inch over the legal size limit of 16 inches.

A great, long day. It had seemed so tough at first that I feared we'd be skunked. No walleyes seemed to stir, although we'll never know what the few hits we missed were. 40 feet down is dark and remote from open skies. But I always believe barometric pressure has to do with it somehow. Perhaps I am superstitious about this; I have no specific evidence for the belief, but I do know that nature is much more subtle than what we see and what we can reason and compare on such a gross level as the darkness of those depths and the clarity of the sky. I had said to Joe within the first two hours that my bet was we'd catch no walleyes--but that we might catch hybrids.

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Miles Davis and the Return to Fishing

A frequent flyer on the right side of my brain, this half, owing to a right stuff of chemistry, behaves like a powerhouse. I've never believed it's abnormal, but different. Our culture is more suited to accommodate brain functions that serve ordinary means, rather than the wonder of why we ultimately do anything. A true culture of the arts and philosophy--not excluding angling, the outdoors, and business--allows for discipline without any crisis or conflict between how-to and the happiness of realization.

The right and the left sides of the brain can sort of reverse politics in a way that's confused, since the whole brain is really the actual fact. The left side is preferred today for its commonsense. But the right side represents or symbolizes the true home of productivity (including job creation). It's been thought to generates original ideas, passion, and love, although further research suggests the comparison between the two halves is not as divided as previously thought.. The right side was also thought to be responsible for authentic sexual response, intuition, and appreciation of beauty and value. It goes without saying that "the right side of the brain" tends to be marginalized as much as we remain trapped in cynical and uncaring attitudes, or caring, rather about getting things done in an unhappy way that would question why, desperately obsessed rather than experiencing happiness and joy. Surely a drive to get at the cause of our discontent--which is what the obsession really amounts to, if the notion of achieving understanding is repressed--could end with finding answers. 

On November 17th, 2004, I disembarked with my son, Matt, then five, for the Delaware River between Barryville, New York, and Narrowsburg, New York, Narrowsburg is about 110 miles from home. I remember the morning was partly sunny, fairly mild, maybe 50 degrees--the snow in the bottom photo is actually from March 2005 across the river from Barryville. After driving several miles up route 206, I put my Miles Davis, Doo Bop, c.d. on. The music never stopped until we arrived at the bait shop in Eldred, New York. I was on one of the most exquisite journeys I had entered into for years.

Matt felt perfectly happy. Although we spoke very little, he beamed with awareness every time I looked back upon him in the rear seat. (We hope this strange rite of distance from our young children--for their safety of course--hasn't affected them adversely.) It was as if he were cradled in my euphoria generated outward, connecting with him and my total environment.

I remember how the road fit in my hand. No longer bang, rattle, boom down the highway, but a seam of energy. Not coarse energy, like coal burning, but cosmic infusion, love itself. I hear nuance in music anytime, but it can strike hard and be in dissonant relation with other variations in the instrumentation. On that day the music's source gained transcendent resonance, with no loss of my awareness being anchored in the road. Matt's favorite piece on the c.d. is "The Doo-Bop Song." And if the most poignant passage of the entire collection is wondrously paradoxical when Andy Griffith's simple whistle (recalling fishing) rises over the drive and rage of the Davis band. Davis's subtle trumpeting over rages of instrumentation is reminiscent of Griffith's whistle.

And the deep bass drumming seemed to pound years of fishing left behind back into me. This trip--we caught a number of good sized smallmouth bass, a largemouth, and a pickerel--as exquisitely mystical as it was, seems most importantly to be the turning point in my life back to fishing as a serious recreational pursuit. 

During my teens I fished an average of about 285 days a year--I keep a log which records every day I fish since the start of 1975. At 18, I abandoned taking fishing seriously and fished only on occasion, maybe 30 days a year. I had undergone a conversion to interest in literature, philosophy, and psychology, studied all these subjects in college, but quit before I would have graduated to study and write while maintaining a shellfishing business. It didn't demand much time. Essentially it provided outdoor recreation. And it paid pretty well.

I never lost the outdoors. But it's good to be back at fishing. I'll never recapture just what I had in my teens, but that's not exactly the point. In a way it is the same American mainstream now as in 1978, which I departed from to do my writing and self-employment--very different from the high school to college to corporate job track. But now I too am a corporate employee, another phase I hope to grow out of into full time writing.

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Catch Marine Fish near the Gulf Stream: Outer Banks North Carolina Memories

The Outer Banks, North Carolina, is protected by both wise policy, and perhaps in an ironic way, nature. Hurricanes threaten all built on these islands and penninsula as if to make sure we never fully abuse their natural presence. Many dozens of miles of protected National Seashore allow for solitude even in mid-day summer sun. The Gulf Stream courses near, so mild weather visits during winter.

Fishing can be fantastic. I was eight in 1969 when my father took me to Kitty Hawk Pier, now removed after fatal hurricane damage some years ago. I caught 22 white perch, anadromadous fish rarely present in the Atlantic, but on this day enduring in droves. I had begun fishing that year, first in New Jersey's Delaware and Raritan Canal. I have forever after loved fishing North Carolina piers.

My son, Matt, and I have yet to try the end of Avalon Pier for king mackerel, but we may in the near future. The plan is to buy stern tackle for amberjacks beyond the reef of the Florida Keys, possibly next summer. Add very large groupers to the mix, possibly. I learned how to tie rigs with piano wire-like leaders in the summer of 2007. But we went out with surf rods! Whatever hit my ballyhoo--surely an amberjack--melted my 11 foot surf rod into a noodle. The fish absolutely slammed the bait drifted 25 feet down or so over 80 feet of water, dove into bottom coral, and ripped the line to shreds, all in a matter of seconds. 

Once we're done in Florida, we'll have most of what we need for the end of Avalon Pier. Then it's the matter of competing for space with the locals. I'm honestly not sure how this will work out if we do try.

So far, I've most enjoyed working a jigger, a Gotcha plug-jig, same used on New Jersey's Lake Hopatcong vertical jigging walleyes. I've caught weakfish and blues, but from the age of 17 have never brought a Spanish mackerel over the rail, the principal target of this approach. Many have slashed at my jiggers, but none have stayed on! It just raises the ante on my expectations every year we visit the Banks. 

We've got them trolling Clark spoons, which is plenty fun itself. The world record came from Ocracoke Inlet, 13 pounds, but most are closer to one and two pounds, some three. I've never heard of any recent over five. Cero mackerel are sometimes present in the Inlet, and these do average closer to five pounds. All of the Banks inlets, even the Oregon Inlet, are wild and free compared to ours in New Jersey. Fishing in Jersey is good and sometimes great. But in North Carolina you can virtually have an entire inlet to yourself. Likely you will see a few boats, but not much more.

I am myself a mix of straightforward, honest, factual conventionality, and also remote, strange, symbolic, visionary idiosyncracy, but the "idiosyncratic," at least in my case, is much more objective and open to being shared, than would be popularly supposed. It's sort of like that first photograph up top--you see it too. Perhaps you wouldn't have shot it, seen it to shoot. But now that it's produced, there you go. For me the Outer Banks somehow suits this paradox where I am in some ways better than anywhere else I've been.