A Stationary Canvas with Nothing for me to Paint on

Sky more distant and slow than at the end of last week, a stationary canvas with nothing from me to paint on besides the image of a likely day to catch a trout, despite the mirror surface. The coots never left where I photographed them and I have no idea what the attraction was. I was more fascinated in the black and white shot, this one of those infrequent days when a photograph interested me more than the surroundings. 

The balance appealed. I spent the hour in the car writing at rapid pace, drawn in and abstracted rather than taking sense impressions. But I did notice the reservoir bottom through aqua marine green extending into depths, which weeks of wind had obscured, and which made me remember May and bass fishing with a desire to do some more in the spring. 

If it weren't for Round Valley Reservoir and other diversions off the highways, I'd just be doing the same damned machine process over and over, clearly in keeping with Albert Einstein's definition of insanity. Does anyone really think we'll get a different result in the economy we have now? By doing the same thing over and over? 

Meadowlands Striped Bass: Fish Early Season in this Transformed Environment

Meadowlands Stripers

Fish Early Season in this Transformed Environment

The Meadowlands are the most paradoxical place in the state, possibly in the world—an immense landfill thriving with wildlife and fish. With the dumps inactive since about 1980, garbage remains underground. It’s said that anywhere you would dig in the Meadowlands, you would find something. The grassy hills that grace horizons are mounds of trash underneath. Near some Richard W. Dekorte Park trails you can see a few small drain pipes that empty black leachate—liquid decomposition from the bottoms of these piles, pure pollution and poison.

But this alien mixture does not empty into the approximately 500 acres of Hackensack River associated tidal flats in the park. When calm, the surface of these waters will sometimes reflect a peregrine falcon and landing passenger jet alike flying overhead. And the big secret for anglers is that for years now, from late March into June, a few fishermen have been scoring big on school stripers. I have heard of them caught as large as 11 pounds, and from another source, 10 pounds. The flats can be an excellent early season starting point because they are mostly very shallow. During a March or April heat wave, falling tide pulls out warmed water from flats above the lower set, and stripers congregate in the currents.

Spillways and a Sluice—Stripers Seek the Action

Being artificial, the lay-out of the few flats is fairly simple. Two have higher water levels than the lower. All three are cordoned off from one another by lengthy dikes with trails and fishing access all along them. But a great deal of acreage is simplified for the purpose of fishing by pipe spillways between these flats, and one large sluiceway with flow under a bridge. Without these striper magnets, it seems doubtful the bass would bother with these flats at all. At low tide, most of the lower flat is exposed mud and huge Atlantic white cedar stumps from the 19^th century. But channels leading to the spillways and sluice are perfectly evident; it all makes sense.

Each one of the eight pipe flows can hold bass. But everyone seems to agree that the outflow closest to the Meadowlands Environmental Center building is hot. Simply exit the parking lot towards the first flat visible to the right of the building facing it. That corner with the outflow looks humble, but can be loaded with bass. So is the outflow at the far corner of the straight dike which proceeds from the first corner. I spoke to an angler who has fished these waters for years, and he told of once catching a dozen keeper sized stripers on a blistering cold day in March when the tide approached its lowest point. The first corner was “nothing but a shallow creek, and I pulled one bass after the other out of it!”

The far corner outflow seems to pump straight out into deep open water, but I bet you will get snagged and change your notion. At low tide stumps are visible and a few lures gracing them. It’s best to begin a retrieve when a swimbait hits water, keep rod tip high, and turn that crank. Plenty of bass congregate here, and one angler told me that a big bass hit his floating Rapala, so big that it never stopped running before the 8 pound test mono parted.

From the far corner, a 10 minutes’ walk—a good half mile or so—takes you to the walk bridge over the sluice. Here the upper flat has the deepest water of all the acreage, about 35 feet, a big hole unlike all the other area. As tide falls, water moves through this sluice with great force because of the uneven water levels between flats. That water is deep under the bridge and typically too fast to fish. But immediately past the bridge portal, edges and eddies develop. A great deal of possibility exists for working a lure, the water is not so deep as it empties onto the lower flat, and bass pack it.

Lures to Choose and Retrieves that Work

Especially early on, nothing seems to beat a paddletail swimbait, with other swimbait styles following as close seconds. I did, however, once run out of paddletails (the stumps are voracious), and settled for straight tailed swimbaits, only to have the bite stop dead. I don’t think it was because the stripers moved on or stopped hitting altogether. Rather, I think paddle action is deadly and can make all the difference sometimes.

This isn’t largemouth bass fishing. Even with fairly cold water a moderate retrieve tends to be most effective. If the bass are associated with these currents, they are here with an interest to feed. By retrieving a paddletail along a current edge, either steady or with some pulls and twitches, it’s not important and often not advisable to keep close contact with bottom. You have two objectives: to provoke feeding stripers to mistake your lure for a frantic herring, and to keep it rather than lose it to a stump.

3/8ths to 3/4 ounce sizes work well; I’ve done best with white and pearl. A light rod will suffice, but with an 8 foot spinning rod ideal for casting lures in the fall surf you can get the most casting distance from half to ¾ ounce swimbaits. This helps in the sluice area—the current reaches well out onto the flat as tide falls—and even in the corners. Naturally with such a beefy rod you will need at least 10 pound test line so that you don’t break it on a hook set. With lighter rods it’s wise not to go under 8 pound test, just in case.

As water warms, lure choice increases: jerkbaits and even topwaters are more appealing because their erratic action approximates the increased activity of herring and bass alike as the season progresses. Fish those edges and eddies especially, but always check strong current, except under the bridge when it’s useless. I’ve caught bass in direct current even early in the season.

Experiment with retrieves since variation might hit a nerve that regular patterns just don’t excite. Nature is less regular and lawful than schoolbooks lead us to believe. Its complexity is infinite and always deviating from any norm. While everything that swims has a constant intent to survive, most everything doesn’t survive long, so irony gets the best of most intentions—bass are looking for motions that catch their attention in whatever natural way moves them to strike. Since we usually can’t know exactly what those ways may be—experiment.

Evening is the Best Bet

For whatever reasons, it’s not always the case that an early warm spell with a falling evening tide provokes a bite. Early in April this past year, I had what I thought was a perfect combination of sun, 87 degree temperatures, and falling late afternoon/evening tide. I would almost have succumbed to believing a big score was inevitable; my ability to put hope in check developed over years of fishing saved face. I had one hit.

Although the best bet early on are conditions that produce warm water ebb, my best fishing in April has been during overcast, light rain on mid-afternoon ebb. And catches, as I have illustrated, are made in blustery, cold conditions as well. At least relatively cold--I don’t suppose a March day in the mid-teens would be worthwhile.

Once water has warmed appreciably by May, early and late becomes the rule that may be broken, especially during overcast or rainy weather. By June, if it gets too hot, those shallow flats become a frying pan and you may as well chase the bass back into the Hackensack River.

Wampum is Money Symbol Better Than Nothing

Wonder and a hole not wide enough to fall into. Or dive, as some would. Brine freezes at 29, and the taste of salt and other admixtures is curiously a reminder of warmth, as if the proverbial salt of sanity assures by its actual substance on the mouth. A wetsuit used to be the actual protection for clammers, but we were always at sea in the winter, consumed except for the point of focus behind our foreheads. Comparing ice fishing to that is like comparing a picnic to survival hunting, but when the adventures were done for the day, we hauled onion sacks of what once served as wampum, money, into the wholesale market, and hot showers never, ever felt better than afterwards. 

It's like an object lesson. Where does money really come from? Banks? No. It's made. And all that is made begins with real stuff taken from nature.

These kids didn't fish any money through the hole. But they caught some pickerel. Not one of them would harbor any misgiving against money, either, so long as it's real and not fabricated. Not that wampum serves any purpose today other than symbolic, but that symbol is better than nothing at all, and debt is less than zero. 

I'd rather work a bay in sub-freezing temperatures and earn money than pretend.   

Clouds Carried Obediently Like Mass Transit Shifts City Status Quo

Forty two-degree breeze, clouds carried obediently like mass transit shifts the city status quo. Sometimes Round Valley Reservoir is burdened from above. Nothing is looking down as something moves by, and nothing lingers to hang along mountain edges like spirit imbibing substance. My boots found enough crunch in the gravel to ground senses to water within range I cast to, which promised trout somewhat, but the clouds didn't seem to swing low enough and as suspected, no hits. 

One of the men I met fishing two days ago had been out since 8:30 a.m. and caught two 18-inch trout.

I've caught plenty when the sky is a blue dome. But when the weather seems angry, when clouds bear down low and spit rain like they mean it, that's fishing weather.

Back to Improve on Development with Reacquired Means

As if things wild, given, undeveloped become the height of civilized achievement. Before cave walls were etched and painted by the first artists, man was a perceptual being without spiritual response, wasn't yet man. Perhaps bones were the first tools, as if knowledge of death began to awaken at the same time.

Most are born within walls and stay within walls. The cold of winter shakes them to the bone, frightens. 

A very few of us find our way outside. Even fewer make it back to improve on development, having re-acquired means where they begin.

Mountain Edges Diffuse in Thin Haze

Soft as a baby's skin, mountain edges diffuse in thin haze suggested mounds of ice cream. They relieved tension as suddenly and objectively as touch and taste. Released at Round Valley Reservoir, I could have been walking on clouds at 38,000 feet for a few moments of realization about how the past decade of my life fishing has ensured my novel writing. I don't choose the word assure to describe this, because actual security in physical conditions makes the difference. If I were pent up behind walls all day and did not get out into the wide open world, I couldn't think with the freedom I enjoy. It's not that the novel is all about fishing--it is in part--but that creativity is generated naturally. 

Caught Another Rainbow Trout: First Day of the Year Fishing and First Fish

Thought intense sunlight wouldn't mean a hit, but caught a 17-inch rainbow. Round Valley seemed a sort of basin of things rolling over the land and into the depths today, as if everything tends to find water and get swallowed. Lakes, reservoirs, bays, and oceans are sort of like stomachs as water generates all the life on the planet, with a lot of help from the sun. But dried grasses and browned branches and underbrush nearly match the iron-influenced gravel along the reservoir's edge and made the place feel like a desert with big water in the middle of it.

I sat up the hill in the car for half an hour reading before I went down to check my rod. The trout had almost spooled the reel, bail left open. It just took the marshmallow and mealworm and headed on out into very deep water, taking the bait for at least a hundred yards or more.