If You can Spend Time Alone and be Happy

Rained so heavily, this is the only photograph I took. Once again, good weather for fishing, no trout. No one else around, either, only a ranger that motioned at me from his window-sealed cab to move my vehicle into a parking space. 

Well, if he hadn't, I wouldn't have got this shot taken with the driver's door quickly opened, then closed. I happen to like it. 

Once it really gets warm, that dock will be placed in the water to the right of the picture. Round Valley Reservoir will be speckled with boats, kayaks, canoes, and the shorelines near the main boat launch and this Lot 2 area will host wandering couples, bass fishermen, trout fishermen: specks of red, yellow, blue and brown, etc. that give the place a blithe feeling of airy abandon, as if many realizations of everything being alright come to people here. 

But I have to say I like having spent an entire late fall and winter coming to the Valley and sometimes seeing not a single other car in the large lot and no one else in view. I like a place forbidding with the weather doing the trick here in New Jersey. It's not that I don't like people. I like being alone sometimes. And to be able to be alone often and/or at length would mean that one likes people, since a man alone has to put up with himself. 

If you can spend time alone and feel happy, that means you're a good person who passes the tests of deeper stuff coming up.

Reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and Anticipating Space to Fill

I was reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire as I waited for a hit, took a break to go out, walk, shoot photos, and didn't realize until just now that as all winter long I never honored pine trees as I did today, the event of my shooting them goes well with the book. (What are those, white pines?) Abbey spent a season as an Arches National Monument or Park, whichever it is, ranger in Utah, and a certain ash is or was the only deciduous tree in the wilderness he contemplated and explored.

 

It's been nice here at Round Valley all winter and much of the fall. If it wasn't, I wouldn't keep returning. I can almost touch May now. April I'm not big about because the trout fishing from shore remains pretty slow and the bass aren't active yet. Even at Mount Hope Pond last April I caught none. Here in Bedminster, I caught loads of bass in the neighborhood pond, but it's a shallow dishpan and warms like a skillet on the stove. Or like an egg on a desert rock. I wonder what kind at Arches. At Mount Hope, I tried jigging at the bottom of the 12 foot drop, but never got a tap. I messed about in the shallows, too, but nothing seemed to be there. Colonial Park Pond is another story with that silty water absorbing heat and I suspect I'll catch a few. But once the season gets under way, something of stark contemplation with the grand outlines is lost because the green and the pleasure in warmth and scents and visible activities here and there fills in the picture and you tend not to experience the wide edges, wide outlines barren and open more like depicted in Abbey's book.

Round Valley Reservoir Heavy Wind Fickle Trout Fishing

Conditions seemed just right to have some trout action today at Round Valley Reservoir. John had fished for hours without a hit and I fished nearly two hours, also. The shiner's still alive. The waves really roll with heavy wind since the water is so deep and the swells build.

I bet the shoreline fishing in May is better for trout. By June it's all over; you need a boat. But I saw two 20-inch browns caught on shiners from shore while I fished for bass last year. I also saw two browns and a 20-inch laker caught last late February and caught a brown myself in weather a little less severe than today's. I guess I'll start casting spinners soon. In today's wind that would have been difficult, although with clouds of sediment stirred up by the wave action and settling back as many as ten yards out, heavy spinners that could be cast in the wind may have been effective, who knows. I know that a few bass in May run along the edges of browned water when wind is high.

Reading The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder at Round Valley Reservoir

Reading Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild on my lunch breaks, putting out the line at Round Valley Reservoir every other day. I'll probably fish shiners and marshmallow & mealworms into April and may start casting spinners soon, but have a lot of reading to do. Looking forward to bass fishing in May.

John caught nothing today, nor I.

The two young women I photographed as a blur, the photo resized in the camera, walked fast talking animatedly, too caught up in each other to be much aware of the wilds they traversed. But even intensely social activity outdoors results in the environment contributing to refreshment.

I feel as if I would go a lot deeper into the wilds if I had the money and time, needing to earn more money first to pay for the time. In our culture, wage work takes a lot of it, very difficult to rise above. But while I would and possibly may clam the bays behind Long Beach Island for more than a day's stint, I will never immerse myself in such an adventure as my 13 years' doing it commercially again, simply because I got the secrets I was after and don't need to leave everyone else behind once more. Besides, it's getting obvious that at my age, youthful adventure was just that. So I'm happy with as much as I do now, which is really no small matter.

Everything in existence has in essence natural identity, everything we synthesize a rearrangement of natural elements. Why is this important? Some portion of the wild nourishes, sustains, expands awareness and feeling wherever you are. Fundamentally, this is what we depend on. The air we breathe, for example. For me, all it takes is a look in the direction of and into some nearby trees to relieve an anxiety. So I have no need of paying the exhorbitant fees of a doctor, just to get a prescription of Lexapro or whatever, for which a doctor might get a kickback from a pharmaceutical company.

We're supposed to be hard-nosed Americans who grab our mother by the neck, force her down, and subjugate her to markets, selling her for the first fists of cash to come our way, but nature never really has been that woman conquered, and the time of reckoning is here: nature is the system we think we've built to subdue the wilds that may seem to threaten. We've derived each and every principle from nature, and it's an unsustainable contradiction to think we can master what is primary by what is secondary. How we live in a principled way will determine if we survive, the rules we enact according with reality.

Spinners, Shiners & Some Trout About on Round Valley Reservoir

Had used a shiner the other day and today felt rushed to get out the door, so I reverted to marshmallow & mealworm. But the two guys I spoke to, one of them with a Cabelas reel that lost the finger grip, used spinners, one of them nailing an 18-inch brown that hit hard yesterday on two-pound test line. 

That excited me. A hard hit in water that must not be above 40 degrees. A month ago I met a man who uses Redfin floater divers fully four or five-inches long. He had been nailing browns in 30-degree weather. 

Those are the sort of conditions that force you to shake the ice out of the guides. That didn't pique my interest, but now with temperatures on the incline, I guess I'm in the mood and may cast a spinner soon. But next time out I'm trying another shiner. I have enough--if they survive in the aerated bucket--to try the Delaware and Raritan Canal on a day auspicious to walking, also. Pickerel there, maybe bass. 

The pickerel behave like little devils you meet in the submerged brush right along the bank. They streak out and grab the shiner in full view with water clear enough. Then they turn and dash out of sight all in a blur of quickness. 

Another man came along excited about driving out--to Cabelas. He had made the stop here at Round Valley to get two hours of trout fishing in before driving all the way out there in Pennsylvania to browse. Nothing. But he filled me in on a spot. 

The implication of his story is that I should have fished there all winter. He also said Lake Wawayanda had 10 inches of ice over the weekend, but that it was second hand information and I doubt it, but Wawayanda is way north and elevated so I can't say for certain. All I know is that ice thickness during the season certainly does vary in New Jersey; in the northern counties alone it does. It does on a single lake too. 

Feel Spring's Presence in the Environment Just as a Tiny Change in the Tide Implies the Whole

Have run into John at Lot 2 Round Valley Reservoir for a couple of years now. He told me about the 24-inch, 5 1/2-pound rainbow he caught this January. "It leapt four times, clear out of the water." His fishing buddy had passed away recently and he uses his rod as a memento, the tag from the Round Valley Trout Association he plans to attach to this rod he caught the trout on. The Association was good enough to return the tag to him. He always fishes trout with three rods and his buddy's made the big difference for him this season. The fish looks great in the photo print he showed me. I first met John late in November 2011. He had caught a four-pound largemouth just minutes before I arrived, showed me on the cell phone. Last February almost to the day, he showed me the first lake trout I had seen caught from shore.

Two other groups of anglers arrived and one fly fisherman. The weather conditions were very auspicious: heavy wind blowing into the cove, clouds, and falling barometer. It seemed to get everyone interested, but no one caught anything. John had two hits in four hours. 

I always feel spring stir in late February and I wasn't the only one who felt it today, even though temperatures are in the low 40's. You can sense the change if you are immersed enough in nature on a regular basis. It's an almost imperceptible difference at first, like tide that has just shifted from slack to barely coming in. But you feel the hint of spring large in the environment just as a tiny motion in the water implies the whole.

Boy Scouts Ice Fishing: It's the Sort of Thing They Don't Ever Forget

25 acre Brule Lake in Pennsylvania's Black Mountains or thereabouts must be about on the same lattitude as the Jersey state line shared with New York, but the ice was about 10 inches thick, unlike any here. Supposedly, the elevation is above 2000 feet.

 

We drove 3 1/2 hours Friday night, arriving well before midnight, and left this morning at 9:30. The Scouts built Quinzies to sleep in last night, closet thing to an igloo. And they caught some pickerel, actually quite a number of pickerel 14 to 18 inches.

 

Tom had cut the first dozen or so holes and set tip-ups. A couple of hours later, I figured most of the tip-ups were too deep and away from weeds. There are some largemouth in this pond, but apparently mostly pickerel are expected. So I slung the power auger onto my shoulder and cut a line along the west side, setting tip-ups so the shiners swam just over 7 to 10 foot bottoms. Not only did I finally man my own power auger, doing this made all the difference in numbers of pickerel for the boys. I found it to be an awkward machine, but it sure cuts through 10 inches of ice easier than a split bar.