Stream Brown Trout on Lures and Fatheads

Not too many brown trout stocked in New Jersey this year, but I thought I would include a piece published last year for Recorder Newspapers.

Brown Trout Provide Fishing into June

          Fishing for brown trout with spinning gear differs significantly from brook and rainbow trout. They don’t hit salmon eggs nearly as often and other options may work better than power bait. Browns are also more nocturnal than the other two, so fishing deep into dusk and before sunrise can be especially productive.

          Fathead minnows work especially well. Available at Efinger Sporting Goods, Dover Sport Shop, Stanhope Bait and Boat and other venues, fatheads are small minnows that almost always work. An ultra-light rod and reel, four-pound test, and perhaps a BB split shot a foot above a size 10 hook are all you need. Generally pools, deep holes, and slow stretches hold brown trout, but faster water often does too, and fatheads can be drifted with or without weight, depending on depth and current.

          Other options have advantages over wading long lengths of stream while you carry a minnow bucket. Shoulder baitfish canisters are available at some shops, but in any event, plugs like the one and two-inch Rapala Countdowns, in-line spinners, Berkeley synthetic minnows, and a whole range of plastic twister tails and grubs used on tiny jig heads or plain hooks can make angling simpler and lead to plenty of catches.

          Rapala Countdowns sink. Their namesake means you can count about a second per foot of descent, which can help when fishing deep water to get the lure near bottom. Steady retrieve is more effective in fast, broken water where plenty of current action is a given. Jerking the rod tip may make a difference in slow stretches. Plugs and spinners give you the advantage of covering more water quickly. If a stream is running high and somewhat off color, spinners may be the best choice since the blades produce vibrations trout sense. Mepps spinners have a modified Colorado blade that produces more vibrations than typical willow leaf blades perhaps more suitable to clear water.

          The best way to fish a synthetic minnow may be to use a split shot a foot above a size 10 plain shank hook on four-pound test, the same simple rig used with fatheads or salted minnows. I think this synthesis of bait and lure is an improvement over salted minnows, which I’ll never use again. They stay on the hook better and have more life-like action. Retrieving with subtle rod tip jerks, lifting the bait off bottom to let it settle again, and drifting it through current produces.

          Another recent discovery on the trout scene is that trout—especially browns—respond well to the sorts of soft plastic grub lures combined with a jig head usually used for bass. It’s a matter of scaling down to jig heads as light as 1/32nd or 1/64th-ounce or just using a BB split shot ahead of a size 10 hook. Tiny Trout Magnets have been on the market for years, and the simple straight plastic tail may be all that’s needed. I used to catch native brook trout on Dunnfield Creek with small shad darts. But trout are selective. If they’ve seen a lot of one variety, they may hit another. Trout can also pose a problem by their sensitivity to color, so experimenting may at the least seem to bring results.

          For a number of years, I would wake on a May Saturday before dawn, fix myself a quick coffee as I organized gear, and arrive on the North Branch Raritan with a chorus of birds loud like a party, very little light in the air. I began with a one-inch Rapala Countdown to get immediate results. After catching the third brown trout in a single stretch, the action would stop. Then I offered a fathead. Again, an immediate hit, and I would catch three more and walk out with a full limit string, sometimes just as the next guy arrived before the sun had risen. I would go home and clean the trout, refrigerate them, and go back to bed. When I had awakened with the rest of my family about two hours later, I always fixed a big trout breakfast for all.

         Why did the browns come to refuse the Countdown, then immediately take a fathead? Whatever the reasons science can discern, trout are selective. None think. But they do perceive very keenly. Perhaps I could have switched to a soft plastic in a subdued color pattern so as not to be too conspicuous in low light and have done as well.     

Striped Bass at Dekorte Park, New Jersey Meadowlands

The New Jersey Meadowlands' Dekorte Park has brackish flats connected to the Hackensack River about a mile from where we fished channels perhaps three or four feet deep as tide fell. The outflows churn water out from flats above walkway dikes, and stripers move in pods to position along and in the currents. Fred nailed his striper just aside from the current on a four-inch swimshad. I noticed his retrieve speed was a little quicker than mine. I switched my three-inch to a four-inch swimshad. In the meantime, Fred had another on he lost. I experimented with retrieve speed and cast placement. Sometimes I let the shad vibrate in the current without reeling. It was that strong. But all to no avail for me.

Then apparently the pod moved out and on. We tried another outflow and a couple of others after that. Tide moving out quick, it became easier to hang up on white cedar trunks that never decay after many dozens of years.

We discussed my past success here, along with my son's lost striper, and inferred that the stripers seem to hit best with some depth remaining, closer to the top of the tide. The water needs to be flowing out, but perhaps fishing is best in the first two or possibly three hours of waning tide. It's easy to imagine that a number of striper pods are on the prowl and when one moves off from an outflow, another might come.

They apparently follow the channels from the river. As we left shortly after sunset, a bittern passing overhead with full, kite-like wings, mud flats were left exposed towards the Dekorte Center. My son and I have seen the flats fully exposed at low tide, besides these channels that seem to direct fish traffic. Cedar stumps emerge black and profoundly aged, as if the 19th century rises from the dead.

I lost three swimshads to stumps. I feel no loss, but be prepared to lose some of any lures you might bring. However, by fishing the first couple of hours of waning tide, and swimming your lure over the stump tops, you're less likely to hang up.

Stripers should be around through May. Dekorte Park is catch and release, and that's good for two reasons. One, this was one of the world's largest garbage dumps just decades ago. Black leachate still emits from the surrounding hills. Those aren't natural. They are garbage filled over with dirt and small trees planted atop. And secondly, it's good to know the fish get put back to go on with their lives.

Cold Front Largemouth Bass

Got out for a little minnow dunking and a drive around Lake Hopatcong with my wife, son, and Labrador Sadie. Very breezy and chilly, our usual shallow spots yielded nothing, so I cast the barrel swivel weighted shiner straight out and put my rod on a rock, bail open, allowing the shiner to mosey its way down into 15 foot depths. This cold front with bluebird skies is persistent, but I was hoping that on this the second day of it, maybe bass and pickerel would feed a little. The lake we fished is pretty deep, so plenty of residual cold water remained under the shallow layer warming quickly with recent temperatures near 80. With temperatures below freezing last night, I suppose most of that warm water layer cooled.

Nevertheless, when I picked up my rod, I felt the tugs of a fish, thinking pickerel, and set the hook, hollering for my son to run over and get the camera. He had taken off to try further along a shoreline. Turned out to be a bass 19 inches long, but very skinny--a big buck. The females certainly haven't spawned yet. I told Matt, "I'm just casting straight out and letting the rod sit," and did this again. He responded to the simple style and did the same. A few minutes passed and then my rod tip jiggled, line turning off the spool. I quickly grabbed the rod, set, and was into a bass that felt much larger. I thought I had a five-pounder, but it was only about 17 1/2 inches, chunky. Soon after, Matt leaned into a good fish, a bass of about 18 inches. And then for another 20 minutes, no action, but for 45 minutes to an hour of being there, the flurry for 10 minutes or so of really nice bass, all over three pounds, provided a lot of fun.

With the sun getting low, I got on Interstate 80 and exited for Lake Hopatcong, checking out Lake's End Mariana where a few people fished, but not stopping to shoot photos. We pulled into State Park, but didn't get out. It looked too drab and cold. We did stop at River Styx and I got some photos there. Trish and Matt enjoyed a little walkabout. They both walked much more at our previous destination, where I stayed holed up with the bass. Both of them felt very pleased with the release of forgetting all else and the beauty of the place, and although we weren't there long, it feels as if we spent a whole day. And we stopped at a few overlooks briefly between Styx and Brady Bridge, arriving at Jefferson House restaurant to find it closed, and the Windlass likewise. It's a weekend thing this time of year. And the lake felt cold, but the kind of cold you know is on its way to spring and summer. You can just feel or taste this. We ate at Jefferson Diner. I had clams Portuguese, very spicy, but full of vegetables mixed with the sauce, pasta, and sausage, and especially clams, clams my favorite. Matt had a big burger platter, and Trish a fancy eggplant dish.

Largemouth Bass Respond to Warm South Wind, Husky Jerk and Rapala Floater

Here in New Jersey the last few days have been well into the 70's, if not above 80 today and yesterday. I got interested in trying a Husky Jerk after sunset yesterday, not because the suspending action of the plug was necessary. I wanted to use it to see what would happen, since I've used it so infrequently. The surface calm, I might have drawn surface strikes, although in recent years I've found the lure of early season surface fishing here deceiving, doing much better on subsurface jerkbaits. I plugged our neighborhood bass pond for 15 minutes, catching two largemouths not much more than a pound each. Both of these hung very close to shore, caught on more or less parallel casts in the same vicinity.

Today I returned to fish at about 5:00 with a Rapala #9 Floater, caught four bass, none more than a pound. A powerful south wind chopped the surface, even though the pond is no more than four feet deep maximum. I cast hard into the wind and tried out from shore, but the hits that led to catches and those I missed came in close. I might have done better with a spinnerbait. Past stints--these measured in minutes, rather than hours--I've done well on quarter-ounce spinnerbaits when a powerful wind drives water against the north bank. And I find bass well out from shore, rather than in close where they responded to the Rapala today.

I don't know why they all have been smaller so far this year. The past two or three years, they've averaged a pound-and-a-half to about two pounds. I was already wondering last year why the average size remained the same, as if the bass hadn't grown. It used to be average size in this pond was about 11 inches, although bass have been here for at least 20 years, and I can't account for the sudden growth. I first fished this pond 15 years ago July.

Chalk it up to two consecutive days with smaller bass. They're surely going to average larger again this year, but it is odd how it feels as if my curiosity in using jerkbaits instead of a spinnerbait got this result.

Hatchery Rainbow Trout Reaclimate to Streams: Wading Gets You to Them

Wade a Stream for Quality Rainbow Trout

          Late this afternoon, I fished the North Branch Raritan River upstream of the typical crowd gathered where trout are stocked from the entryway bridge to AT&T World Headquarters. Fishing slow, sometimes trout refuse to feed just after being stocked. But I caught two rainbows on salmon eggs, including a two-pounder, and left before my mood would turn to any dismay. The few trout that ventured upriver were more interested in feeding. I had seen three other anglers catch a trout apiece in the area of the separate exit bridge where I fished. The crowd well in view about 60 yards away caught none.

          Some of the many rainbows left in the river tonight will surely move downstream and upstream. Especially if we finally get heavy rain that floods our rivers, trout will spread out between bridges and anglers can catch some by engaging the length and flow of a stream, wading.

          On stocking days, you can witness fishermen standing on a bank, baiting a hook with a worm weighted by a split shot, and placing it directly down among a swarm of trout bunched together after being thrown from a bridge. Much the same could be done in the hatchery runways or a bathtub. If catching fish is what it’s all about, why bother with rivers and lakes? Open an amusement park with tanks to fish in. It’s similar with fishing as it is with golf—some courses are more difficult and more highly prized.

          Wading at its best is truly wholesome enjoyment. If you succeed at catching trout by going beyond the familiar bridge site and looking instead to places you’ve never seen, wading can make you feel good through and through. Either with or against current, the flow gets going within you, in part because terrestrial life originated in the seas. The mysterious feeling of deep affinity for water has some explanation by citing life’s origin. Human amniotic fluid is a lot like brine, as if something of the distant past—before mammalian evolution—remains part of our physiology. The sudden smell of brine at the shore can awaken a poignant feeling of being at home, a familiarity with the planet which is mostly ocean. Our region’s streams flow to the Atlantic either by way of the Delaware, Raritan, or Passaic rivers. Ultimately, affinity with water is oceanic, but less feeling is plenty healthy and enough.

          Rainbows won’t only be found in deep holes or currents with boulder eddies and depth. They also hold in shallow riffles. Drifting shallow riffles with salmon eggs need not be an arduous repetition. If, after one or two tries, nothing slams an egg, move on. Fast water rainbows are exciting when encountered. They’re so eager they may strike an egg tumbling between your feet. I’ve heard of it happening, such an antic of hatchery trout that you can’t help but like them.

         Deep, slow water deserves slowing down. Plumb the area thoroughly. It’s possible to have caught several in six inches of water just upstream, then to catch more in 10 feet of slow water, where it takes a while for the salmon egg to drift near bottom.

          Sometimes you have to expend a lot of effort for few trout. I frequently remember an outing eight years ago on Pennsylvania’s Bushkill Creek. My son and I fished most of the morning. He caught one or two; I caught three. The visual memory I have of what it took to catch the last trout is clear as day. Searching that long, rocky, deep stretch for the practical result of catching a rainbow trout so vividly awakened my senses that the impression on memory remains striking. Books on creative artists, writers, and scientists like Kay Redfield Jamison’s Exuberance claim that what they all have in common is time spent in wild places. Perhaps to awaken senses by such outdoor pursuits as fishing is to stir deeper faculties of the mind. I could paint the Bushkill scene from memory. And nothing is as perennial as fishing besides hunting and gathering berries. People have done it for at least 100,000 years.

          If you find you like small rivers, you might try a small stream like Beaver Brook in Warren County, or Peapack Brook in Somerset for something different. Many brooks in the Highlands and Valley/Ridge have wild rainbows and/or browns and native brook trout. In the spring you can try and distinguish if you have caught a trout recently stocked or not. At any rate, our region has tiny rills, brooks, mid-sized streams like the Pohatcong, and small rivers like the Pequest full of trout this time of year. Each offers unique experience.  



Knee Deep Club Hoping to Stock Lots of Trout in Lake Hopatcong

Dows Boat Rentals

 

The Lake Hopatcong Report from Laurie Murphy at Dows Boat Rentals doesn't have much to say for Trout Opening Day, but some interesting fish otherwise have been caught. Laurie wrote that the lake did not completely melt out until Friday, a day before the season opener for trout. Due to the furunculosis outbreak at Pequest Hatchery, only 2000 trout will make it into the lake this spring. However, the Knee Deep Club has reached out to the Lake Hopatcong Foundation for help in getting more fish stocked by member's and anyone else's help. The Foundation, agreeing to a one time matching grant, requires that Knee Deep collect $5000.00 before stocking trout April 26th, and it will match this amount. This is a chance to make a donation and go fishing, because, for one, Dows is open and renting boats, and secondly, there will be more trout to catch in the lake, whether by boat or from shore. I'm making my donation out of a sense of inclusion with other club members. I don't fish trout on Lake Hopatcong, but I do fish hybrid stripers and walleyes, two fish that Knee Deep has gone a long way towards establishing and maintaining. If this were a routine stocking, I would simply look the other way, since I fish trout elsewhere. But the club is trying to make up for a lack in the seasonal fishery the state normally provides for the most part, and anyone and everyone who fishes trout in the lake will be benefitted by at least the possibility of more fish.

 

They're not "only" hatchery trout. They're trout. People prize this fish because that's what they really are--living fish requiring skill to hook and play, and worthy of admiration. We admire fish for their beauty. In part, because fish are where we came from--the water--life flourishing as fish life in the ocean long before any did on land. And fish began the vertebral venturing onto land (before they were amphibians), which evolved into us. What is a hatchery trout that we breed? Our own care.

 

Laurie reports that Michael Attanasio was excited with his 4 pound, 9 ounce pickerel, a very nice one, bigger than any I've caught. Dan Lehr caught perch and crappie, as well as largemouth and pickerel from 2 1/2 to 3 pounds.   

Opening Day Rainbow Trout, Taking in Hunterdon Hills

 Awaiting 8:00 a.m.

We almost turned around and went home. I've fished a lot of Opening Days since 1971, but none with water as muddy and high as this morning. There may have been an absolute washout one of the Opening Days I would have fished; I don't remember for certain, but I knew better than to judge the conditions unfishable this morning, and faced putting on my resistant neoprene waders. The first five minutes or so of fishing yielded nothing to anyone, so when my son, Matt, suddenly played a trout, I felt a little surprised. The bright pink eggs paid off. We filled a single limit of rainbows in an hour, and then drove downstream along Federal Twist Road. By then wind tunneled down Locatong Creek's valley.

These Hunterdon Hills, Kingwood to Raven Rock descending hundreds of feet, are really much more than the cursory eye of daily doings perceives. Way back in 1978 I once ascended the Locatong from its mouth at the canal a full two miles and back, all the way to Strimple's Mill, catching smallmouth bass on Twister grubs rigged on a plain hook without weight. That August day I came upon no one else, and I remember seeing only one house just before the mill rises in view over the stream. Relating this story to my son here at home wouldn't mean much, and of course I never had, but as we parked at a bridge upstream of the mill, I enjoyed deep pleasure in the telling.

We stood on this bridge you see below and I shot more photos. The stream flowed forbiddingly, the current moving more like a freight train than a black bull you back away from, and where the trout would lie exactly in all that water seemed worthless to try. But we got our rods and I nailed a rainbow on my first cast, the water deep enough to reach against the wind holding fish or at least one was there. I had to mend line against the current and the wind, saw the line twitch, set, and engaged play. Nevertheless, that wind was too much and we were out of there in minutes. It billowed through from right under the bridge. We added some weight to our snaps today.

And then I showed Matt Strimple's Mill, a little surprised the place is still there, and it even looked as if it's been in use recently with some saw dust underneath. Broken windows, rotted sidings, an open view of the inside--all this suggested that it's been abandoned for years, all except the saw dust that surely would have been swept away by recent big storms. How long it's been since I've seen the place I can't remember, but I spoke about the black & white photo print hanging in our study of my brother Rick, fishing those same shallows near the bridge, Strimple's Mill in the background. He was 10, so 36 years ago and some days or weeks.

I experienced a realization that would have appalled me in younger years. I posed the simple question: why have we been coming up here for the past 39 years? Not every year, but often enough. There used to be a residence we called Tobacco Road on Federal Twist, a total wreck of a place with junk and rusted cars in the front yard, yet inhabited. My family on my father's side originally comes from the mountains of West Virginia, hillbillies, some who were ambitious and decided to take on the big world, moving to the city of Charleston. My parents grew up in Charleston, my father a paid organist at 17, playing for the Charleston Senators minor league baseball club at the stadium. Musically gifted, he became a world class performer. He once told me he was sure his ancestors in the West Virginia mountains played various musical instruments. This eased my feelings, because it used to bother me that I come from such unsophisticated roots.

And there we were, riding down the hills towards the Delaware River, and it all seemed to make sense. I took in the scenes deeply, deciding to take CR 523 through Sergeantsville on the ride home, viewing Stockton and this smaller town with a military-sounding name as if we are still back in the Middle Ages, and that our technology is yet primitive compared to what we will achieve. Think 5000 years from now, let alone six or seven hundred since before the European Renaissance. But it felt good to return to modern conveniences, once home, and know that I would be on the computer. It still bothers me a bit, those farmstead origins. But ultimately, it's no different for anyone else. We all come from cave men and bush wanderers.
  

Strimple's Mill Beside the Locatong