7 Inches of Ice Lake Hopatcong

Oliver asked where we would go on Hopatcong, and I suggested State Park, River Styx, and a spot with a drop-off from about 10 feet of water. Two years ago, Landolfi took my son and I here, and we waited for about two and a half hours, just talking and on occasion lifting tip-ups from holes to stir any lagging shiners back to life. The sun touched the horizon and we were thinking of leaving, although my interest piqued, since I'm very familiar with things happening at the magic hour. A flag went up, all three of us threw cares aside and ran for it. The fish hit right on the drop-off about 12 feet down. Matt heaved on the line and could barely move it.

"Here!" Joe grabbed the line. Landolfi's patience is short lived, but he gets things done. The hook pulled.

"That was a big fish," Joe said.

It's the sort of spot not limited to pickerel and bass as State Park at least tends to be, besides perch and panfish. Could have been a walleye, channel cat, or even a musky.

Today I mostly looked forward to getting out, conversation, and having some moments of communion with the environment: all fulfilled. And of course I shot photos, 200 of them. But after our four hours or so were finished and Oliver had caught one yellow perch to show for our efforts, when two guys came walking to Dow's dock behind us and reported catching six pickerel, I felt the old familiar urge to actually catch fish come alive as waiting on our 10 tip-ups never did provoke.

 Felt mild the first couple of hours, though never got above freezing.

Lake Hopatcong never freezes evenly. Great, thick sheets of ice collided here like little continents, heaving up ice to the left of this photo, and driving ice under here where I photographed the fissure with a very thin sheet over it.

Black ice is best. But this time a bust.

Round Valley Reservoir Trout Report

I've fished trout four or fives since I reported last, lost a nice one, and have witnessed three lakers 15-20 inches, two browns 19 and 22 inches, and a 22 inch rainbow. Mike got the browns on shiners, and the lakers also took shiners. A man and his young son fished together, the boy catching the rainbow on what I forget, but the fish was a conversation piece. Whatever I had on hit a marshmallow and mealworm. I've noticed a couple of guys using 9-foot rods to get extra-distant casts. My son and I each own 11-foot steelhead noodle rods, and I'm thinking about it. Can't use more than 6-pound test; noodle rods are light power, but that's the test I use now anyhow.

The word has been that the browns are gone, but it's rainbows I've heard little about. Oliver fly cast his 10 wt. recently and watched a golden palomino follow his nymph. Not a taker, but a close encounter.

Lake Hopatcong has as many as seven inches of ice in the coves, but this ice may thicken considerably more before the reservoir freezes. In any event, the reservoir won't freeze unless we have more sustained extreme cold than we have enjoyed as yet.

You've got to admit it. Cold can feel good on the face. It stings the nerves and can make the face burn for an hour after you come in, but it's a sure sign that you're responsive and alive.

Ice Fishing Last Year's Knee Deep Derbies and More

Happy New Year! Should be another good one, and we may have ice soon.

 

          Due to plenty of ice on Lake Hopatcong—nearly two feet thick as of March 10th—the Knee Deep Club is hosting another derby on Sunday, March 16, ice conditions permitting. Additional information can be found online. If the derby is held, non-members will be enabled to participate at an additional cost: $25.00 instead of $20.00 for members. Individual membership in the club is $20.00 and a perfect way for beginners to familiarize themselves with ice fishing and the lake otherwise through acquaintances with other members. If mild weather persists until Sunday, surface ice may be a slushy mess, yet safe underneath.

          Pickerel and perch especially fish well through the ice, and plenty are being caught. The February 16th derby winning pickerel was 3 pounds, 12 ounces, and 2^nd and 3^rd place fish were also over three pounds. The winning walleye was also 3 pounds, 12 ounces, not large as this species goes, and the winning yellow perch was 1 pound, 3 ounces—larger than the winning largemouth bass at 1 pound, 1 ounce.

          This does not mean that Hopatcong bass are small. They don’t fish as well as pickerel and perch through the ice, and no one happened to catch any good sized that day. I got a weekend report from Laurie Murphy at Dow’s Boat Rentals on Monday, February 24^th, which included news of a 5 pound, 6 ounce largemouth weighed in at the shop’s scales. The bass was released. Perhaps a party cooler, filled by a siphon stuck through the ice, was used to transport the bass alive. How it was done I prefer to leave to imagination. On Gropp’s Lake, Mercer County, we used to construct live wells by hollowing out 18 inch thick ice, then cutting a small hole through the bottom.

          I also heard from somewhere or other that during the February derby, a few small muskies of about 40 inches were caught. Muskies are not included in the contest, since the overwhelming persuasion on the lake is to release these fish.

          If you want to try for muskies, walleye, or even hybrid stripers and big channel catfish, ice fish one of the many main lake points. If you can find parking at Dows, you can access Nolan’s and Chestnut points, or even walk clear across the lake to Elba or Pickerel points. In any event, purchase a Fishing Map Guides topographic map of Hopatcong, which shows the points, coves, and pickerel flats. If you do fish the main lake, most of the walleye, hybrid stripers, and catfish will probably be 30-45 feet deep. Muskies are not necessarily so deep, although they often are way down at bottom. Sometimes a smallmouth bass is caught at Chestnut Point, but whatever the reason, this species is stubborn through the ice.

          Largemouth bass are better through the ice than smallmouth, but finding where they are is difficult. Pickerel are relatively easy to find and better acclimated to cold water feeding. The State Park flats, for example, about six feet deep when the lake’s level is normal, are acres of weed beds that pickerel prowl winter, summer, spring, and fall. The River Styx is another example of extensive weedy shallows that can be productive for ice fishing. Woodport is productive also, and a good bet with low water now. Perch are available in these spots too, and often rove about in large schools through other areas as well.

          Most of the perch fishing is done by jigging a tiny jig with a mousy grub on the hook. A good idea is to exercise with the manual or power auger and cut a lot of holes. If a school swings in under one hole and is gone after a minute, you can move to another hole and possibly catch up. In any event, especially if you use a hand auger, this is a sure way to keep warm if it’s cold out. The effort expended on ice 18 inches thick is substantial.

          Laurie Murphy told me recently that she remembers years when the ice wasn’t completely gone until early April. It was amazing to contemplate a photo taken of Lake Absegami in Ocean County on February 22^nd this year completely ice free. The Highlands are certainly a winter attraction if you learn how to approach them, while South Jersey is another story entirely.

          Even Round Valley Reservoir has ice a foot thick at the time of this writing, and ice fishermen are catching lake trout 60 feet deep. It will be interesting to see how long the ice fishing season extends this year. Even if you don’t care to actually fish through the ice, getting out on a frozen lake for a walk can be a very stimulating, brisk way to relax.

 

            

 

Beach Fossils of the New York Bight

 

Beach Fossils of the New York Bight

Here's an article sufficiently outdoors published in The Paleontograph many months ago.

          Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York, is a slice of sand where routines of the everyday Big Apple meet the open Atlantic. Who would think this crowded beach is a great place to pick fossils after a storm? Between November and March, Nor’easters produce opportunity few care about, but those who do seek fossils find tokens of deep time. A group of about three dozen of us from the New York Paleontological Society kicked our way across the sand towards drift lines, having been informed that the treasure to seek is a blue crab fossil from the Pleistocene Epoch more than 11,700 years ago. We were assured that plenty of fossil shells would be found, but that the crabs, locked into place by clay having become rock, are uncommon.

          We could do better. Fossil lobster claws, gastropods, sponges, and other very rare specimens have been found on the Rockaway and Long Island beaches. But no one seems to expect them.

          We walked and picked shells that appeared ancient near the throat of the New York Bight, the indentation or oceanic pocket between Long Island and Queens, and the northern New Jersey beaches, cleaved by the Hudson Canyon. Ocean currents erode the coastline freeing fossils from sediment and sand; storms wash them onto the beaches. To some degree the canyon, 7217 feet deep at the continental shelf’s base, routes current in the direction of Rockaway Beach. At any rate, when the wind is strong from the southeast, fossils tend to grace drift lines. You could bet that collectors walked the beaches after Hurricane Sandy, and in fact a blog account confirms they did.

           We surely found Holocene Epoch specimens only a few thousand years old, and none of our collection seemed to be of the rare Lower Pleistocene exceptions two million years old that sometimes get reported. Most seem to come from the Pleistocene Ice Age, although interglacial periods warmed ocean temperature averages 3.6 to 19.8 degrees F beyond what they are now. That was news to my concern for global warming. It made me feel that we are less alone and unique than I had thought. On the other hand, the Wisconsin Glacier was the last of three ice masses, and ocean levels fell 400 feet lower than at present with ocean temperatures averaging 5.4 to 12.6 degrees F colder than they are now. Thus, the Hudson River carved what remains as the Hudson Canyon cutting through the continental shelf. Almost all of the fossil shells are of species alive and well in the Bight today such as surf clams, ocean quahogs, whelks, and moon snails. However, the Ponderous Ark and the periwinkle turn up while living specimens today are from North Carolina southward. This is clear evidence of those warmer waters of startling climatic shifts between glaciers.

          On our beach trek, I had been finding fossil shells that would have excited me as a boy, had I known this is what they are. North Carolina’s Outer Banks had yielded many finds for me at dawn before other beachcombers took their picks. Fossil shells may be available on any beach, although barrier beaches subject to erosion reveal the most. But how does one know how to identify them?

          They tend to be gray. Once a fossil shell was pointed out to me by an experienced collector, I knew them all. Discoloration can vary from gray, to off-white, to tan or rusty. They have no periostracum, the outer shell layer, nor ligament that holds together the bivalves, although there is more to being a fossil than these lacks of characteristics. On occasion, a blackened shell may be found that is not a fossil. The black shell particularly of clams and scallops is the result of years being buried in bay mud, which may be anoxic as is sometimes claimed to be the case. Sulphides stain the shell. However, black shell stain may not require much lack of oxygen. As a clammer in New Jersey’s Barnegat and associated bays many years ago, I found black mud had permanently blackened shells, as opposed to the whitish shells of those from sand, yet these live organisms were not without oxygen despite abundant sulphides. The smell left no doubt.

          As paleontology enthusiasts, we New Yorkers knew that what is essential to making a fossil shell is not the lack of a ligament—which is also usually not present in fairly recent, non-fossil bivalve shells—nor the absence of periostracum, but the mineralization of the fossil substance, whether of shell or crab that also characterizes gray clay concretion. Taphonomy determines specifically how and why fossils are preserved. In common parlance, a fossil is the remains of an organism turned to stone, but fossil shells are not exactly stones and don’t seem to be so at all, although they may be embedded in stone concretion such as common gray clay. Furthermore, shells are mineralized upon formation by organic processes—they’re made of calcium. So are bones, and fossil bones are classics. But the quality of mineralization is not the same in fresh shells or bones as those that have fossilized. The scientific term for the process is perimineralization, which implies the added ingredients from ground water penetrating the pores of bone over great expanse of time, or of brine transforming the mineral content of shells—porous enough—and hardening them to some degree.

          We all know fossils are special. We sensed this as children. Their stoniness is something I sensed as a five-year-old as having to do with a special process of some sort, and I was aware of immense time as a very young boy. It is a natural transformation that results in preservation, as if impermanence in nature is not the whole story. As a child, I found fossils in my Indianapolis, Indiana, backyard and contemplated them as symbols of something absolute within existence of which I am part. They suggested to me that I have something deep within myself that can weather the flux of life.

          True, the earth, the oceans, ourselves—none of this lasts forever. Yet the oceans and the entire planet are part of existence that cannot have come from nothing, nor become nothing. Everything transforms, as a fossil is a transformation of organic matter, given that it is not a fossil footprint or the like. A fossil suggests immortality in the way a work of art is a re-creation or transformation of experiential meaning which lasts for millennia. But nothing lasting would mean anything without particular search here and now, quite limited in time as we were by the few hours of our outing.

         For the time being, we clambered along the beach. We must have walked 15 or 20 blocks and I never expected to find one of those blue crabs, not that any evidence of the original coloration would be present if I did. We all seemed to search with sincere persistence. No one on the beach appeared to be there on a social lark. My son, Matt, had gained a fossilized lightning whelk in perfect condition. What’s the likelihood of this? I saw it first, standing out on the flat, wet sand as the wash receded, like a live creature crawling out of the primordial sea in full view to anyone who would look from the City of New York. I called out to my son. I pointed and he ran immediately to it. We celebrated and soon moved on, my suspecting that this would be our best find and perhaps it was, but everyone had the crab in mind.

          And then it appeared very simply at my feet. I saw the ribbed pattern underside, picked it up, and beheld what everyone else up and down the beach was looking for. I felt more odd than fortunate. This proved to be the only blue crab fossil found. The outing’s expert guide gave my son a blue crab piece he had found on earlier occasion as if to complement his father’s fortune. I was more grateful to the guide than for my own find. I don’t find myself truly avid about paleontology these recent years. But I was so as a young boy; it was important that my son take home a special token. What I remember best is Matt’s triumphant lifting of the whelk above the surf as if he could blow a clarion call through it.    

  

 Fossil oysters in clay concretion

Fossil blue crab (not blue-claw)

My New Website

Good-Size Trout Hooked Round Valley

 I happened to be walking by with my camera when he set the hook. "Can I get a shot?" "Sure."

Nothing's happened for me since I caught the big rainbow more than two weeks ago, but I've been out a few times and got the feeling of Round Valley's expanse that always seems to let me breathe easier. I guess that's important for someone who smoked Marlboros. We had some intense snow showers, obviously low pressure moving through, the kind of conditions that make an angler more expectant. This young man I photographed battled a very good-size trout long and hard before it snapped his line. Once these larger trout get close to the bank, they react by powerful runs. I wish I had thought of telling him to loosen his drag a little.

He used a shiner. Now I'm thinking of doing the same, not that this will dramatically improve my catch. Nothing does that in winter. I'd love to catch a laker, and shiners might make this more likely than marshmallows & mealworms.

Has been very quiet in the park. The Valley has a harsh, forbidding wildness in winter. 

Round Valley Winter Lake Trout Possible to Catch from Shore

Funny how, by mid-January, it still didn't seem Round Valley Reservoir would freeze. By March, 18 inches of ice had accumulated in the main launch area.

Round Valley Lake Trout are a Winter Possibility

          The recent cold snap never froze Round Valley Reservoir. Chances are good for open water fishing the rest of the winter. I’ve been fishing for rainbow and brown trout since October, using the classic mealworm and marshmallow combination. M & M, as it’s called. I’ve meant to try shiners and think I will buy some to use before this article gets to press. Both rainbows and browns hit shiners, but lake trout do also, and I would love to catch one.

          I’ve had lake trout in mind for years. While in Maine six years ago, we rigged a canoe with a portable graph recorder. Our lines with ounce-and-a-half metal spoons got down to the needed 63 feet or so in a jiffy. Big lake trout marked on the graph as I back-paddled the canoe against the breeze. My son jigged a spoon in their midst. None hit. We tried Lake Wawayanda in Passaic County, deep drifting live herring from a rental boat. Nothing there, either.

          But during the late fall, winter, and early spring, some of Round Valley’s many lakers venture close along shore. Last winter, someone landed a 28-incher from a stretch of iron-tinged sand and gravel near the South Lot. This isn’t especially large for a lake trout, but I would be plenty happy with one.

          My son and I, and his Uncle Jim, have together tried live shiners, and I’ve tried them on some occasions solo. We’ve caught bass 25 or 30 feet deep on sharp drop-offs in the dead of winter, but my largest trout so far, a rainbow well over five pounds, went for the humble M & M on a size 1 plain shank hook. Two small marshmallows floated the mealworm three feet off bottom, the leader attached to a small barrel swivel. A three/fourth-ounce steel egg sinker guided the main line running through the middle of it in the South Lot area.

          A mile or so of shoreline to the left of the main boat launch ramp, along the dike, and on around the bend into Ranger Cove and beyond the South Lot area is good fishing. Apparently, trout roam around all of the roughly oval shoreline outlining the reservoir’s 2350 surface acres. Those are many miles to perhaps spread pods of trout apart by wide distances, but if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you may enjoy a flurry of action.

          I spoke to an angler who caught three rainbows just under the 15-inch minimum size and missed six hits yesterday. Today neither he, nor myself, got any hits. With the rain and fog I thought we might have some fun, but it doesn’t always work out as the conditions seem to augment.

          A couple of years ago, the wind blew from the west 25-40 mph steadily, driving rain like pins into our exposed faces, and this was too much for trout to resist. Four browns came ashore on the hook along with a 20-inch laker between me and another angler in little over an hour. I can’t say for certain whether the weather moved these fish to feed, or whether we were at the right place and right time to meet a pod of trout that could have been elsewhere, but it seemed quite obvious that the trout were feeding actively.

          If you want to catch a laker from shore, you will probably have to spend years fishing. But in any event, live shiners are the bait to use, and bottom fishing may be most effective. Throughout the Ranger Cove area, bottom usually drops off quickly. You can fish from 15 to 30 feet deep or more using the same steel egg sinker for casting range and secure hold. A plain shank, size 6 hook through the back behind the shiner’s dorsal fin suffices. Attach a small piece of Styrofoam to the leader between the hook and the barrel swivel, about eight inches from the hook tie loop, to keep the shiner floating away from obstructions.

          Even at this time of year, Round Valley is a beautiful destination which I find worthy of photography on every outing, in addition to fishing. Since the method is called still or bottom fishing, there’s nothing to prevent you from getting some reading done. Most anglers use a bell device on the rods’ tips to alert them to a hit. In any event, be in close earshot, or check your two or three rods often.



6.9 Pound Rainbow Trout Round Valley Reservoir

The trout broke someone else off. The two yellow orbs of bait weren't mine, and the hook they were connected to wasn't swallowed.

My first trout of the season at Round Valley, third or fourth time out, all of these short stints. I set a mealworm and marshmallow about 20 feet deep, returned to my car, and revisited the rod about eight minutes later. As I approached, I saw the line was tight, straight out. I thought I must have set the rod down before the steel egg sinker hit bottom, so no slack resulted with bail open. And then I saw the spool was empty, and amazed I lifted the rod, reeled some line onto the spool. I'm not sure I tied a proper clinch knot, but I guess so. It's amazing the trout didn't either pull the rod and reel in or break the line off the spool.

It was a long, hard fight. The trout crashed on the surface about 300 feet out. When I got it close to shore, it took off on repeated runs, giving the six-pound test line...a test. Marvelous to see the fish struggling in close. I felt some pity, knowing I was going to take it home. Fish are just like us, in a way. They seek pleasure and flee pain. But we really have no idea just quite what a fish's experience is, although it's not human. Nor would an assumption that they feel pain in any intensity comparable to us have decisive evidence in its favor.

The yellow eyes were fierce, with cobalt blue centers, the teeth spike-sharp. I took it to Behr's Bait and Tackle on the way home to have it weighed. 6.9 pounds, slightly less than 25 inches long.