Lush Closure on Famous Bedminster Pond

Showers and thunderstorms in the forecast for today, I put rain gear in the trunk, along with essentials, and got to bed before I would be too tired this morning. Matt and I had purchased nonresident NY fishing licenses for the day, and after I awoke and after Trish filled me in--heavy rain and flooding--that's what I rued. They're only $10.00 for a day, so the state of New York really does offer a deal...as they have to, as sales slipped when license fees increased too much...and I dismissed the issue as a friendly contribution to the state's fisheries on our part. What the hell, the DECALS site must state somewhere the fee is nonrefundable.

I already had the hunch. A good reason to have waited on purchasing and printing licenses at the last possible minute, but the way my family operates on the fly, we might have forgotten. And then we would have had to drive to whatever that town's named way up in the hills...and have hoped the resort there still sells licenses. Now that Trish and Matt own mobile devices, this would have made making connections easier, but I won't go into that.

The hunch. I forget specifically. Something moved me to have a good look at the framed photo in our living room--Trish and Matt underneath a big sign for Port Jervis Diner, where we always eat after our Barryville river floats--and that made me feel sure, as I've felt for the past three years...sure that moment framed for generations to come is of our last moments at Port Jervis Diner, and Barryville is a thing of our past as well.

I mentioned my feeling to Trish yesterday. I was wrong, of course, she said. But it's just how events unfold. I can always feel this. That is, if I happen to be in touch, which I'm not always--I thought the drive to the shore yesterday would be a breeze--but I seem to usually know in advance an outcome. It's just that a hunch is never knowledge. You never know an outcome until you have it.

Helps to be prepared. They say so in Boy Scouts. And if Baden-Powell came up with the notion, it's probably a very good one to heed.

I'm happy Trish did not take disappointment deeply. She loves Barryville trips. "Can we go tomorrow and Hopatchcong (she affectionately mispronounces the lake's name) on Wednesday?"

"The river may be more than muddy. Flooded." Besides, I indicated, there in Barryville, it's not so near its sources as to possibly crest immediately after rain stops.

(We've caught smallmouths in the muddied river, but not the really flooded.) Judging the downpours and the current level of the North Branch Raritan as any rough gauge to judge the greater river, that Wild & Scenic stretch is flooded. So now she says she'll get a Wednesday off near her birthday. She wants to be on the river up there. And at the Diner thereafter. Hopatcong will patch us up in the meantime.

What a luscious wet day. I wanted to fish at least a little, after going to the Bookworm as a family in Bernardsville, directly across Claremont Road from Saint Bernard's Episcopal Church, the roadway crossing over a possible trout stream (I examined the brook and it might be), the name of the road having suggested to me the famous Claremont stretch of the South Branch Raritan River, which I've fly fished and blogged about. Saint Bernard struggled with philosopher Peter Abelard, against the philosopher's analytical approach to knowledge, and emphasized Lectio Divina, or the apprehension of "The Living Word." In other words, direct and unabridged presence of spirit; a power which is no small matter. Bernard cooled his lust by ice baths, and frankly, I'm reminded of Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, imploring, in the song "Whole Lotta Love," the subject's need of cooling. Wild juxtaposition this may seem, it's really no joke. To take too much of this presence is to fall as heavily as tungsten, much less lead.

After wonderful experience at the bookstore, we ate at the Bernardsville Café, the portabella pillia or whatever that is I ate, delicious. I had bought a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci's younger years. Recently, I told a friend Leonardo was just a farm boy who went to the city, interested in becoming an artist. Da Vinci means "from the Vinci," and the Vinci is no place of distinction at all...except now that Leonardo came from the fields. True to my ruthless self-criticisms, I positively lust for the author of the book to correct my blithe, fairy tale assumptions about the genius. As if the monumental figure of Da Vinci were every bit as naïve as my rural teenage moods, my singing "Sarah Smile" by Hall & Oates to abandoned pre-dawn twilight while pedaling miles in perfect solitude...to go fishing, of course. He came to the city as an artistic greenhorn at age 20. By what foolishness--I guess--that I've gathered.

And I had to buy To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. Haven't read that one. And the harsh realism--minus the story's content involving criminality--seems appropriate to me now. The job I hold. Read the first three pages there in Bernardsville. Not least is the biography about The American Visionary, John Quincy Adams, "a sadly underrated character." This I must read, I told myself, and placed the book back on the shelf with the absolute precision of prayer. I never over extend my means. I know the book. I know the spirit. And the latter awaits me.

I wanted to fish a little, but, rod in hand, I came upon police presence at the neighborhood pond quite contrary to my innocent desire, and I did not want to make company with any questionable scene, so I turned back, gathered my wallet and car keys, drove to the famous Bedminster Pond with little light left to get some photographs....and that's all I expected. The open water you see in the photo is an illusion. Its actual space hardly extends 15 feet from shore and there the water is too shallow to hold fish. Inches. Wall-to-wall weed cover. (Almost, that is.) A sort of living likeness to some Jurassic Swamp now fundamentally providing for Exxon's profit.

Very nice over there. You've got to love a swampy pond. Especially if you live in a society driven by fossil fuel and presided over by some logical outcome or other of Middle East involvement. After all, the dancing step of Fred Astaire, while he sang "That's Entertainment," depended upon spoils to have had the mainstream reach that Hollywood still enjoys today. I walked in lush humid wetness, got in my car, parked at home, and walked back over to our pond. No one present. I fished. And 20 minutes later, finished. Quite dark. No bass lunged for my spinnerbait, despite an exquisite spring-like spell of precipitation's closure. 

Beach Day

Sometimes a foregone assumption is no better than a kite on a calm day. It's supposed to fly, but just doesn't. I figured we would roll straight down the Parkway to Island Beach State Park smooth as one of those fast European hydroplanes, but about a half mile from the entry from Route 440, traffic began to slow.

Somewhere down the line--heavy traffic all the way--a sign informed us Island Beach State Park was full. No admittance. "I think Chris Christy's vacation advertised Island Beach," Trish said. No doubt, the coverage IBSP got from that escapade spelled out the Park loud and clear. Whatever the case, it was Sunday, and though I expected few incoming visitors and many leaving the beaches at weekend's finish, we could have slipped Bob Marley's "Exodus" into the player for appropriate celebration.

So we drove through the thick of Seaside to catch sights of commercial grabs, while we discussed Matt's possible employment next summer, which of course, he's in charge of. The young man defended his position against his skeptical mother very well. And northward though Ortley Beach and Lavalette we drove highway 35 into Point Pleasant, where I wanted us to at least walk along Manasquan Inlet, and possibly fluke fish. I spoke to a guy in the know, and it was evident action might pick up in a couple of hours with incoming tide. An assumption further evidenced by talking to yet another savvy guy on down towards the rocks. No use fishing.

We rode out of Pt. Pleasant back towards IBSP. Who knows. It probably opened in the meantime, I thought. Soon some electronic sign or other--my wife saw it, not me--informed us the Park was open. We stopped at Surf Taco for food to carry onto the beach.


I leapt into the surf--not Matt with a recovering ankle--and strode and swam well out there with the breakers, riding a few. The brine felt warmish and full of life. That's not to say I saw any fish. The quality of stuff, sense, and feeling intermixed offered that uncanny promise anyone can receive who opens himself to it. But instead of total self-immersion, I felt a little removed--just a little--and knew there was no hope of getting as fully into this ocean as I always felt during my 13 years living by the beach. No real disappointment. I accepted as much as I could take, feeling thrilled to be 56 and as alive as an adolescent. Nothing foolish about that.

Trish doesn't swim and I don't recall her ever going out into the surf beyond the edge.

I read a few pages of Anders Halverson, An Entirely Synthetic Fish, about stockers. Rainbow trout ultimately from California's McCloud River. And then I told Matt it would be a miracle if I caught a fluke, proceeding to catch a striped bass instead on the first cast, a less likely catch than a fluke in August New Jersey surf. Hit a killiefish bought at the Hook House in Tom's River on the way in. That's the first true striped bass I've caught on my five-and-a-half foot medium power St. Croix and six-pound test monofilament. I had simply tied on a plain shank size 6 hook and crimped a split shot up the line a bit.

Snapper blues provided some fun, too. They really made cut bait of killies.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/08/manasquan-inlet-fluke-and-seabass-on.html

Night Romps

Very early yesterday morning, from 1:00 a.m. until after two, my son and I tried topwaters for bass at that secret pond where he and his friend keep catching them over five pounds. He caught a 13 or 14-incher; I caught three 11 and 12 inches. These cool night temperatures. At least temps hung somewhere in the 70's when we fished, though night fishing bass seems better suited to mugginess. Wind wrangled treetops, but the way the two-acre pond is situated sort of like the bottom of a bowl, the surface remained calm. It was nice and Matt wants to get me out there again.

And then late yesterday afternoon and well into the night, as a family we spent five-and-a-half hours at Morristown Memorial Hospital's ER. I had checked my BP at work and got 210/139. I felt alarmed. I know that's enough to cause a stroke. Maybe. Doctors have told me so. Eight years ago, I went to the ER where they recorded my BP at 260 over something or other. I had to stay a night or two. I don't quite remember how long I stayed, but they ran extensive testing, concluded my BP had been about 200 or higher for about six months...and one of the doctors openly wondered at the fact that I didn't suffer a stroke. (Well, we outdoor people know nature keeps us healthy.) So I left work early yesterday, not the way I wanted to end this work week and begin today for a week's vacation. Writing this post helps set me straight for this well deserved time away from the job, and come to terms with the fact that I needed to head to the hospital, not stay the rest of my shift. Had I instead told my regular physician--who I hope to see Wednesday, will phone him tomorrow--that I got that BP reading and stayed at work instead of going to the ER to get stabilized, he would have rightly thought me a fool.

I never really thought twice.

Of course, the plan was to finish my shift at 9:00. But anyone who sticks to a plan, instead of creating a new plan when needed, ends with nothing. If a new plan is needed, but the original is followed, the original will fail. That's true for business and fishing alike. Gratefully, our vacation plans remain in place as we intended, besides this plan to see my doctor on Wednesday.
 

Rooting for another Summer Highlight

Day off. Downpour at 5:00 p.m. Believe plans are dashed. This much isn't: some time to read.

Considered a major effort today. Photographing Black River, Pequest River, Paulinskill River. (Pitching a magazine article for next year which will feature lots of photography.) That would be a lot of driving of course--and lots of time composing shots. If I could get around need of doing this, I would rather read, told myself. Except for a ride up to Chester. Set up tripod along Black River. So I opened just a few folders on my laptop late last night. I have photography of these rivers in spades!

So, Black River. But it's raining hard, and me & my family go see Dunkirk around 7 p.m.


Additionally, Matt & I plan on night fishing very early Saturday morning, 1 or 2 a.m. He and a friend fished a pond we keep secret the other day, just for five or 10 minutes, and Jason caught a bass over five pounds on a buzzbait.

Rain's stopped. Maybe I'll head up to Chester some morning soon to come. Getting on towards show time now.

Plan on a ride over to the Sporting Life on Route 22, Whitehouse. Need to stock up on bottom fishing supplies, since I'm going on a charter on the 10th. Want to swing by the golf club and visit Lenny on my way back.

It's a good summer. I'm not fishing all the time, but don't have to. Ride to Riegelsville & back just to buy eels about two weeks ago--a high point. I certainly would head up to Chester, if I wasn't constrained by the movie plan. And reading. There's time if I leave right now.

This much I know. Life is always ready to surprise, if someone just goes out to meet what might await, and likely does await. Outings never disappoint me. And like me, anyone else doesn't even have to expect much. He might be surprised if he just slips the right c.d. into the player while driving. At first, I thought it would be just an inconvenience to drive all the way to Pennsylvania and back for eels.

A summer highlight. No inconvenience that. So I hope you're braving the pull that tends to keep you reigned in to relative boredom and "ease," getting out and enjoying life when you can. Reading too, for that matter. I told a friend the other day who complained--so typical--of "no time." Time is relative. People who use that excuse aren't making efforts to get up and go, which aren't too hard to do.

Got a week off coming up. Should be interesting.

Latest

I wanted to slip this in before August 1st. Every first day of that month, I remember a bike ride back from McClure's Ponds--Brian's familiar with these former Princeton Day School Ponds. I was in the habit of doing the 16-mile loop, sometimes every day for days running. This, I think, was 1976. I was 15, when the large husky-Lab mix, think it was, followed me from the ponds all the way to Lawrence, running behind my bike the whole way. That's how much that dog bonded with me.

So, I get home. Mom, this dog came back with me. "All the way from Princeton!?"

"We have to find the owner. It's lost."

But the dog found me and that was kind of special. We found the owners within a day. They put a Lost Dog ad out or something.

So every August 1st.....

Anyway, it's also when summer's getting on. Happy to report this summer has slowed down for me, so it feels real. Some people I talk to. Where they actually live isn't real anymore. You can't separate home from season.

Imagine. A nation of homeless people. People become schizophrenic. Without reality. Lost dogs looking for their owner. Unable to comprehend they are their own.

Happy to report also my son and his friends go places.

And Laurie's report from Lake Hopatcong. Plenty of hybrid stripers on herring off the points. Six and seven pounders. Lou Marcucci makes the news a lot. He recently caught a seven-pound, five-ounce walleye, and his walleye is not the only catch. Bass get caught too. Of course they do. 

We Might Find Our Way Again

Had the privilege to fish a private lake with Brian Cronk and Sam Kaplan this morning. Sam's parents live in the lake community. I was running a little late, but not so behind our scheduled meeting time of 5:15 that I felt the need to phone, and when I got to the dock area, Sam's canoe was just about to get unloaded from Brian's truck. I bought my second canoe--a Great Canadian fiberglass no longer manufactured--in February from a man north of Paramus, thanks to Craig's List. For $350.00, I probably made an investment that will last the rest of my life. This morning was it's Maiden Voyage for me, and I feel honored in the everyday way of getting out and living to put it on the water with a friend and new acquaintance. I try to cut through stereotypes when I write these posts, presently reminded that this is not as easy to do, as it is to get out and around, involving myself not only with pursuits that amount to shape-shifting purpose, but letting crap go, cutting down the signposts that clog veins and arteries trying to tell my heart where my blood should flow, as if everything is a maze that needs authority at every turn. As a matter of fact, my circulation system works quite naturally.

It's just the thing of using a low dose of a statin drug. No worries there.

Best of all this morning, the social quality. We fished in separate canoes, and we did get separated at least for half of the three hours out there, word back and forth when close, sometimes hollered when distant. I let very light breeze carry my craft off a ways after something was said about the bite dying under sunlight, and then felt deeply reminded of my 13 years on Long Beach Island, clamming the bays for a living. Before I could remind myself that I've suffered the tendency to think I lived that adventure chiefly in solitude, not memory of being alone but of complete release from any preoccupation and boundaries, day after day for years, word back and forth with a friend when we happened to work in our shorts during summer and wetsuits when chillier in that brine. Perhaps there was never a better way to socialize, because the bays brought nature, language, and personal presence together as nothing else could. To work feet in bay bottom and fight choppy brine up to your shoulders while collecting clams, this brings you home to this planet in a most directly involved way. That friend went on to earn a Psy.D at Rutgers University. He made this possible only through earnings as a clammer.

The man who sold me this second canoe warned me it's tippy, but at 13 feet long with a wide beam, I found not only does it stay put on the water; it maneuvers very subtly. We began by paddling towards the back of about 77 acres. Brian caught a bass close to 2 1/2 pounds on his first cast, once Sam positioned us to start. And though both Sam and Brian used Senko-type plastics rigged straight on worm hooks, not Wacky, I tied on a Pop-R surface plug. The water was dead calm, the day very young, light dim, and it all invited the possibility of bass or pickerel welling up from underneath, an opportunity I never want to miss.

Later, Brian told me, "Every new guy we bring out here heads for those pads." They're really shallow. I had a good-size pickerel on that plug, which got off, a fish striking in no more than a foot-and-a-half of water. I missed three other fish--two of them certainly pickerel--that didn't really commit to taking that plug.

By the time I gave up on the Pop-R and Wacky-rigged a Senko, Brian had four bass and Sam three. One of Brian's was three-and-a-half pounds, caught when we were separated by a couple of hundred yards, so I got no photo. I watched them fish. Fast. At first, I thought they were speed-worming. No. "They hit on the descent," Brian said. They were letting the worm fall, then twitching prodigiously and even reeling several yards or more to let the offering drop back.

Behind an island, the lake possesses a cove-like quality. My worm finally rigged straight on a worm hook, maybe I was set for business. Brian caught another bass, about three pounds. I drifted off about 75 yards, hooking a nice bass that played just a bit before the hook pulled. And then two casts later, thought I was into a fair-size bass, which proved to be a pickerel, boated, of about 21 inches. So I felt relieved, but I was feeling the bug now. Ready for more. Fish were hitting and I felt it was all just beginning. Someone in a kayak struck up conversation by asking if I kept any fish here. No. And not anywhere else, besides some of the walleye and hybrid stripers, for the most part. And he told me he runs off guys who do keep them, so I complimented him on confronting them directly about this. After all, it's a private lake and these others come on uninvited. We spoke for a few minutes at an interested clip, talking about how fishing refreshes us for out jobs, Hopatcong and wild trout streams, etc. He told me he lives on the lake, goes to work at 9:00 a.m., fishes every morning and does real well. Then soon I got word from Brian that we would try an area around the island, and as I paddled behind Sam's canoe, I felt I was leaving the honey hole behind, probably an illusion of my success.

This lake suffers profound eutrophification; there's talk of dredging, but I agree with Sam that it's probably best to let be. As is there's a lot of fish. Water stays off color. Muddy bottoms of course. And once I learned depths would register no more than about seven feet, I knew I was never bothering to set up the fish finder. I settled right into the lake as is.

But now, in our new territory, the sun was out, and I knew what this meant. And indeed, it was all over. Near the docks, we did confront cover near shore with two or three feet or more of water at the edges of brush, and Sam caught one more fish here. A crappie on his worm. I've written many articles for magazines that boast of my catching bass--really good-size bass by Jersey standards--during blazing hot afternoons. But the truth is, the hope for this is shorelines with depth and cover, especially woody or brushy cover. Boulders help, too, even for largemouths, and almost always there's some weeds. I've done it for years, but I felt a little uneasy today, because this is the second instance this year of lockjaw bass under sunlight. It is true. My son got a bass barely over two pounds in crystal-clear Lake Aeroflex under direct sun, and there I got an early evening three-and-a-half-pound bass with sun on the water beyond the shade the bass swam under, but I have a tendency of asserting "truths" too directly. In a way that falsifies truth for lack of details to clarify the matters.

At least the articles make clear where I catch those mid-day bass.

Another morning out on the quest, well aware it's not only my own. Life is a lot more than scene reduced to caricature of experience. Scene and screen sound alike, and the more we escape both of those surfaces to live real life rather than dally and doll out false references to how it really is, the closer we may come to finding our way again.

I've never been asked if I'm an outdoorsman, though I've been told I'm the number 1 guy in this respect for someone I know. I probably had no problem with the "identity" as a teen, but I resist getting cubby-holed, because it's not a particular ritual--like "outdoor activities"--which matters, but overturning the soil of experience so something fresh and natural gets exposed. Doesn't mean I'm some sort of gardener, either. Lol. Life is more than being some one thing against all else.

So much for identity politics. Thanks to Brian and Sam! I look forward to more!

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-did-ayn-rand-institute-get-my.html

No Outing Fails to Surprise

Many outings fulfill their expectation and may leave a little wanting, but no outing fails to surprise. We caught nothing, and though for me this meant we broke even, Oliver really believed we would catch something. Big striped bass, flathead catfish, channel catfish exist in this river. Night requires time, patience, and perseverance to catch any, but on my first night attempt during August 2008, I caught a nine-pound flathead, which I thought must be a big channel cat before it came into view, and I lost a striper. Since then, I've tried two or three more times, neither myself nor my son and a friend caught anything but a smallmouth bass on a shiner, and a nine-inch striper on a Rapala at the mouth of the Pequest.

I don't believe it's a chuck-the-bait-out-there-and-wait appeal, even though all I did to catch the flathead was bait up with a dead eel, lob it out un-weighted (flow slow) just before sunset, and attend to baiting a live eel on the rod I intended to man. Within minutes, the flathead was on. The striper took some doing by drifting eels with current.

When Oliver and I left, he mentioned shallower currents and I knew he was onto the right idea. I knew current like this existed upstream a couple of hundred feet, but the way were situated with a party going on where he could venture, neither of us felt any gumption to try. He had anchored live sunfish with heavy pyramid sinkers. That might work, but we were aware it's hit or miss regarding the make-up of the river bottom, even with the long three-foot leaders. A number of times he found himself snagged before turning the reel crank to check on the bait.

Flatheads sometimes move into shallow, hard-bottomed riffles at night. In any case, working a stretch--and riffles at the head--makes sense. Involvement of any kind tends to yields results. But river night fishing for these big targets...I felt sure the first time I bought live eels for bait that this takes some time and figuring out. Every outing since has confirmed this feeling, and I wasn't fooled by the first, either.

I wanted to get out under night sky, fish, and above all enjoy good company...possibly gaining just a little more insight into the workings of this endeavor for elusive stripers north of tidal water. All expectations felt fulfilled. It's not that I'll ever become a regular at this, either. I'm just satisfied to meet the mysteries on rare occasion.

On the way there, we drove across the Pohatcong. Oliver had his mobile device pinned on the spot. Suddenly, I braked before a huge tree on the road. Rain had fallen, but at least in Bedminster, no wind accompanied.

"We're not far," Oliver said.

"Let's park and walk."

"Better back up and park on the side."

"Yeah."

I put it in reverse and as I began to maneuver, Oliver said, "Is there another way?"

"Not that I know."

He was working that mobile device. "There is." Soon it talked to us. I typically find the likes amusing more than annoying. It showed us the way. We rode up and down two mountains. About five miles, I guess. I never would have needed a mobile device. I've never been in a situation when I needed one and have no desire to upgrade from my flip phone. Time it took us to drive around the tree....was probably more than walking would have entailed. Just an amused thought I had.

Mysteries. No stunning meteor on this night. But I haven't heard a screech owl in years.

Surprises. Dead wood tree on the road. Two dead-wood fallen branches on the road, separate places. And weirdly, as we fished near the time we quit at 2:30 a.m.--same time three fishermen across the river quit (they had fish on)--a large tree fell in the woods nearby. Not a trace of wind. I could tell by the sound of the trunk breaking it was dead and rotted. I reasoned and told Oliver that just maybe there had been wind earlier...which loosened that tree. Not much more likely than it falling after what we had witnessed. Another surprise for me is valuable for fishing knowledge. Still on I-78, headed for Exit 3, Oliver asked me if this rain would raise the river level, and so increase our chances. He didn't mean raise it dramatically. I said no. But coming towards Carpenterville, he remarked on us getting close to the river as the road began to descend fairly sharply. Some seconds later, I realized that even with the relatively light rain--sustained and for a little while pretty heavy--a lot of water was coming downhill, and said that, yeah, that level might be coming up a bit. As we set up a little while later, Oliver wedged a surf spike between rocks at river's edge. Just an hour later, he remarked on the level having come up a couple of inches. When we began packing to leave, I noticed three or four inches of water had climbed up that spike. For fishing, yes, a rise in water level not dramatic can be very good.

That screech owl. "We hear them in our backyard," Oliver said. That impressed me, but took a little of the faraway quality of the bird's call away. Some light haloing over horizon to the north made me long for my tripod...and reminded me I need to learn manual camera functions. More than any other attraction, the big fish that repeatedly broke surface mid-river interested me. One of them slashed water close, and I saw the break--immense and exciting. Oliver believed them carp. But he did remind me that carp typically break water around spawning time in spring. I drifted eels right down their ally.

There the current takes a great eddy formation. As far as I could cast--and with my eight-foot Tica I cast a 15-inch eel very far--the eels drifted upstream. The situation reminds me of tarpon fishing behind Big Pine Key. We drifted blue crabs directly on tarpon that turned over at the surface, never taking a crab.

I got into play. The little insight I gleaned involved  a definite idea less than further confirmation of the efficacy involved in letting all go to guide an eel the right way. The humble idea of conscious attunement was enough for me last night. I got snagged three or four times, and the first two or three mishaps resulted in lost eels and hooks....which didn't sit right with me. I knew it possible to open bail, let the eel find its way out and then to continue the drift, because I discovered this that first night in 2008. The last time I got snagged, the eel did just that and redeemed all former losses.

Above all, when drifting an eel, I do not impart much action. I figure the less a striper is alerted to any guidance extraneous to the river itself, the more likely it takes. So naturally, the more I'm attuned to the river, rather than distracted with myself, the more I am like the environment any striper out there occupies. There was often silence between Oliver and I, but more between myself and my activity. We spoke freely without any hindrance. At my best, I felt sleek and active while measurably doing very little. It was about 85 degrees out--at least 80--and upon setting up I had taken off my Woolrich wool shirt, which I used to help subdue wriggling eels to get them hooked. I felt all the more there in the wild with no shirt bagging my skin.

Most of my hooked eels wriggled and scurried. Once and awhile, I enticed them to do more of this. I was curious about where they swam in the water column, but not concerned that they cruise at bottom where they try to get under rocks or whether they swam freely. After all, if stripers were breaking water on occasion, it didn't seem best the eels swim deep. Somewhere out there in the vicinity we fished, the river is 35 feet deep. I've always felt this is probably excessive for stripers, but where I placed most of my casts last night, I hooked and fought a striper almost 10 years ago. A very different style of resistance to a rod than any kind of catfish. When Oliver tried a shallow-swimming surf plug, I thought it an interesting idea.



http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/05/river-channel-catfish-delaware-river.html