Turning Point

Saturday's post didn't get to the gist of the recent Lake Hopatcong outing, but maybe my distraction is revealing in a positive way. Since 2007, my son, Matt, and I have fished the lake every fall, usually during the third week of October. That third week of October 2012, we flew to Missouri and then drove into southern Illinois to Shawnee State Forest, Snake Road, in search of new snake species we had never before seen and photographed. A very successful trip. But later that fall, November 17th, we got out on the lake.

Without thinking of Matt away at Boston University, no fishing the lake for us this fall of 2017, I started to think of inviting Jorge, back when we float tripped a length of the South Branch September 9th. He had expressed some interest in fishing Hopatcong sometime with his sons. I felt a deep desire to pass the torch that morning, but it never occurred to me until this evening to recognize this pivotal turn of events from one father with a son grown, to another with sons more and less the age of eight, the age of Matt when I first took him out of Dow's Boat Rentals.

Before the obvious occurred to me, that my feeling out of sorts with fishing has to do with the loss of my chief fishing partner, I was thinking maybe I can yet regenerate the connection with the lake before the year is out. I have one more trip scheduled before I might ice fish a couple of times this winter. But the post I wrote August 2016, "On the Big Pond with my Wife and Son," haunts me. What I called grand affirmations involve high level contemplative encounters through participatory activity outdoors. Fishing, in other words. Fishing became religion for me. For years. And then that day in August, as we rode back into Dow's just after sunset, I felt loss. It had been a wholesome good day on the lake, but as we chugged back, I felt as if I were leaving all of it behind.

Of course, I hoped it was just that particular day amiss. Looking back, I know it wasn't. Posts last year, some of them, reveal just a little of my job stresses. Since then, I've managed to get a strong grip on this, as yet, relatively new job in a Chef Studio. I began as a total greenhorn. But things have changed. My son is not only gone but grown up. To show a boy the world is not the same as to celebrate it with a young man. We certainly will fish again, but whether or not the innocence of these former glory days can ever return for me, this is less the concern than my telling you, my readers, that the likes remain possible for others who find it in fishing.

It's not only important to whomever may achieve such happiness. Grand affirmations include the surrounding world. They ultimately bring hope to others in subtle ways. I used to write a lot about going out, and then coming back refreshed--re-created as we say recreation--to function all the better at work and with family and friends. It makes a positive difference in a big way, even if all anyone else knows of it is very subtle.

So my knowing this, don't think for a moment I will abandon the quest. Things have definitely changed. But I will get out. And I can't predict what developments might yet await.



http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-big-pond-with-my-wife-and-son.html

Type and Voice

I get on my high horse and write a post like the previous. Feels great, as if the air I breathe has an exquisite chemistry not available here below. I may not be the best at high styles, and I only imply any doubt because no one else has ever read my journals, and I like to make things seem mysterious sometimes, but if I'm not the best, and I certainly don't think I am, the point is, anyway, that I step down and write to you on levels even more frank and ordinary than this right now. Any writer can seem a real ass, because he takes language and tries to fix it in place by pen or some form of type, as if to lay down some kind of law, when everybody knows words are native by speech alone.

There I was riding on my Black Charger the other day, or so it seemed, and now that I try to make a little fun of it rather unsuccessfully, you might ask what's real and what isn't. Hemingway's conclusion to Islands in the Stream. I lived alone in Surf City, New Jersey. November 1982. Refusing to watch TV, only to read and write, besides treading clams, I did watch once. The movie version of that Hemingway novel. An ending absolutely unforgettable. The actor's deep voice as if Hemingway's own:

"It is all true."

An American Fishery

To think of life as if it were a plotted novel is unrealistic, given the reality we each traverse--wild, chaotic, a plethora of unknown influences from which we turn to stories in a hopeless attempt to impart order on an existence which just is. If any of us were to strip from mind anything and everything comprising sense and meaning, we would confront an irreducible primary impossible to designate, and yet by an inexplicable miracle, absorb the fact that existence is. And if we were not to then proceed, naming this and that thing, we would certainly go quite insane. First principle: existence exists, which implies particularity, since nothing stands out--exists--except in a certain way. Already, we're interpreting reality and beginning to make up a story.

Problem is, things happen to us, regardless of how we attempt to have life our own way. I haven't yet written a successful novel, though I have one perhaps in the making, but given time and security to finish a plot that works, a novelist--I suppose--is afforded a luxury life can't offer, and his readers in turn: a self-contained story that works just so, even though the best novels allow interpretative takes upon the work of literature which may be potentially infinite, as philosopher Jean Paul Sarte, for example, noted.

Art in any form can fuel the mind with power to produce purpose and order in life, a function that works subconsciously more than at the conscious level. Not one of us is without personal preferences for art, because without formal images giving meaning to our desires, they could have no identity and direction. This "hopeless" life we each live gains an edge on chaos, though order attained will always slip under our feet as if something elusive cheats an entitled dessert. I still learn lessons about limitation. I can't control my life to degrees I often desire, but I am sometimes happily surprised.

Last night, I got home from work exhausted, and with what proved to be more than two hours of preparation yet for the day with Jorge on Lake Hopatcong. The alarm would be set for 4:45. I mentioned my destination offhand to my wife. Lake Hopatcong with a friend. She looked at me with surprise and told me she was going to Manhattan. Manhattan! Why didn't she tell me. My jealousy put her off a little.

"You don't communicate."

Well, she hadn't, either. I turned quickly to loading my car with what I had as yet prepared, and felt my energy gather just as quickly. It would be a good day on the lake.

Jorge had told me where he worked in April, but I confess a forgetful mind. For some reason more subconscious than known, I wanted to ask him again. He works in Manhattan. I've written in a previous post about my wife's plans--hopes more than plans, I think--for she and I to move to Manhattan when I retire. A studio apartment. I always think that if I were to earn the money, almost impossible, I would buy a boat, dock it on the Hudson, and besides pleasure cruises--fish, of course. Good striped bass, bluefish, some fluke pretty nearby. Great way to hang out with friends. Not to lose the main idea, of course not. The culture. Plays, Comedy acts. Museums. These seem to be Trish's big three. I think more of philosophical, literary, and photography organizations. I might not be the best mind to entertain, but maybe I can hold my own. Manhattan is a big city with powerful minds more than matching it. They make it work on all levels but the natural.

Lake Hopatcong was the typical fishery today, regarding what we caught: two walleye, five or six crappies, a perch, bluegills, a bullhead catfish, and a white perch. Kind of slow fishing, but involving enough action to pique interest and form some indelible memories. Jorge had never seen a walleye. The first we caught, mine, was small at little over a pound and quickly released. His was about three pounds, also released. His biggest crappie was a nice fish, regarding this smaller species. Catches accompany celebration because we manage to haul something to ourselves which matters. Always a struggle to some degree. Fishing is addictive not because it results in boons that grace the table, though it can and in very special ways--walleye is hard to find on the market, and you'll never find crappie, to the best of my knowledge. Fishing is addictive because there's no escaping the fact on a deep level that fish have food value. What we do is as ancient as the formation of our own species. Built-in.

After we came back in to Dow's Boat Rentals, Jorge clarified an issue about renting boats. For five dollars, he can waive the Boater's Safety certificate. So he may bring his sons out fishing, now that he has some first-hand lake familiarity, knows some spots. We anchored on four total. We were unloading the boat when he invited me for a coffee, if I knew somewhere to go after packing it all in.

"Sure. Jefferson Diner is a great place."

He treated me to lunch--a sandwich platter for him and a dozen steamed clams for me--and we hung out for more than an hour, conversing nonstop. Then we parted. He for Union County, me for Somerset County. On the drive down I-287, it occurred to me lunch was a little like Manhattan. Another level. A higher level. But a level impossible without the ground at our feet or the water under a hull. "Nothing without Feet on the Floorboards," as I named a post from early May this year. In another essay, I wrote about how outdoor experience replenishes life to meet opportunities later for higher levels with interest and zest.

There might be plenty to praise about a life lived at high levels, but there's no getting there for anyone--it's a privilege--without earning it, although this sort of effort always implies people holding up the structure like a foundation. I dislike people above who don't recognize the importance of people below, and I have in mind particularly a philosopher from the 19th century I will denounce in the next paragraph. I've always been a heady individual, but nothing else has compensated as valuably as getting back into fishing with my son more than a decade ago. It hasn't been easy for me as a wage earner to learn what low paid work is all about, since I come from a highly professional family, but it's just my preference that I wouldn't trade the knowledge I've gained for the B.A. I never completed.

Friedrich Nietzsche, that philosopher from the late 19th century, seemed to possess little more respect for the likes of me than to call us slaves. We live so the best can be happy, according to Nietzsche, not to pursue our own happiness. I don't presently think of a more un-American thinker than this German.

If my wife and I move to Manhattan, and today was auspicious in this way I mentioned of art affecting the subconscious mind and helping to organize life, I will not forget this post, nor will I reject the life I've lived as a wage earner, as if I should instead resent it in a rabid way similar to so much of Nietzsche's ranting.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/05/lake-hopatcongs-enhanced-fishery-is.html

Magic Hour

This evening resonated with the previous, as cloud cover continued eastward and sun came out, although by the time I had noticed after waking from a long nap yesterday, I knew it was too late to capture light reflected from the AT&T entry bridge over the North Branch Raritan River. Sun just about on the horizon. Today, I got home from work after getting up just after 5:00 a.m. for a long shift, and saw I might have time to make it. As a matter of fact, I had about three minutes, got four or five careful shots, and then cast a little worm imitation on my two-weight TFO fly rod.

 The river is low and very clear. Not a very prospective goal for anyone who wants to do better than spook fish. But the fact that I couldn't see any trout was at least a little in my favor. Shadows growing underwater. I tried a few spots, crouched low, giving each a couple of dozen casts or more, figuring that the longer I stayed there still and quiet, the more chance any trout would lose inhibition. Or come back to a holding position. Some of this water is about four feet deep. There has to be at least a few trout in this stocked stretch known as the Zoo. The moniker gives away its popularity as a fishing hole for people captivated by the passion. Places like this usually get stocked heaviest.

While I fished, I noticed the reflection of colored limbs in front of me. I've posted one of the results of my observation. The moment of grasping that I had other shots to compose--at least of this spectacle--was the inchoate movement towards what my Magic Hour became. When I set the rod aside, I felt freed. No. That's not to say I prefer photography to fishing. I tend to think preferences are more self-delusion than truthful. Anyone will discover he or she has a whole panoply of values, if he or she lets go of fixating on just a few.

For a half of my time total, the latter half, I felt exhilarated, well aware that I not only had felt exhausted after little sleep last night and 10 hours on the job; I was exhausted, but it felt real good to have gone into overdrive by exerting will to go and tread about the river in the first place, getting low and gritty now, becoming fully present by impromptu positioning of my tripod-mounted camera among lethal rocks in the near-dark. I experimented with the High Dynamic Range function of my Nikon D7100, and various aperture and manual settings for a number of subjects. I even got into one more hairy position that required careful effort negotiating a slope, only to find it too dark to read the Mode Dial of my camera. And too dark for this camera to focus from the best I could reasonably do.

Results I did get are interesting. I don't offer more for you to see because I'm still in a conservative phase, keeping my shots as if they'll get published. Keeping most of them as if a few of many might.

Beside that chilling river running through town, I had become aware of feeling for a moment the way I used to feel on New York's Salmon River in November. And then I knew that if not for the sudden cooler weather, I wouldn't have enjoyed this evening to today's degree. I felt as if I met fall for the first time this year, and it's almost November. The morning glories in my family's garden bloomed floridly. I noticed upon coming back home. The clouds and some light rain--and surely the cooler temperatures--kept them from closing before noon. Soon a hard freeze will kill them; this is as should be, and yet I wistfully want to see them blooming in November. Abnormally as this may happen, it will be amazing if this event comes true.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2017/05/nothing-without-feet-on-floorboards.html

Roy Bridge

Took a personal day from work and rode up to the Valley & Ridge with my wife, stopping at Buck Hill Brewery and Restaurant near Blairstown for lunch, taking the road out of Blairstown to Millbrook Village--where we spoke to a number of people in early American costume--and driving onward to Buttermilk Falls where I engaged photography I found peculiarly difficult, though a few pictures might be good. Would be best to shoot here after rain for more waterfall effect. As you may infer from my photo of the Big Flatbrook, water is low everywhere. Except for the South Branch below Spruce Run Reservoir getting pumped out.

I found a spot to fish with my six-weight unexpectedly. I had thought it was immediately off NPS 615, but I found it off that road leading way back to the Falls. Water was so clear that four- or five-foot depths were laid bare to light and any trout must have hidden under whatever rocks. The Big Flatbrook stocked with 1710 trout on Thursday the 12th, there surely are a few in this hole, but a thorough casting practice yielded none, and we drove on to my favorite spot at Roy Bridge.

Here the situation was different. The run with six-foot depth underneath did not flow well enough to support my confidence, but I saw a riser in the riffle leading in. That fish began to make some commotion, and by the time I got into casting position, I side-armed a cast (with Wooly Bugger attached) that worked beautifully, emphasis on cast to suggest this sort of success, getting that olive Bugger directly in front of a trout with its back exposed, the water about two or three inches deep. I soon saw that's about all it is for now. Four or five inches in front of that trout, the Bugger couldn't be ignored, and the trout seemed to strike, but I reared back on nothing, and the Bugger got snagged high up in a tree. Before I could snap it off, prepared to go back to our Civic and retie, the trout darted by me--rainbow about 14 inches--and on down into that run I mentioned.

I tried the run again thoroughly, then moved up to the area of Roy Bridge itself. I cast to a few intermittent risers, though nothing seemed to be hatching--I'm no expert at hatches--but I did not go back to the car for my vest and dry flies. The water had virtually no flow, dead calm, and I guess the subconscious inference of just letting a dry fly be on a stationary surface dissuaded me from trying, though now I think a little more involvement--or had I more time to get involved--could have at least piqued interest. I did see just a few bugs over the water of about size 10.

Instead, there I am stripping a weightless, olive-shaded streamer with a little red on its nose, and though the water is deep here, I figure that as a few trout are coming up, weightless would work. If it would work. It didn't. My time was limited. But I certainly got some casting in, and above all, I witnessed trout present.

South Branch Raritan

First Frost

How it Used to Look Mid-October

First frost. Three a.m. this morning, I stepped out barefoot, walked across the lot free of neighbors who might ogle at my folly, and touched ice outdoors for the first time since early in the year. Car tops stitched with tiny frozen patterns. I sat on a curb facing northeast and the sky overhead invited me in as it hasn't in a long time. Simple and spontaneous as looking up and getting admitted free of charge. Inside on the couch, I had been reading Gray's Sporting Journal, a bulwark of sanity against a world that forgets where it is, and forgets that the most basic requirement for living here, besides water and breath, is capturing food and sheltering oneself in the pursuit.

Someone has to do it. Most of us think farmers.

But here's a twist. Gray's is devoted to the word as much as it is to the sport. The name of the magazine doesn't leave out the word journal. Anyone can believe farmers are enough for everyone's dietary need, but only fools believe language should be limited to reflect such systematization as agriculture. Word--for human beings--is as important as food. And funny thing, isn't it, that romancing farm life might lose something--no, not always, necessarily...think of Wendel Berry, perhaps--to sentimentality, compared to reflections of the wild.

Don't mistake romance as escape writing, if you follow what I mean. I think some of the best is gritty with arduously labored detail coming from strenuous first-hand experience. Realism and romance unite in writing difficult to read, requiring time and absorption. Difficult outdoor experience demands the same.


After posting last night, I went into edit function and added what, at first, I felt would be most important to the text, which, when first composing, I completely forgot: green foliage. I subsequently riffed on climate change, but here's more.

I've felt disgusted at right-wing denial of global warming, for years. I thought this a denial of science. Now I think the right, or the denial-laden of any ideological disease, are not religious enough. We used to hear so much huff and puff about The Bible. Now I consider that if the same sort as believe in "God's word" also believe (suddenly we don't hear much of the likes) Global Warming is a false idea, then they don't know how to read The Bible, perhaps.

What was God always doing to the Jews, when they went astray? Biting them in the ass, so to speak, and in response, at least in some of the stories, if I recall rightly, the Jews firmed up. Who wouldn't when getting chomped on at the rear?

Now supposedly, Jesus made redemption universal, so the wrathful antics of a jealous God are done and over with. This might imply sweet nectar from the front side of the human form, but it is a most naïve belief, unless it's understood that this redemption is an ongoing and historical process. Anyone who has worked a tough job in any economy of the past 2000 years knows damn well that The Kingdom of God did not supplant the human condition upon Jesus's crucifixion. The symbolic event of the life of Jesus Christ--and I do not deny its importance, on the contrary--is potential, not actuality. And on that point of Christ's importance, a simple consideration might do. Think of his life. If you don't know about it, you can Google information, if you want to. Anyone of that repressive society (at least more so than ours is repressive) of Christ's time, and who would have lived as Jesus lived for three years before he gut busted, anyone who would have done that would have been a monumental genius.

That said. What about God. Does "He" still compensate in the negative for our excesses. Read the Lessons of History. (The title adorns more than one book.) History never gets over itself. Always pride comes before a fall. Our scientific and technological achievement is the greatest pride mankind has ever known.

As I put it last night. Kudos to all who have done it and still do. Pride is the crowning virtue. Most Christians might not agree this is true, but my opinion differs. Pride and power. And power implies responsibility. So now that it is payback time, we must pick up the mess. Make something that works differently, just as the Scientific Revolution 400 years ago was a proposal to work and produce differently.

October River Smallmouths

Behr's Bait on U.S. 22, Lebanon. Note on the door: "Out getting bait."

So we rode eastward to The Sporting Life. Closed Mondays. On the way to Sportsman's Rendevous in Flemington, Mike told me this place is going out of business....but he had phoned them a week ago and got an answer. We found the store open with virtually nothing left on shelves and in racks or anywhere else. We took two dozen shiners, just about all they had left, and I bought some lures I might need this coming spring and summer, the lures at 50% off. 

"Sorry you're going out of business," I told the man who I think is the owner.

"Just how it goes," he said. He was cheerful in the way a retiree who's lived well might let the past go.

"You were always our old reliable when Behr's was closed," I said. 

And some of those runs from Behr's way out to Flemington involved an extra 45 minutes at the least tagged onto a trip to Round Valley Reservoir, which is right around the corner from Behr's, but 20 minutes from Flemington, far to the west of Bedminster, also.

I hate to think of what might happen with The Sportsman's Rendevous gone, but at least The Sporting Life--a new store--should usually back for up Behr's. In any event, today, I would hope, is unique, except the fact is: climate change is only ramping up towards a very uncertain future. The landscape looked like South Carolina appeared on November 6th just three years ago. True, it is only October 16th, but never before in New Jersey has an October 16th appeared so green. As Cushetunk Mountains appeared on the approach to Behr's, I felt that sort of awe mixed with horror; an inchoate suspicion colored my response as if we might be in for more than a simple adjustment to warmer temperatures. Those mountains are green. Some of the trees are an off green, but far and away, they are green, no orange and red at all, and very little, only slight, yellow. 

After we left the Flemington store with the bucket half full of water and bait, I hooked a right, instead of a left, and wound up way off course for Neshanic...thinking instead of Round Valley. But we got to our spot after driving forever, and passing Stanton General Store where Mike used to buy breakfast as a cable installer. 

"That place has the best blueberry muffins. We used to get them fresh out of the oven, cut in half and buttered."

Valuable to know, whether or not I'll ever be in the vicinity of this place in the morning. And, if so, have time to stop. In itself, the character of Highlands culture and society is interesting to learn about, because it's the backyard of any Central Jersey citizen with enough gumption to explore and patronize what's there. Or in other words, what can make for a life. And whatever our future as a society, I believe we can manage to maintain forms of the good life; we will, that is, if we survive as a civilization, and I certainly see no reason not to believe we will. The issue is simple in the following way: what did we do, beginning with the Scientific Revolution 400 years ago and subsequent technology? We discovered much of nature's order, to challenge nature's dominance over us. OK. Very well, kudos to success all around, but now nature will challenge us in turn. Rise to it. It's just a classic situation of hubris resulting in a firm bite on the ass. As human beings, we can get over the likes. We have intelligence and will, which, for example, a deer brought down by a wolf and chewed on the posterior (to begin with) doesn't have to save itself. For the time being, as we rapidly sink into the witch's cauldron of the Anthropocene, businesses like Stanton General Store are available to anyone on a pretty low budget. Don't I know that. County roads, state highways, U.S. highways, towns, have establishments of unique individual character interrelating as a sort of spread-out collage of possibilities. I'm not saying blueberry muffins are much to live for, but all told, when you think about opportunities in the Big Picture frame, little things do matter. There's no picture without details.

I promised Mike on Messenger we would catch fish. I promised him more than that, but I'll get to that point in moment. I caught a 13-inch or better smallmouth on the first cast, Mike losing another on his first cast. Then the hole--it gets about 10 feet deep--sort of gave us the glass eye. Here the river's running pretty high, since apparently Spruce Run Reservoir is delivering water, and the river is running somewhat off color; this state of affairs tends to put the bass off bait and lures, in my experience. We used those shiners weighted by split shots to get them down, but no matter what we cast, action just wasn't going to amount to a fervid day in memory years from now.

I went downstream some 25 yards, got snagged, snapped off, retied and re-baited. I went back down, this time warming like a fanned coal to a wide, slow eddy in casting range. The split shot must have just touched down when the bass took the bait. I felt the loping pull, swung back like a batter to a ball, and said, "Woah." Mike must have heard me by the reception of an ear reaching a moment's perfection, I asked for his audience, but having turned to watch, he might have pictured a comedy. Moments before my big hookup, I had chided myself for forgetting my chest wader belt, but I never thought--did I--that maybe I was forgetting something else. No doubt about it, this bass I had on was somewhere around three to four pounds. If not larger. It's a big bass and still in there! And during the two seconds it lugged on the line, I became aware the drag was too tight. It's going to run. Of course it would. As I began to reach for the drag knob, it began that run, snapping my six-pound test monofilament almost immediately. I always know better than to fish with a drag set too tight.

I told Mike we would catch some serious fish. He knows how much I chastised myself.

Mike caught a smallmouth. I wanted to wade way down to a special spot I know about near the long stretch's tailout, and so I departed. By the time I got there, fishing as I waded, the shiner was almost dead, but I curved a beautiful sling of a cast, owing to the heavy split shot, slicing surface by that weight right on my target, spotting at least a dime with this exchange, who knows, maybe better.

I don't know how deep it is there. I've tried counting the sink, but never with any precision to report back, not to you or to my own mind. I was up to my waist and a good 20 yards from underneath the overhanging tree. I imagine it's five feet. Maybe it's six. Big bass like to hang there in summer.

The split shot clicked stone, I hopped it and the bait, paused, and then I felt the pick up, allowing the fish--that fish making sure that shiner was dead--some slack. And then I tightened the line and set the hook. I soon lipped a nice bass of about two pounds. One of those rare humpbacked smallmouths that weigh more per inch than the usual fish of sleek form. Fifteen or sixteen of those inches from nose to tail.

We ran out of time after an hour total, packed it in to my Honda, and drove a short distance to a stocked destination, not that trout can't swim upstream to where we fished in the first place, but surely more trout exist near where they got released on Monday. First cast, I lost a largemouth on a shiner, and further attempts--using large and smaller split shots, and also no weight at all--yielded no interest until my last cast, when I caught a small smallmouth. Before that final take of the day, Mike hooked a nice trout on a salmon egg, but although he had his drag set loose, the leader snapped in the middle. Two-pound test.

Maybe the line was nicked. Always more happens out there that I don't know, than what I do know. But sometimes it seems easier to forget what I know, than to take my mind off what I can't fully fathom.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/05/catching-smallmouth-bass-in-streams-and.html