Mount Hope Pond Revisted

Bass are hard to catch at Mount Hope Pond. They always have been. As my son and I set out along the western shore today, eventually working almost all the way into the back from the front of the pond near the swimming beach, this was the first time I've been up there at the 18-acre pond since 2014. I told Matt to expect two hits per hour on average, and today we went a little under par, but I am fully convinced the fish are there in completely comparable numbers to when I discovered this pond in 2011. We sighted about as many as used to be normal. I also told him that the few bass caught usually measure 16, 17, 18 inches, but the single fish I caught today was more like 13 inches, though I hooked another a lot bigger.

This fishing means getting back into the sticks. Not only that; it means getting stuck by them. It also calls on accurate pitching and casting. I physically showed Matt what this demands by parting brush, standing on a sloping and uneven bank from which I could have taken a dunk, and pitching the worm, never quite working out how I might set the hook, should a bass have taken it, and yet staying open to the thought. You do not want to break your rod on a branch, at least not if that rod is an expensive St. Croix like mine. Matt got the idea right away, went through the thick, sighted a bass he thought was five pounds, pitched, watched the bass vacuum his eight-inch Chompers worm into its maw and just as quickly force it back out.

I've seen only one bass that big here over the course of some two dozen or more visits, but I bet a six- or seven-pound fish exists that may never get caught. I've caught a couple that were probably over four pounds, fat 19 1/2-inchers, but don't get your hopes up if you're thinking of traveling I-80 and getting there. Mount Hope Pond is the best symbol I have of the sort of hope I live on, but it's tough, solitary, and with rewards infrequent yet a little outsized, it demands that hard effort to achieve, which most of us don't care for, but is dependable.

That's no slight against my friends. So many of you who read these accounts. I would be lost without you, and yet I go my own way. An angler always finds a way because he exercises his own judgment. That never means I don't confer with others'.

I doubt but very few others, however, catch bass here. Let alone any over five pounds. Who wants to get back into his car, scratched, and covered by mosquito bites, risking the infection of his comfortable vehicle by the dozen or so ticks crawling all over his clothes? It takes an unusual character to enjoy this kind of fishing. The sort used to nature's difficulty lifelong. The mosquitos bothered me little, a mysterious immunity that clearly seems to have to do with my habit of being out there among them, but when I finally took a good look at my son after hearing his complaints, my first thought was that maybe I had a medical emergency on my hands. His arms, his neck, were pocked all over by swollen welts, and yet he wanted to keep fishing. After the encounter with a true lunker. He knows how to judge size.

I blogged persistently about the fishing here. When especially the post I link to began racking up big visitation numbers--more than 1270 have visited this single post, out of more than a dozen others on the pond--I felt afflicted by awful guilt. I related this feeling to a friend. He couldn't have quite understood how it felt. I had spot-burned my own best secret. Fishing seemed to get worse and this state of affairs just added to the "wrong" I had done, but as the years moved relentlessly on, I began to come back around to where I began with this blog, my feeling that information never really hurts. Ignorance hurts. And I began to feel a deep longing to come back up here and see if I am right.

My feeling grew that Mount Hope had persevered. Even though I hadn't been back up there to gain any hard evidence, I've plenty of evidence from many sources stored in my brain. Even as a teenager, when I began writing about where to catch fish and getting these articles published, I learned right off the bat that despite big feature titles spelling out where to go, very few people--if anybody--takes the advice by feet and hands. This is not at all to discount practical pointers, but the entertainment value of writing ranks foremost along with aesthetic value, and above all else, by formalizing information, it becomes part of the culture we all share. Knowledge doesn't trivialize. That awful disparaging sense of overfamiliarity is an illusion, not knowledge. It's caricature, not character. A bad mental habit of sloth, inaction, and the wrong assumptions about freedom. (You are not anybody's slave, nor are you under the lock of any institution or job.) Ultimately, my pieces protect and serve Mount Hope Pond. They celebrate, mythologize, and cite the value of this place.

The bass are still there. Out of 1279 visitations of that post linked alone, it's possible a few bass were caught and released as the result. Maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe some people have taken my advice and fully enjoyed themselves. Is that wrong, of course not. Since when do anglers have an attitude like radical environmentalists against the human species? Whatever is the case, bass are here.

I haven't reread this post linked to, but by how I remember it, I wasn't as good as I am now of telling it like it is. I probably wrote about the need to get back in the sticks, but a reader glosses over that and just thinks I'm telling him to follow a trail into the woods. Catching bass consistently here is hard to do.

That said, yeah, there may a few of you who, like me, find it relatively easy to make an effort and cast and pitch with an ever-growing sum of accuracy. One thing for sure: Do not tell me the craft of the cast is limited to fly fishing.

Mount Hope Pond's west side is pocked all over by schist. Wear hiking boots if you come here and rely on steady feet.

Part the brush and get into position.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/05/mounthope-pond-offers-chance-at-lunker.html

My wife got a phone call from the NJ Meadowland's DeKorte Park today. Someone found Sadie's collar and turned it in to the office. lol Nice of them.

Here's Laurie's latest:

Fishing has been pretty good this past week, with lots of Hybrids hitting on herring and  also casting bombers at night. Also producing walleye doing the same. The Yacht Club off of Bertrand’s Island has been good, along with Bed Bug Island and Davis Cove and back in the Byram Cove area. We are fully stocked with a large selection of Bomber lures. Several trout have been caught trolling with a phoebe and hitting on the smaller herring with Pete Pantelis weighing in with a 3 lb 2 oz Rainbow. While out fishing with his Dad Joe, Ethan Orlando landed a 3 pound 2 ounce pickerel.  Seeing lots of yellow perch and some nice crappies, hitting small jigs, worms or fatheads. The Knee Deep Clubs next contest takes place on June 24th for Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass, so make your plans now. Cash prizes will be awarded for the 3 heaviest fish. We are open early for bait, tackle and boat rentals, from 5:30 AM until 7 PM.  Have a safe Holiday weekend...

Unique Beauty of Meadowlands' DeKorte Park

 We began by fishing rising tide in the upper flat.

My family and I came to the New Jersey Meadowlands' DeKorte Park near Lyndhurst in 2009 or 2010, with New Jersey Audubon on a birding venture. I returned with two other New Jersey Audubon members in January 2010 or 201l, a frigid afternoon in the low 20's, photographing various species of wintering ducks, when the leader told me about striped bass arriving on the Sawmill Creek Flats here where we walked the trail dikes, in March. He told me they congregate around the pipes connecting the flats separated by these pathway dikes, where tidal flows concentrate and pass in strong currents. Soon my son and I were fishing a few outgoing tides and hooking up with a few schooley stripers.

Fred Matero first came with me five years ago in April, when we found the pathways fenced off after Hurricane Sandy. That afternoon and evening we wound up fishing the Hackensack River after tortuous attempts at finding access, though we found some. I find it really hard to believe that was five years ago. Seems a much shorter time, and yet it does feel, on the other hand, as if we've come here a long while, and that it has been.

Fred took a strong liking to the Meadowlands, and we came in 2014 and 2017. During the two off years, Fred got over there from Bernardsville by himself at least once. It's a long distance jaunt and we've always scheduled them around outgoing tide.

And all told, we have enjoyed action with few bass. Every time it seems we meet a regular and strike up conversation, getting more informed on the fishing. Today's confidant lives relatively nearby and has fished here a lot since March this year, as well as the Hackensack River nearby, although he's caught no stripers in the river itself, only on the flats at DeKorte where they arrive from that river, and he's caught them in significant numbers, but not size. He told us another regular said he's caught keeper-size bass (thrown back) through the summer, which surprised me. Someone years ago told me the action is done by June.

There's good reason to release all of the fish, as this is a park requirement, because the hills near water's edge, for one example of pollution source, are actually garbage dumps covered with soil and planted. If you look for them, you can find vent pipes that release gases. These hills look better than ever now, as bushes and trees have grown since I first saw them in 2009, and twice today I heard a ring-necked pheasant's throaty call from up there somewhere, sounding off like an outboard engine turning over.

Fred made the point that bass we catch here could be bass caught in the surf some other time, as they're migratory, but just the thought of eating a fish with pollutants deeply engrained in the area is plenty to remove want to take any home, not that bass we have caught haven't appeared fully healthy.

And the water seems fairly clean as does the bottom. When tide goes all the way out, besides rather minor channels (except for 30-foot depths near a bridge), the flats are mud featuring patches of Atlantic white cedar stumps. There's good reason they were logged during the 19th century. The wood is so durable they remain today.

Compared to what it was only 30, 40 years ago, DeKorte Park is beautiful. The view of Manhattan is world class. And jets, one after another taking off from Newark International only miles away, I never feel these as any distraction, but rather as adding to the unique aesthetic. One of them, a large airbus, I think, its four engines caught my eye and I felt its weight and majesty, becoming aware after it had passed, still feeling awe, that empathy is not limited to feelings we have for other people and animals. We feel it for objects, too, but objects as subtly personified, as things can inspire poetry.

Of course, that jet was filled with human passengers. So, in some respect, I felt empathy for people I knew were onboard.

The jet passed in the middle of spending at least on hour seated on a large rock, casting especially the edge of strong current. I covered that area thoroughly, lobbing the paddletail swimbait upstream and letting it sink and then swing like a fly-cast streamer across the current, then retrieving it back along that edge facing me. I tried casting it directly into current and letting it vibrate at length in place. Sometimes it very slowly sank when presented this way. On other casts when I tried this strategy the current carried it over to the edge and I reeled back at moderate speed. I let eddies so powerful they were like whirlpools turn and twist the lure. I probed bottom. I reeled quickly, keeping the lure near surface.

Not a hit. But after sunset, we walked about 3/4ths of a mile back to Fred's favorite spot. I got there ahead of him; he wasn't sure if he'd got a bump at the other pipe nearby.

I retrieved my swimbait quickly at the surface. "I don't want to hog your spot!" I called out as he approached. And just as my words finished, I felt a fish knock, and swung my look its way to see a large boil on the surface.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2014/04/striped-bass-at-dekorte-park-new-jersey.html

Shakedown Street

Condo association where I live is closing in, and I have to haul my two canoes all the way down to Lawrence Township in Mercer County, where my father might not like them. They're in the Common Element. We own our house, but the spaces outdoors--even the patio--have "common element" designated as a matter of control over the people--mostly working class--who live in the Cortland neighborhood.

The canoes are situated behind bushes and the little of them visible actually looks nice. Who would disagree with successfully owning goods like them?

Well, in the first place, I understand, as I understood upon our buying a house under an association's rules, that this ownership is a little like my writing on the Blogger platform I don't own. I do own the copyright, of course, but have bought no domain.

What a loaded word.

The association lords it over us now. They've notified residents of this second inspection in 20 years coming our way. The other happened last year...just as the "ruling classes" crack down on us across the board in a society presumably American. (I hold a working-class job and learn a lot about this society.)

What is the working-class? Like a refuse bin, a collection of individuals receiving damnation from above, the psychological projections of people with a lot more power pushed down on us. As if we're sacrificed like servicemen...so "others" (as if we don't comprise this society as well) can be free.

I worked hard to buy these canoes, and it might be obvious to some that I must have worked by means other than working-class, at least if they knew the level of my wages. And that my wife just put Rod Sirling on, The Twilight Zone, seems like an innuendo about further work I do, which I haven't yet received any monetary payment for. This episode of Sirling: "The Orbiting Human Circus." Ancient Rome never got nearly so spaced-out with Bread and Circuses. Our distraction, I hope, will never again be repeated in human history.

You may recall I recently posted on Sirling. About the pig-faces episode, and I have achieved some quality of life; quality of life may be felt as an abstraction involved in the theme of that episode. Is this achievement of mine unacceptable? Of course not, not among rational people. But for a working-class man to possess significant intellectual capital--while knowing fully that this capital is worthless without physical goods to ground it in reality--for a working-class man to effectively influence this society we live in by use of the mind, this may be very threatening to those Americans who presume to rule, while any American with any self-esteem knows "rulers" are un-American. The American nation is free. That which is not free is bound by farce and injustice.

I use the definite article before the word mind because every individual is, in fact, a social being.

Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead croon about what used to be the heart of town. "Shakedown Street." No one really wants to be dead and grateful; we want to live here on earth. And any man worth the salt of this desire will fight for his life.

There is no forum for appeal with the condo association. I have to move my canoes. We can't begin to afford a lawyer, though of course I am aware the rules could be investigated for possible contest, not that this thought bears much relevance, because if we could afford contesting these rules, we sure wouldn't live here.

What's relevant is that if I must, I can in all likelihood sell my canoes, though I especially want to keep the Great Canadian, a great find, and would do my best to persuade my patient father, if I had to keep it on his property. Selling both would mean dropping back to the shore-bound/rental handicap I bore out for many years. Chris Lido, former editor of The Fisherman, used to joke about my actually mailing print photos to support articles that were published with the film-print images, and I treasure these emails between him and me I keep as hard copy, because I want to believe his humor was good-natured. I was already forever grateful during my 20's and onward to The Fisherman for publishing me at age 16, although not a word was edited, because each passed muster. The articles are good, in other words. There was no prejudice against a youngster writing them who was fully qualified. I fished almost every day during my teens. I knew my business.

Getting back into publication after many years as a self-employed commercial clammer, mostly from the Jersey Shore, this was a lot more difficult than getting published as the privileged teenager of an upper-professional family, although, of course, no mention of this status was ever needed or given; the issue here is that my intellectual ability at that age reflected upon my parents, my father going on to hold the position of Music Director, Washington National Cathedral while George W. Bush was President and surely contemplated my father's music while seated in the congregation, as my father stood conducting. I do know that on another occasion, my father leading the American Boychoir, George W. Bush winked at Dad.

Dad is fiercely independent. This explains why, for me, it's "You're on your own, son." Something to be grateful for eternally, but the loss of a Great Canadian might swing in the balance. I don't know.

Buying another inflatable is out of the question. It worked to some degree of course, but seems laughable now that I have the canoes, not that I would discourage anyone finding some way to get on the water, but that I would encourage moving on to a better craft, if possible. My son and I, friends who fish with me, we have moved on, and if these canoes must be reduced to money in my pockets, we are not going back to an inflatable. We will rent and fish from the bank.

I bought my canoes by writing essays and articles for various paying publications, supporting most submissions with photography. (I also bought very expensive photographic equipment through these earnings.) It's like any other business. The canoes serve to increase my earnings. To sell may mean less income, but I never forget the words of novelist Ed Minus (Kite, Penguin Group), my former writing member: "Sometimes limitations impart greater freedom." That is, if you will act freely within limits, by which I mean the difficulty is the essence of that freedom. This is great reason never to give up.

The general pattern of politics in this country at present: the rich get richer the poor get poorer. I'm fortunate to very unusual degree--thanks entirely to my own effort, certainly not luck, and don't I ever know this--very fortunate compared to most of the working class who lack education. So I try to avoid sour grapes and deal with what gets thrown down on my shoulders. I think of the rock band Lynrd Skynrd's, "Sweet Home Alabama." The last words of the song involve the soloist swearing a load off his shoulders, but rather than racism implied--racism absolutely is evil--I think of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. The motto of Litton's Fishing Lines, "An Angler Always Finds a Way," is the honest truth. To think that some new leader on the condo board, our situation here in fact, would defeat me, this is a lot more laughable than owning an inflatable boat.

Pickerel Action Gives Emphasis to an Otherwise Slow Day on Lake Hopatcong

An early venture, we met writer Michael Vandenberg at 5:10 a.m. sharp at Dow's Boat Rentals, finding the shop open, Michael buying a fishing license and hoping for fresh hybrid striper fillets, the three of us getting rained on the moment we began to move our stuff to the boat. I wasn't messing around this time; before I lifted anything, I put on my heaviest winter coat, and the rain jacket fit tightly over that. My black pants in the photo below are wool, and they proved to be very comfortable.

We motored directly to a spot I thought promising. I've experienced countless outings anybody might think would be a slam dunk that turned out to be slow fishing. We caught 10 hybrids, most of them big, in the rain the other day. Rain again, so ditto, right? It rarely is so easy, but Mike caught a hybrid of about 15, 15 1/2 inches just after we had turned around for our second trolling pass. In the photo it does look like a keeper, and I should have measured it, but at the moment my patience was short, since the plugs of my son and I had already got tangled twice, and I felt certain we could get that problem right, and in fact, we did.

We must have made six or seven more passes before I judged the fish weren't there. Nothing but one fish had marked on the graph, and on Wednesday it was lighting up like a penny arcade gimmick. We swung out and motored full speed all the way to Byram Bay. Water temperature read 60. I  had
noticed that temperature again after two trolling rounds and nothing. The same place is alive with warm water fish with that temperature at 70 or higher, I'm very confident about this.

I began to notice a pattern I didn't expect, since hybrids and walleyes are "supposed" to be in shallows now. Well, some are, but we were marking fish on herring clouds at drop-offs, mostly 14 feet down or deeper, many of them big.

Soon, we were back out towards the main lake and I was casting a Mann's Little George, and then we trolled diving crankbaits; eventually I resorted to a Binsky Bladebait, a favorite fall selection, because we found hybrids and/or walleye stacked from 35-38 feet down over 45-48 feet of water well away from shore and on herring. Big ones. Carp and, as far as I know, channel catfish, don't ride herring schools. As you might expect, nothing hit, and besides, during the fall, vertical and diagonal jigging is a meditation involving lots of time if you want to catch fish. We said the heck with it and went into Great Cove, the walleye weighing more than six pounds caught on a trolled jointed Bomber recently serving as a little incentive, but in the back of my mind and with a little more weight of realism, I was thinking maybe we could hook a pickerel a little shallower than running over the 14-foot depths preferred for hybrids probably suspended over bottom.

We first ducked into Dow's to use the john, and as we walked back to the boat, I mentioned something to Michael about maybe hooking up during our last hour, though I didn't say this with any conviction, just as the sort of floating possibility that does sometimes pan out. Most of my readers might not care a whole lot after three-and-a-half hours of very early morning fishing and couple of fish. Michael had caught his, and I haven't yet mentioned that I caught a largemouth in Byram Bay despite the chilly water. Why ask for more? Well, because when you play a game, you only enjoy it as you give it your full focus and intent, and this means you're looking to score.

And after we caught four pickerel, Michael losing another as it jumped, that lake came alive to us as it hadn't yet all day. I began musing about the light changing relative to cloud density, how some patches of trees were rendered a light green for a little awhile against others darker, and I even came through the windows of my skull and verbalized this to Michael and Matt, just before dozens of sailboats suddenly appeared. Wind actually increased then, and sun came fully out for long seconds at a time. I said, "Nothing else gives you the rhythm of life like a lake," and as I write, I still feel the boat rock. The point of a game is to get transported somewhere else from where you began.

And it had rained, off and on. Spits and splats. We didn't get soaked, though.

We had trolled eight, 10 feet of water when I began to get pickerel on the brain, in the form of an unuttered complaint, when Matt reared back about a minute later as the boat gained a small weedy flat six feet deep. I threw the outboard into neutral, the boat slowing when I felt a knock, and I began playing the second pickerel, both of these small, about 15 and 16 inches. Matt's smaller fish took the plug whole and the rear treble seemed all the way in the gullet, but that couldn't be; no, it was caught on the last gill raker, and my having performed a little surgical operation successfully, perhaps, that fish might live. My son felt no hope at the attempt, but he didn't mess it up.

Meanwhile, I kept a slant eye on the fact of our drifting perfectly back over the flat to our starting point, because I certainly wanted to make another pass. Once again, Matt hooked up, I threw the engine into neutral, and then four or five seconds later as the boat had slowed, I hooked up, this time into a nice fish that gave that respectable pull of definite weight I so enjoy, although, of course, not stripping braid from the reel as the drag would scream for a long time. Those hybrids the other day fought like crazy trains.

The pickerel went fully air-born once, and I knew it weighed about two pounds, though we didn't use the net, 15-pound braid sufficient...at least, given that the fluorocarbon leader wasn't nicked, so I had taken a risk.

About 21 inches.

We made a few more passes, Michael having lost his fish, before we headed to Lee's Cove, exploring more shallows, Matt catching a pumpkinseed sunfish on his Finesse Sinking Rapala that might have placed in Knee Deep Club's panfish derby held today. (I did slow down the trolling speed from that little flat, forward.) We're Knee Deep members, at least I think I chose the family membership again, though I'm getting old and tend to make little mistakes like that would be, but I've got to get trolling plugs in before it's too late for this. So about the derby, which Matt could have entered even as a non-club member, I just never considered that maybe....

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-matter-of-tuning-in.html

Lake Hopatcong Trolled Hybrid Stripers

Funny how I feel entitled to experience as I imagine it coming. On the way up to the lake, I was in an annoyed, irritated mood, keeping it from my son, but thinking he could sense it plenty, irritated because I didn't get to bed until 4:00 a.m., and didn't wake until 10, the hour I had planned for us to hit the road, and even that plan somewhat of a compromise on my original dream of us having all day after Matt's freshman year at Boston University, though we would still get in eight hours. I have memories of us fishing during summer for eight, nine hours, when we forgot everything else and slowed way down on the lake, comfortable in 90-degree temps, sun on the forehead. Today would be a day just like that.

Well, for one thing, the fish wouldn't leave us alone. Besides that, yes, it was raining, very hard, and the temperature never got out of the low sixties. Soaked almost through and through, despite rain gear that is supposed to work, I was not only shivering by the end of almost five hours, I shook. Matt shivered.

I forgot my apprehensions while driving up, but while catching the first two or three hybrids, I felt too much my supermarket salesman self, as if that forehead of mine so worthy of solar heat was still fixed on the relatively monotonic process of moving product. Not that this is any complaint; I think I've got beyond unease and have embraced my job fully, but the natural world out there, that's a much larger reality than any sort of architectural structure, such as a supermarket that stands on given earth. A reality much bigger than all that is done behind any walls.

So greater dignity is appropriate outdoors.

Over the course of nearly five hours and 10 of these hybrid striped bass--the largest at five pounds, 15 ounces; Matt's biggest five pounds, 9 ounces, most of these fish fighting as if we hooked freighters on the Atlantic, all of them on various trolled plugs--we got well beyond where we came from, thus fulfilling some of that "all day" feeling, though we never sought out Woodport, a range of the lake we haven't fished, not even the Byram Bay area where we like to fish in the spring. I became aware of how the driving rain and chill affected me, but not with the observational clarity I tried to focus, so I just accepted that was no use, although I wasn't dysfunctional, just a little too short on patience for the first couple of hours.

And yet, it had happened. Ever since my son and I caught a number of nice hybrids on an October excursion in 2014, my biggest over five pounds, I've dearly wanted him to catch one at least as large. That trip nearly four years ago seems like yesterday, and yet the deep longing for my son's nice one has endured deeper than we can measure time. I wasn't in anything like an euphoric mood today, or even a relaxed state, but complacency doesn't describe it, either, so I give myself a pass; even though I wish I could have better celebrated the catch, there's time yet for this.

I remember not one, but a number of fishing excursions during my teens in steady rain, on one occasion getting to my destination eight miles distant on my bicycle, and then hiking a half mile or so, not a path, but through the water of the stream dammed at the pond I fished, air temperature at 50 degrees. Was this insanity? No. Unusual stubbornness, yes. I didn't know this then, but by the time I got home on my ten speed--after dark--I was in second-stage hypothermia. All I knew, I was delirious. Very.

So today I tried to compare, not very successfully, my ability during my teens and 20's to deal with weather extremes, compared to me now at age 57. I did conclude that it's harder to do at this age.

A great day. Even when I doubt, as I doubted today on the way to the lake not about the rain, but about the amount of time we might have and our opportunity to go deep into experience, we always seem to come through by getting out of the grind of the ordinary. And it didn't take a high mood for me to do this. We didn't fish until sunset, but going on five hours was fully plenty.

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

To the WH

Lenny, who knows, maybe there'll be another nut on the premises soon. He does drive a stick. If those trees in front of you were clear cut, you could see the farce. Not talking down to you. lol. Some words just don't work outright. You're in the real WH, my friend. And I bet that place over there will never have tigers in the other river.