How's the WH?

Just polished off a goodly portion of white rum leftover from Ocracoke Island, that infamous seat of the ragged pants of pirate Blackbeard, which celebrated the 300th Anniversary of His Decapitation last summer while we there; what a festive occasion I would have been proud to see Theodore Roosevelt celebrate, given that the Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, ordered the execution...so Lenny, what's up? This rum just did not work against my insomnia, so I've come downstairs, drinking milk I heated almost to boiling...the...I forget the name of the substance, starts with an t, I think.

A good Governor, Spotswood. No affiliation, by merit of a joke, I agree, with the KKK.

I see trout in the river lost to vagaries of my imagination, but I know firmly that so long as they still get stocked, that portion of the river is exceptional...I like to hope a few escapees make it into stretches beyond.

WH is a tough job, but I know you have a nice chair and desk. Think of you on frequent occasion, so here's to history, as Boss would have it. He tell you that? Told me that.

Got Out in the Snow

Told Joe Landolfi it's a cancelation today, unless he has four wheel drive and would pick me up in Bedminster. Judging conditions at 3:00 p.m., I sort of wish I had gone on and met him at Laurie's. The roads aren't really very bad. I've had some wonderful times ice fishing during snowstorms, although I did consider this time around that with ice safety dicey after all the mild weather and rain of recent, snow cover would make judging that safety less sure, if the ice isn't thoroughly whitened underneath by re-freezing anyhow.

I had phoned Stanhope Bait and Boat and asked about safety on Tilcon Lake before arranging today with Joe. She didn't know, but she told me Lake Musconetcong has eight inches of ice over it in the back. I doubt Tilcon is safe. It's a deep lake with shorelines that drop off almost vertically. The main lake of Hopatcong is mostly open water from what I gather, and it's no deeper than the deepest depths of Tilcon. Besides, when the bait supplier for so many who ice fish Tilcon hasn't any word to offer on the lake, that probably means no one is going there because it's not safe. If they were going, some would probably tell her so.

At work yesterday, facing coming snow and really not only my wife's prohibition about my driving in it, since at my age I don't feel the same excitement on snow-covered roads as I did when younger, the idea of at least getting out for a camera shoot at the river nearby popped into mind and I committed to this immediately. I went to bed at 1:30, set my alarm for 10:30, when I looked out the window, saw no snow, and slept another half hour. When I got up is when it began flaking out there. About an hour later, I was at the river with nearly an inch on the ground.

So I got about 25 shots on my new Sigma 24mm f1.4 Art lens, concerned about the contrast. I was shooting from shadow, underneath that bridge, and obviously with all the white of clouds and snow, contrast overdone might be expected, but I wasn't sure if it was the lens...or my new Nikon D850 camera. So I put on my trusty Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. This is a DX lens. On my full frame camera, I can use only 14-16mm of the focal length or the edges are shadows, since the sensor on my camera is a lot larger than a DX sensor like that of my D7100. Which is OK. When I can use 14-16mm, great, that's ultra wide angle and has its uses. But I went on photography message boards to get the scoop on using a DX lens on an FX camera, and a lot of people feel that though it works, sure, you should really use FX lenses on expensive FX cameras, and some have done tests to show that on an FX camera, the sharpness of the Tokina lacks out from the center of the image on FX, while it doesn't on DX. (I never was informed on why this is, but I saw the comparisons.)

Anyhow, I shot another seven or eight photos with the Tokina and got the same high contrast, so either that was how it is, or my camera needed attention, me vaguely having wondered if, once I would begin editing, I would judge all OK. Which I have. There's no camera, no matter how expensive, which can balance light between shadow and brightly lit subject matter as the human eye does. The more I shoot, the more I become aware how badly a camera gathers information (in the form of light) compared to my own brain. I sometimes feel my endeavor is ridiculous, compared to contemplating scenes freely without any stupid electronic device, but mostly I play it out as the game of getting the best I can with electronics, and always, without fail, I'm fascinated in shots that draw a "wow" response from me. After all, without a camera, you cannot "freeze time" as you can on pixels. Memory serves you more like a movie camera, but no matter how vividly memory remains intact, and it's better than vivid in two dimensions, it doesn't give you an image "out there" to contemplate. And if you have it on file and own an image processor like Lightroom, you can edit it to your own likings.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2016/06/photo-shoot-afternoon-at-round-valley.html

Laurie Murphy Reports from Dow's Boat Rentals

Laurie Murphy:

Most coves along with the State Park are covered with about 7 inches of ice. The main lake is just skimmed over with some open water so that is not safe enough to fish.  Several nice fish made their way to the scales with Bryan Higgins weighing in a 1 lb 10 oz Crappie, Sean Donnelly with a 3 lb 6 oz pickerel, caught in Great Cove,  Max Hughens also with a pickerel weighing 4 lb 4 oz and Pete Pelligrino with a 1 lb 2 oz yellow perch. Jeremy Hughens also had a 45 “ muskie, released back alive.  The Knee Deep Club’s ice fishing contest is set for Sunday Feb. 10th. More info can be found on their website or you can call the shop @ (973) 663-3826. We are open at 6 AM, 7 days a week and fully stocked with whatever you need for ice fishing. We have shiners and fatheads, along with waxworms and spikes for bait. Have a great week and be safe on the ice...

Nice Ice Fishing on a Private Lake

Brian Cronk and I decided it was worth checking on the private lake, despite the recent heavy rain. It has a sizeable stream leading into it, so I was afraid that rain and warmth broke up the ice. We got there about a half hour before sunrise to find about four-and-a-half inches of ice, so we drove to Dow's Boat Rentals for shiners, finding a crowd there getting bait like I never have before witnessed. I think most of Hopatcong was frozen, but there was a lot of open water near the shop at Great Cove. We returned to the private lake when the sun was just about on the treetops.

And then we hiked about 400 yards, Brian hauling a Jet Sled carrying all of our gear, me dragging Sadie the black Lab who refused to walk while I tested ice on occasion with my splitting bar, finding ice that seemed as thick as six inches, though most of it was nearly five. When we figured we had walked enough, though I really felt it was best to give up the trek because Sadie's harness kept pulling out under the weight of dragging her, I threw a cloth sleeping bag out for her to to rest on, and soon got my power auger to turn over on the second or third pull. I don't think it cut as well as it used to. The blades had got bad and I replaced them, but it just doesn't seem to cut as quickly as did before the original blades got dull. If anyone has experienced the same and knows of a solution, please let me know. In the meantime, I will have to Google for information on this if I find time, maybe join a message board and pose a question. For the most part, I was satisfied with the Eskimo's performance despite this doubt. In total, I cut 15 holes, and each of them didn't take terribly long to drill out.

As we began setting up our legal assortment of 10 tip-ups, flags started popping before we could get close to having them all set. I had to show Brian how to set them up so we could get the job done on the double. He ice fished some during his high school years, but the steps to getting a shiner set were new to him. When we finally had 10 out there, we had lost a pickerel because it cut through the double 15-pound test fluorocarbon leader, and I had caught one 18 or 19 inches long, while Brian had caught a couple of yellow perch. Deepest depth was about seven feet, and a few tip-ups, two of them I later moved elsewhere, were set in about four feet of water.

We had some leisure time. It wasn't all cutting and resetting. And chasing after flags. Brian tried jigging a Keitech in earnest to no result. I got into observing irregularities in the ice, including myriad small bubbles, wondering about formations, mentioning to Brian that if there's a book written about so many variables in the formation of ice on lakes and ponds, I don't know of it. I might get around to finding out if such a book exists. There are all sorts of ways ice freezes, leaving behind a visible record of these developments that can really call upon a lot of questions. But many of them might be very difficult to answer. How those frozen vortexes appearing like little white tornados with whited dollops on the ice surface got that way doesn't seem clearly evident at all, but maybe the answer is more evident to science than it seems to me.

Eventually, Brian phoned his friend Sam. (Sam's parents live on the lake.) How many perch and pickerel we had caught by then I'm not sure, but for the record, I caught three pickerel and a perch. Brian caught five or six perch. He also lost a pickerel to another cut-off, pulling the fish long enough to know it was good size. Sam told us we weren't quite on the spot. When Brian told me about the channel eight or nine feet deep, that's all the mention I needed to know it's a likely spot for largemouths, despite being only slightly deeper. That's what Brian had in mind. A nice bass of about three pounds. The lake has plenty of them this size.

By now a temperature of about 20 degrees had risen to 35 or so, the surface of the lake having softened, a slippery foothold having gained some traction. I hauled the auger about a hundred yards up lake, cutting two holes. I got a tip-up in only of them, preoccupied with other stuff in the interim. When after about six hours out there that seemed to pass very quickly we decided to start packing it in, I got around to taking the long walk to that distant tip-up that never let its spring take flight. I was thinking about Brian and his persistent wish for a nice bass, looking at that tip-up as I got closer to it and thinking about the fact that it never sprang, and then happened to look at the ice in front of me. When I looked up again, the flag had risen. I called out to Brian. Did he want his last fish? (We had taken turns.) A long walk for that from where he stood by the gear, but his assent signaled that a bass would be worth it, and I stood next to the hole while I waited for him to walk up, watching line steadily peel off the spool.

A bass. Pickerel take a shiner like a rocket for just five or six yards and stop. Perch often take a shiner and just stay in place with it. Bass take a shiner and lumber steadily away, not stopping. Brian got a hold of the line with his hand and started pulling. But all he pulled in was the shiner he had pulled from the bass's mouth before I reminded him that when hand-lining with a tip-up, you have to tighten up and set the hook, too. You feel that pressure and yank back hard on the line.

It was a beautiful end to a nice day on the ice.

Tip-up and high flag.

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2018/01/nice-pickerel-nice-company.html

Think We Have Something of an Ice Season Ahead

Got an invitation from Brian Cronk to ice fish a private lake, the two of us exchanging messages as we planned ahead. And then we got more rain than expected. Since a creek leads into the lake, it's likely our Sunday plans are smashed perhaps like the ice cover itself. Brian and I have been trying to fish together ever since we fished Hopatcong in 2016 a couple of times, but circumstances keep jinxing us. Some things are definitely meant to be, but keep getting curtailed by unforeseen events cropping up in-between intentions. We'll get out and fish yet, I'm sure.

Other waters unaffected by flow are getting back into good shape. That was a warm heavy rain and it certainly eroded ice cover at these places too somewhat, especially along the shoreline edges, but ice had thickened to as many as eight inches over shallow lakes and ponds, and it's cold again, but be careful if you go out this weekend. I certainly can't tell you just how it is when all I'm doing is typing while I sit at home and judge from past experience.

But it is getting colder. Zero-degree temperatures are forecast next week to the north of where I sit in Bedminster. Lots of single digits besides. We'll see yet how cold the rest of February remains, but this is sustained cold in the relatively short-range forecast, and I think cold enough to ensure safety for ice fishing over deep water. Don't expect Round Valley Reservoir to freeze, but the pond there will likely be safe. It's 37 feet deep, and the day my son and I fished Budd Lake on four inches of ice, only an inch-and-a-half of ice or so covered Round Valley Pond. I've seen some pike photos since my son and I ventured out there on Budd more than a week ago, and, yup, I'm jealous. We didn't fish all day and best of all, we had a really good time. We had more sheer fun catching those pickerel on Round Valley Pond last year, though.

Another friend and I are making plans also, so expect a lively report on our ice fishing February 6th.


https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2016/05/lake-hopatcong-fishing-difference-day.html

Nice Ice Outing on Budd Lake

We got to Zach's shop and again it was closed, so we traveled all the way down to the Sporting Life for the shiners, greeted by Andy Still as we walked in. He wasn't fishing today, just hanging out. Matt remarked as we left that he seemed to look at us like we were crazy...headed over to Round Valley Pond. But no one there really knew if the pond was safe or not, and we doubted that it would be, given its depth and relatively lower elevation than Budd Lake, reported to be safe indeed.

But we had to check.

I just grabbed the splitting bar and we quickly headed down to the pond to be sure. I had to position my right foot on weak ice in close to give the real ice just beyond a whack and that foot went through; my boot filled with frigid water within a second, that leg sunk almost to the knee, but instead of reacting, I let it be and took my whack anyhow. Not safe. I guess that ice is an inch-and-a-half or so thick.

My foot warmed pretty much by the time we got back to the car. Thermal sock and very good boot. By the time we got to Budd Lake, we had been "out" a long while, but there was more time to fish than I feared we would have. A sail runner zipped by, but even before we got unloaded altogether, a second showed up with two guys pushing it because wind had died. I had already determined the ice was four inches thick, and Matt and I agreed we wouldn't run one of those crafts on ice that thin.

I had the power auger in the trunk, but we just left it there. Four inches is very easy to cut with the splitting bar. I noticed on one occasion that Matt broke clean through by two hard slams of that iron.

So for about two-and-a-half hours, fishing well into dusk, we hung out and talked. Most of life is stupid compared to what two intelligent people can say when they step outside the bounds. Crisp, calculated conversations that carried time very nicely. None of that second-guessed bullshit warping the tenor of what we said. Calculated in the sense of immediate spoken result.

Before we had even got to Zach's, I told Matt that if we had to fish Budd, most likely we would get skunked. And we had such a good time catching pickerel at Round Valley last year. I know pike get caught on Budd and some of the guys who catch them come out on social media looking very savvy indeed, but I always find it slow except for very rare occasion. On one of those, I caught two pike, but they were only about 17 inches long. On another, I missed two hits and witnessed quite a few caught. Besides those two little pike, I once caught a 23-incher. I have missed some other hits and have also caught a 12-inch channel catfish, but I've fished Budd through the ice quite a bit since 1997 and that's the extent of my catches.

It's about six feet deep everywhere, which means the fish are spread out everywhere. There is one 12-foot hole, and on one occasion when I parked on U.S. 46, I knew I had found it by the amount of line I let down from the tip-up spool before the weight made bottom contact. That tip-up I left alone a long distance from where I sat. It went up. By the time I got to it, all 40 or 50 yards of line were gone. Pike don't run that fast and far. Bass might. But the little channel cat I once caught took line so fast the spool almost looked like a blur.

A Little Ice?

We've got some strings of nights in the teens and low 20's in the forecast. My son is working Sunday, but may have off a week from today when we might get out. I have my doubts, though, that either Round Valley Pond or Tilcon Lake will freeze sufficiently, especially Tilcon with even deeper water and wider acreage. And I don't want to go out on Tilcon if ice is three inches thick. I will go out on three inches covering Round Valley Pond, because it has tighter surface acreage, which means it's   more likely to freeze evenly. It is deep at about 37 feet, though. Will three inches of ice cover it by Wednesday? Does not feel very likely. So will we go fish shallow Budd Lake, if it's marginally safe?
We had such a good time over at Round Valley last year, and Oliver and I out on Tilcon,,,