Bunch of Big Morris County Bass

The first came from a foot of water near the bank under the shade of trees late in the afternoon. We had paddled directly up the lake, beginning our fishing too far out in six feet of water in the sun. The lake is nine feet at the deepest. Most of it seems around five feet. This first bass hooked itself immediately after the worm splashed down, tearing through thick algae on two solid runs that reminded me of a hybrid striper. Brian had to paddle us closer to the fish as it got stuck in the mess, and when I reached for the lip, I felt the hook fall out against my hand.

It measured 20 inches. Weighed 4.36 pounds.

We missed a couple of hits in close. Brian lost a bass of about three pounds on a Rapala before the fast action would come and go. This fast action lasted no more than 10 minutes. By twitching a Senko near the surface in about four feet of water among milfoil and algae matts, I caught four: about 12 inches, 16 1/2 inches, 17 and some inches, and 19 3/8 inches. The latter fish weighed 3.46 pounds.

After that second nice bass of just under 3 1/2 pounds, I told Brian the bite was probably over. It was. An unusual evening bite perhaps--before sunset.

I gave this post a "Big Bass" title. Though none of them weighed over five pounds, which you might say is true lunker status, for New Jersey, I figure they're big enough to have grabbed your attention. Besides, for most fishermen perhaps, a 20-inch largemouth is "five pounds." (If I used the word "nice," instead of "big" in the title, you might not be reading.)

I wondered if we would get something of a secondary bite. It took a long time. We must have fished an hour and a half before it happened, catching nothing, though Brian had taken some hits. Then, as dusk began to settle, Brian hooked a bass of about three pounds on a topwater. It got in the thick, and once that happens, it's difficult to keep line tight. When a bass has loose line on its end of the algae, it finds it easy to throw the hooks. Which Brian's bass did. 

He missed another fish or two. I can't remember the number. But using a Rebel Pop-R, I caught a 12-incher, an 18 1/2-incher that weighed 3.19 pounds--a chunky bass--and another a little over 16 inches that weighed 2.13. I know most fishermen's 18 1/2-inch chunky bass weighs close to four pounds, but that might be by the old standard of the trusty Deliar, a device that made fishermen liars everywhere, because it's nothing like a certified scale. I tested my electronic Rapala on a five-pound bag of sugar. By supermarket standards monitored by the state, I guess that bag did weigh five pounds.

None of these last three bass got photographed.

The secondary bite was nothing like the furious action of the first, when bass violently disrupted the surface when taking my Senko slightly below that surface. Each of the three I caught later over the course of 20 minutes or so first tapped at the plug, besides the biggest, which fully exposed its upper body when taking a pass at the plug while making no contact with it. The trick in each case was to keep fishing that plug. Very slowly. Each bass slurped it slightly, though each was then easy to hook, and, in fact, the big one slurped that plug down to its gullet, though removing the treble with needlenose pliers was easy.

What a day. Brian asked me if it was my best day of the summer. I told him yes. I could have made this post one of my themed stories that evokes the quality of experience more than the knick-knacks of fishing, but not only did I burn out that talent--doesn't mean I can't conjure it back--I don't have time tonight, and besides, I did so well at catching bass today that I want to emphasize this. 

Brian had raised the issue of tournaments while we fished Wawayanda, and tonight I told him I wished I had taken the advice of Tim Tingo, Mercer County Bassmasters' top tournament placer, and taken out the loan for an outboard to go further into tournament fishing. I set my goal on tournament fishing independently of him, but hearing that advice from the club's best was valuable. I did take trophies from guys mostly at least twice my age, having begun fishing bass tournaments at age 16. I remember rising to mania during those events. Intensely competitive.

You can guess what happened. I got inspired as a writer.

An afternoon and evening like today's makes me feel young and starting out. 

  

 17 inches or so.

 16 and some.

  

Brian's biggest cuts into algae where it threw the hook.


https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2013/09/four-pound-smallmouth-bass-south-branch.html (Not quite.)

Face-Off between the State and Business? Hopatcong's Algae

I refused to come out and state my opinion baldly from the start of the mess, because I had no firm evidence to back it. A friend of mine told me algae blooms go way back--he's in his 80's--and they never harmed anyone, but although I readily felt whatever's happened this year is overblown, I didn't want to say so on one account. But if you will read especially the first link I've offered, you'll hear Laurie Murphy speak about Joe Welsh doing his herring operation these weeks as if nothing's happened, getting no rashes. Mind her additional words, though. She's seen people swimming in the lake recently, but she recognizes that people with weak immune systems could get hurt. And she does not let her dogs near the water.

I don't think an advisory is a bad idea. And the second article is worth reading, also, because it tells of increased phosphates in the lake's water, causing algae to bloom. So apparently, it is worse now than in the past. But the lake is NOT closed. And misleading information got out that it is.

How bad is it? Not so bad as to "close the lake," which never happened, and yet electronic messages along Interstate 80 used language like "ban." Business takes the hit. It's reported that such messages are "erroneous." They are that, but I wonder about the intent. It seems to me the choice of such language is too obvious to be an honest mistake.

https://www.njherald.com/20190707/businesses-take-a-hit-from-lake-hopatcong-algae

https://www.njherald.com/20190710/crowd-sounds-off-on-impact--of-lake-hopatcong-algae


https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2017/01/open-letter-to-nj-boat-regulation.html

Caught Some Pond Bass

The late afternoon warmth after a good day off from work motivated me to do more fishing. I haven't been over to Fairview Farms in rural Bedminster Township since, I think it was, 2010, when I took my son and a friend of his. I first fished the pond with Matt in 2004, one of four bass caught nearly two-and-a-half pounds. I caught a two-pounder on another occasion, and although we didn't fish here often, we did enough to know the pond doesn't fish fast.

So it's been almost a decade. Hard to believe. Since then, the Raritan Watershed Association has installed a fishing dock. The pond needs it. I found the banks fully overgrown. Maybe had I walked the trail further, I'd find pathways in, but the best I could judge the situation from where I stood on the dock, all of the spots we depended upon in the past are completely grown in, and the only way to fish the pond is from that dock.

That's bad and good news. Apparently, most of the bass are inaccessible, as stationing along shore here and there normally gets you to them when fishing a pond. But brush overhangs have become a very interesting feature.

I came intending to fly fish, and that's how I started. The popper I tied on is pretty big, and I had a hard time casting. Mainly, it's a problem of the fly line or the rod. (It's moderate action.) The best I could get was 40 feet, before my popper got snagged on the back of the dock, my wherewithal not all that good. I did give it a good try for 15 minutes or so, but refused to retie. I wanted to catch some bass, and the overhangs looked too good not to target them with a plastic worm.

With my St. Croix medium power spinning rod, I was fully in control. I got the worm right into a pocket under brush, on the other side of a cut of vegetation, let it sink, tightened, and hooked the bass photographed. I caught another about the same size near the edge of brush photographed below. Casting a worm with a spinning rod, when pinpoint targets are involved, is a thrill.

It was getting dark and I had to leave. I didn't feel I was at such a loss fly fishing the North Branch this morning, nor when on the South Branch, so maybe I won't find the fly rod a handicap when Oliver Round and I float the latter river. I've caught smallmouths fly fishing the North Branch and Paulinskill rivers, while targeting this species. While fly fishing redfish in South Carolina, I routinely got 50 feet or better, and I didn't feel put out on the Salmon River, but I do have something to learn yet.

Jeremy Mehlhaff, our South Carolina guide, got 90 feet.

I get 60 with my worm on the spinning rod.

It's nice to have a place like Fairview Farms nearby, thanks to RWA. I may not return for another decade, for all I know, but it exists. On the way there, Larger Cross Road took me out of myself, the sun low. I realized, as I left, that in part my motive was to escape my troublesome job...and I couldn't. But I didn't think about it as I fished, if my feelings were perhaps all too conditioned by the habit of doing that job. Seeing darkness encroach and knowing it means getting up soon to go do the job again felt ominous, put me in a low mood, and yet someone was burning wood along U.S. 206, and the smell lifted that mood, reminding me of the Steelhead Inn in Pulaski. We do such damn jobs so we can go to places like that, so these jobs cannot possibly be all bad. 

I may as well confess to you that my father once observed, when I was about 22, that I "try to escape reality." I think there's nothing wrong with trying, if escaping reality, for me, is living on royalties from books written. It's just that I'm a lot older now than 35, the age at which, I hoped when I was 26, I would begin living on royalties. It's not that I was a bad writer; it's that my curiosity led me in so many directions. I was still reading books and searching out my own ideas by age 35. Fishing got me back to getting published, having first got published on fishing at age 16, and fishing has grounded my approach to writing memoir. So there's hope I'll earn royalties yet. 

These last two photos got screwed up because of condensation on my lens, having taken the camera outdoors from air conditioned house. I wiped most of it off, but didn't have the patience to get it just right.

Brush overhang is really good here. That's holding water under those bushes. Getting a worm right into that pocket near the photo's middle...a cast like that yielded my second bass.

Dow's Boat Rentals is Open and Weighing Fish Despite Algae Bloom

Laurie Murphy:


The Knee Deep Club’s Hybrid Striped Bass contest is scheduled for this weekend July 13th & 14th. They will be making a final decision on Wed,  July 10th as to whether they will be holding the contest or not due to Lake Hopatcong’s recent blue green algae bloom. DEP’s advisory is to avoid bodily contact with the water and to not eat the fish caught at this time. There has been alot of misinformation put out there, but the Lake has been open,regardless of what the signs have said,  other than the public beaches being closed to swimming only. If you go to The Lake Hopatcong Foundation page, you will be able to find out all the latest information concerning the algae bloom, with links to the latest reports from DEP.You can call Dows Boat Rental at (973) 663-3826 after Wednesday for more information regarding the contest. With little to no boat traffic on the lake , it is the perfect time to cast your line. We are open 7 days a week, from 5:30 AM - 7 PM, with bait, tackle & boat rentals. Bruce Apslund, fishing with herring, landed 4 Hybrids, the largest weighing 7 lb 14 oz. Several nice bass, both Large & smallmouth, have been being caught, along with some nice crappie. Jim Welsh landed a channel cat, weighing 4 lb 6oz, caught on some dead bait and Jim Archambault made his way to the scales with a 4 lb 13 oz pickerel.  Brandon Wood’s  walleye  weighed in at 6 lb 8 oz.

Packed House at Lake Hopatcong Foundation meeting concerning the algae bloom. More than 300 attended. Link to the news is below:

https://lakehopatcongfoundation.org/packed-house-at-lhc-meeting-to-discuss-harmful-algal-bloom/?fbclid=IwAR1Z2LsuFoyDc3btLincp4GALsHRhXCScOn4ld9VI58ZBQtC-gUYCOIDLlc

Tried for Natirar Smallmouth Bass

Arrived at Natrirar before sunrise and fly fished the North Branch Raritan, bringing no spinning rod this time. All the killies I brought home from the recent Sunday at Island Beach died. They require careful tending, and I got distracted.

This is a bassy looking stretch, about four feet deep, and though none rose for my popper or hit my Haggerty's Hell Raiser, a few sunfish did peck at the popper. It would be a marvel to catch a smallmouth here as big or bigger than the one I got at 202/206 the other day. Most people I know of familiar with the river don't expect big ones as far upstream, but I never forget the story I heard about a 17-incher caught in Princeton's little Beden's Brook. The stream is smaller than the river here at Natirar. 

Haggerty's Hell Raiser

Finally, Smallmouth Bass

Got to the South Branch Raritan well before dawn and made my way along a trail in relative darkness, noticing a few big carp making a ruckus in shallows when I got by the water, not able as yet to see that water was off color, though I was able to judge it was high and guess that it wouldn't look good, either.

I came with my St. Croix Avid seven weight. My prize for placing as a finalist for the Brookwood Press Writing Award. I've had the rod a couple of years, sitting in its tube, awaiting whenever I might get back to the Salmon River and fish steelheads. I got the idea last year to buy fly line, leaders, and flies to use for the smallmouths. I spent well over a hundred dollars on this summer quest, and though it would seem as if it didn't begin well this morning, I got a taste of efficient casting, and being there on the river was worth the effort.

How efficient, I can't judge by much experience, but it does feel as if the Scientific Anglers Air Cel fast forward line I bought is somehow too light. I don't feel it quite loads as it should. I didn't spend a whole lot of money on it. I should speak to Oliver Round about this, and Jim Holland at Shannon's Fly Shop, and possibly find myself obliged to spend a lot more. If I'm headed back to the Salmon River, I don't want to be without, and besides, after all this anticipation for the South Branch, I don't want to let that be a cheap shot, either.

Nothing rose for my popper. No surprise. I did see a few fish come up here and there, so I thought just maybe a hit was possible, but every time I find the river like this--high but not very high, off color but not outright muddy--I fail to score. The only exception might have been a little bass on a Johnson Beetle Spin once.

I did bring killies. Since I have a bucket full after fluke fishing the other day, I made sure to bring my spinning rod as well. Nothing hit a couple of big lively ones.

I left the South Branch and parked at the North Branch, right over here near home, where U.S. 202/206 passes over. I knew water would be low and plenty clear. No room to fly cast--I wasn't into the idea of roll casting here--I got killies underneath that bridge, having lost a small bass to a jump on the first cast. I told myself you would think there's a nice big smallmouth hanging out back in that darkness, the water at least fairly deep, and I cast as far back underneath as I could--pretty far--and then let current take the bait even further.

Finally, the line moved off and when I tightened it, I felt the weight of a sizeable fish pulling. I set and felt solid resistance. The fight involved a couple of drag screeching runs on six-pound mono. I knew the bass wouldn't quite weigh two pounds, but for steam smallmouths, it qualified as a pretty big one.

I measured it at 15 inches.

I never could get the killie all the way back. I guess a number of attempts finally coincided with the bass having happened to swim up as far back as the bait reached. That bass is still there, released. I've never kept a North Branch bass.

Living is More than Work

It didn't happen right away.

I had to go back to the car for a second armful. As soon as we had our belongings on the beach, Trish left on a long walk with Sadie, while I immediately began tying rigs for my two surf rods. An eight-foot rod I created a simple bank sinker fluke rig for, and for an 11 foot rod I tied a circle hook to 30-pound leader material by snell and rigged fish-finder style. Killies for fluke. Fresh live surf clam for any black drum.

I got deeply absorbed in sitting back and watching the two rod tips closely set apart, the dimensions of shapely clouds overhead against deep blue sky of striking and unexpected interest to me. I'm certain this experience helped me get where I was going.

Some of the time I got up and tried casting for fluke, having cut off the three-ounce bank sinker and going with a couple of large split shot, but the only hit came after I got a killie way out there by that heavier weight and let it sit. I felt surprised, because it took awhile, and I figured peeler crabs would have got the bait.

I had wanted to sit and watch, rather than reel the rig in at the probable moment. I could have done more heaving of killies, but it wasn't too long before the wind shifted suddenly, blowing in from the northeast, temperature dropping drastically all at once, biting flies disappearing in an instant, and surf getting rough, but not very. I figured any fish might move in close. I wanted to be involved with working the bait, rather than letting it sit, though I could have cast the bank sinker and retrieved it by lifting it and letting it drop, though that would have felt heavy. Much of the time I cast a double-split shot weighted killie and let that sit. The split shots held bottom.

The sun getting low but not yet close to setting, this is when I reeled in the baits and took a walk, finding myself very focused in a relaxed way on what was right in front of me. After a hundred yards or more of this, I looked up and around me, and that's when it happened. All the garbage taken in day after day at work evaporated like magic. I was nothing but everything I saw and felt around me, feeling as free as I might ever want to feel. It's not that I was thinking of work at any time earlier during the outing. I hadn't thought of the place since the day before, when I was there. But I did think of my job at the supermarket soon after my defenses had fallen, and felt dismay that a shield came back up, though I went on thinking, realizing that--no doubt--when I'm finally done with stupid jobs, I will heal.

It might take only a day at that.

Stupid jobs, that is. I realized, as I often have, while heading back to our station on the beach from this walk, that writing is work. It's a job, too. I thought of something Ayn Rand wrote (The Ayn Rand Column) and detested her words. That people with "real" careers, or however she put it, don't like to go on vacations. All they really want is their work. She's some example, because she suffered her elder years depressed. I've inferred this from My Years with Ayn Rand, a memoir by Nathanial Branden, and I've also found Jeff Walker claims this explicitly in The Ayn Rand Cult. To do nothing but work is to miss the point of life. Because no work, including writing, is a sufficient end-in-itself. It should be obvious that work is a means to living. Living is more than work.

And I caught a fish today. They always look like a joke when they come into the wash. Skates. But I feel respect for any catch. Mine took a big bloody chunk of bunker I had cut with my Spanish War Knife. I had put it out near the end of our stay hoping for a bluefish, and though I would have much preferred a keeper fluke, or a bluefish like the one a friend caught on Island Beach the other day, or even better yet, a black drum, the only disappointment I felt about the state park was the 8:00 p.m. closing, though I came to quick terms with that.

As we packed to go, a tern dive-bombed for something right in front of us. We saw it come out of the water with a baitfish wriggling between its beak.

"That's a good sign," I said.

Trish said, "They're not leaving." A number of other people on the beach were clearly going to stay later. "You want to stay?"

"No. Let's stay within the law. We'll come back in September."

No restrictions then on staying into dusk


https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2018/08/some-fish-in-surf.html