How to Build a Time Machine

We began by trolling spinners in close to the bank that drops off steeply. We passed over a few weedbeds that could have held pickerel. "Do salmon swim this close?" Matt asked. I'm no expert and haven't boated a salmon yet, but I've heard they do. I'm sure we passed over some pickerel and bass.

We tried further out, continuing to troll at the same slow speed. A Mepp's size 6 with reflective tape on the blade and a quarter-ounce Rooster Tail. The second setting on my Minn Kota 55 Enduro. As we approached our favorite weedy flat for buzzbaiting, I thought of riding over it, but when I moved us over the edge, found the water too shallow for comfort. A kayaker cast something nearby. We continued on across the lake to the opposite shoreline. Curving back towards that flat, I noticed the kayaker, now in the middle of that flat, had a fish. I saw him lift it at the side of his boat and lost sight of it when Matt said, "He lost it." We positioned at the edge and cast our spinners over the weeds, beginning to get hung up on occasion. I kept my eye on the kayaker, determining that he threw a spinner also. When we got close enough, I asked if it were a pickerel.

"Bit me off," he said.

"Ah, that sucks!"

He retrieved that spinner so slowly I thought of the homemade spinners I've run out of. I built them with minimal weight on the wire for a body so they could be retrieved very slowly at shallow depth. I told Matt just the other day about Jann's Netcraft, and the conversation we had convinced me that I should invest in components and build some more. They're easy to make. And if I had a couple today, we could have fished that flat more effectively. Spinners on the market are standardized. In especially shallow water, you'll retrieve them perhaps three times as fast.

I had been thinking especially the big pickerel, along with bass, sit on the deep edge of residual weeds, so I as I reached for my box of plugs, I had two things in mind. An off-color plug, and one of my Storm Hot'N Tot chrome finish plugs with the big metal lip. Proven for pickerel and bass on the troll here, but the idea today was to fish them slowly. Both plugs would ride at about the same depth. Instead, I changed my mind at the last instant, and pulled two Hot 'N Tots, thinking all that flash in this clear water would appeal especially to pickerel. We trolled them in close where deep, and out in the middle. "Especially a big salmon will hit them, too," I said.

Eventually, we worked back into a deep cove, where it gets very shallow near reeds, a marvelous looking spot for an 85-degree late March afternoon when evening settles in and its still very warm. I cast the plug against banks that drop off cliff-like, and noticed how garish the plug appeared in that super-clear water, reflecting sunlight. Later, I said to Matt, "A fish might see that and say, 'What the f@#$ is that!' and bolt the other way."

I thought of my off-color plug and how wise it would have been just to try it.

In the summer, the fish are all over that chrome, but with water temperature in the 40's today, I had my doubts after what I saw.

We fished three hours. Comfortably. It wasn't warm out, but not bad. We got back to Brian's house where I keep my canoes with plenty of light left, and hung outdoors together for about an hour, talking. Me, Matt, Brian, Carolyn, Sadie, and Juno. Two black Labradors, the latter. Brian asked Matt if he ever read the book he asked me to suggest to him. Matt remembered instantly, but yet intends to read How to Build a Time Machine.

Wawayanda

Trout on Salmon Eggs

Well, my friends, the last I wrote you, I thought I had been crazy when I wrote you earlier. Now maybe none of us are so sure I was. 

I hope none of us dies. I'm watching Pence on TV. Plenty of younger people without underlying conditions are dying. Contrary to what he said.

I've lived a full life. If I'm gone soon, the blog will stay up, so long as any of my family remains to keep it up. Not that I quite believe I'm going to die. 

Matt and I got out for the recently stocked trout. On the way to the South Branch in Califon, we saw a pond neither of us had noticed before. I pulled over, turned around; we checked it out because it seemed as if it might be public. It is.

Sometime soon, maybe.

Matt's photographed fishing what I consider the main hole of the area. When we first arrived, someone fly-fished there, so we drove on to let him be. I found that my favorite sluice is now posted and fenced in. I'm glad Mike Maxwell and I enjoyed excellent fishing there in 2017. That was the best microlight action I've had in many years.

We went back to the hole and found it empty. Fished maybe 15 minutes, no hits, so we concluded the river here hadn't got stocked. Got some photos of three mergansers. A second male came and challenged the other.

First casts at the North Branch Raritan Zoo got hit. Mine, and Matt's. Then three youngsters approached. We told them we had just begun. One of them, also casting a single salmon egg with minimal weight, hooked up immediately in shallows just upstream. Then he caught another. I landed a rainbow about 11 inches long a moment later. Matt was missing hits and me too, but the hits were slowing. After all, the river was hit hard all day and maybe yesterday. One of the youngsters went to another favorite spot of mine not far downsteam. He caught one. The other two went down there with him. All three of these guys caught trout left and right fishing salmon eggs lie we do. One of them 16 inches. I had my ass handed to me. I had waited on the initial spot too long, instead of moving.

I'm the guy who's writing the book on fishing salmon eggs.

I went further down, down below the bridges to a sluice that often produces. I was angry at myself and wanted to cool off. A song sparrow helped. The delicate beauty of its music. I got hit once and that's all. 

I felt good about those youngsters, Matt's age, maybe two years younger. Getting out and fishing with excellent craft. The only things I disliked, and I disliked them intensely, included the good ole' boy language they spoke. I guessed they watch fishing shows on TV. (I never watch them.) You don't have to make yourself into a yokel to fish well. I can't deny they fished well, though.

Except for chumming with corn. That results in fed-up trout. And it's possible corn kills some. 

Opening Day

Correction

On March 13th, I think it was me who went south, more than the world. This statement I failed to further inform myself about:"We're far from the end of the pandemic. More than 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu in 1918. Approximately one third of the world's population was wiped out."
In all of China's much larger population than ours, only some 3200 people have died from coronaviuus. Worldwide, the death count is only some 8000, and the virus has been in China since late last year.

It's not that I believed hundreds of thousands would die here, I didn't quite, but I dared to use that figure to give the post a heavy tone, and now I feel as if it were a crazy move on my part, since days later, it left me vulnerable to some TV newscaster's "worst case scenario" of 2.2 million Americans dying. How, when since late last year, only some 8000 have died globally? How is that likely? Don't have time to research and try to find out, but it doesn't seem likely.

While growing up, the phrase was, "If you think the world is crazy, it's you who is crazy." Things haven't changed since then. I stepped off into the deep end on March 13th.

Getting Serious at Bedminster

Some people have told me I should run for President. Can you imagine a supermarket food-prepper getting elected? That's like a "nigger" in charge of a 19th-century South Carolina plantation. Some have wondered what the f@#! I am doing in that job, but as it turns out, it's a very good one, because among essential services. I will continue supporting my family on less than 15 bucks an hour, while--unfortunately--many Americans will be strapped. For all we know, we may see soup lines.

A janitor there had $700,000 in stocks a few weeks ago. No, nothing like that now. But the point is, I'm not the only one who, after he lost his corporate job, found no one would hire him because of his age. Companies routinely break the age discrimination law. When on unemployment, I went to some seminars offered, and the speaker told us they do. The janitor has a story similar to mine.

And more. I voluntarily stayed in a low position with the credit union. I had more than option to climb the ladder; it was encouraged, and my performance evaluations were beyond "meeting expectations." I was subtly frowned upon for not reaching for better, but on the road, I not only had time to quickly write thoughts on notebook pages, but time to shoot photography and fish on lunch breaks, a practice I found not only filled my life with inspiration, but made me much more willing to do my job well. And, in fact, I became superlative. (I never quite got over making the mistake of giving a bag of interoffice mail to the wrong branch on rare occasion, however. Then I had to race back and correct the mistake, but there was always time.) You wouldn't understand why that was better than advancing and making thousands of dollars more each year--as well as retaining employment rather than getting laid off--unless you can understand the ambition of a writer who is fully committed to every advantage he can gain for that career, rather than for a conventional career.

(It's theorized that average IQ cannot understand IQ above 130.)

An evening like this one at Bedminster Pond with my son, Matt, is a great equalizer. If my IQ were over 200, it wouldn't have made any difference, perhaps. Not in terms of a catch. I did see a small sunfish. Matt pointed out a snapping turtle that had just surfaced. The evening lacked that certain punch bass need to overtake a spinner. I got a couple of bumps that might have been bass knocking it. A Rapala Husky Jerk--suspends--would have been the choice. If the water were clear. I knew that maybe even with it dingy, the plug might work, but I got into the persistence of trying to tease one of those bass, maybe bass, knocking the spinner, to commit. I knew all along the chance was about nil. Maybe not nil itself. Especially with the light getting interesting.

We did begin on the sunlit side. Shallower. But there was no sunlight on it. I got the notion that maybe the deeper shaded side would offer something. It did result in more interest from both of us. And for me, the feeling that it mattered cleared up some uncertainty about life.

Matt told me he felt better out there. He remembered Lake Musconetcong. Topwater fishing for the pickerel. Wants to do that again. I don't know if many pickerel have come back after the chemotherapy the lake got for water chestnuts, but perhaps they have.

Summer

Counting the Dead

Going to try and fish Bedminster Pond with Matt after I post the following. It's not very mild out, so the chance of any catches is little. I haven't ruled out rigging up fly rods and fishing the river instead.

About a week ago, someone at the supermarket pitched me the idea that the pandemic could be biological warfare, planned and executed in the interest of worldwide authoritarian dictatorship, beginning with Putin. I don't believe this is the case. Pandemics happen naturally. I noted the Spanish Flu in a recent post, from which a third of the world's population died. This pandemic won't be as severe, if I have the death percentage correct, but many of us will die, and all the likelihood is that it will have essentially been due to natural causes. It would have helped if tests were widely available, but agency set in place to deal with a pandemic--put in place by the Obama Administration--was gutted by Trump.

If everyone were tested, why lock down? Those who tested as carriers could have quarantined. At the least, we would have had more control in combating this disease from Day One of its emergence in China.

"2.2 million people in the United States could die," news flash just now. In 1918, 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu, but the population was much less, so even if two million of us are soon dead, the percentage isn't quite as high. Rather than to quibble over that, the news now is staggering.

The news also reported Trump as saying he always believed this a pandemic. Yeah? He was reported only 11 days ago or so as saying it's a conspiracy of the democrats to lower his re-election chances. Not long thereafter, I heard him mumble on TV like a druggie that this would soon pass, as if it were nothing.

I will be posting. My mood is somber, and for all I know, it may tend to remain so. I wonder what nation we will re-emerge to find? How many months or years from now?  I am informed there may be a vaccine available in a year and some months from now, so possibly it won't be much more than a year. We suffered a fairly serious economic downturn not much more than a decade ago. This one, I think, will be much worse, but markets will return, of course, if any of us is to survive. America is resilient. America is the toughest nation to ever stand on the face of this earth.

If you catch a whiff of death's stench, remember who you voted for in 2016. If you really are confident in that vote, you know you made a good choice. Confidence is not evasiveness. As we witnessed Republican senators not long ago, we saw them dodge.

America is great. Great enough to suffer damnation. And come back.

I wish I could find more confident words than those, but I don't have them now. What I face is something I know I may not recover from, though I believe I will. I just feel very put out. I worked very hard to get my life back during what has been a most chaotic winter for me. True--good thing I got my equipment in order before the lock down. I would have been screwed. But no sooner was I finally feeling hints of normality, than this pandemic came down on us.

Part of what sucks so much is that even with the economy as good as it was just weeks ago, who among us was full of confidence and life?  I'm speaking for myself; maybe you were full of confidence and life: I did see some photos of outstanding catches on Facebook. Are we to give up and not even care to return, because life sucked anyway? Maybe we'll explore the depths of depression in the interim, and find life calls us back in spite of ourselves. Not very appealing, no, but speaking for myself again, I sure know I can't get cheerful over TV ads, and rarely have got cheerful over them, anytime. If I controlled the TV in our household, it wouldn't be on as much, and in any event, maybe people will wake up about how childish and ridiculous so much marketing is. Not to talk down children, but ads behaving like 13-year-olds jacking off for the first time aim at adults. 

Lenny, Hope You Read the Blog from Home

I'll be posting. Don't know if the state, etc., will send any press releases, but I'll come up with some content.

Take it the club is closing?

How Can We Call These Men Leaders?

Above that odd log, deep in the background, a couple of anglers fish. They caught nothing.

I spent a couple of hours last night preparing for Tilcon, but I abruptly stopped when Matt called upstairs to tell me he had a fever of 101. (No, not nostalgia for entry-level university courses.) He had just finished getting Lightroom up for me; all that's left to do with the computer is work out a few remaining loose ends; the camera works fine; apparently there never was a problem with it, so I'm embarrassed before Nikon USA for sending it in for warranty repair--I told Matt to sleep and see what the temperature is in the morning. 

It was 101, so we cancelled on Tilcon. Anyhow, I got gear in some order for any coming outings.

Morristown Memorial Hospital screened Matt over the phone. Very little chance it's the virus. New Jersey Department of Health told us it's OK I go to work. The prospect of two weeks off did not feel right. I like a check at the end of the year for all of my sick days, unused. And I do not like to deal with the state for unemployment insurance. You don't get your full paycheck's worth, anyhow.

We're far from the end of the pandemic. More than 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu in 1918. Approximately one third of the world's population was wiped out.


With temperatures in the 60's, I expected Bedminster Pond to be on fire. I did catch some bass. Little ones about six inches long. Three of them, like last time, though I fished a full two hours. Lost a crappie bigger than the bass. Used in-line spinners again. Fished the sunny side. Water's warmer there. The best moment was getting a camera shot I especially like. I felt for a moment as if I might return to normal, confident reality.

But of course, just as I get my life back in order, mass death descends upon my countrymen.

What does fishing matter in the face of impending disaster? KC at the supermarket insists life goes on. It does, and it's important to maintain normal activities like fishing. But to turn a blind eye to what's happening to our country is not patriotic. Fishing is a way to gather thoughts.

I will survive. I can't promise you more than that, but I'm confident I will, and my wife and son. But if America has any value at all, other people besides myself and my family matter, too. Some I don't like. For example, I didn't like the demeanor of national leaders on TV today. OK, OK. They were being somber. But frankly, something all too clean about them, while they misled us about facts on the ground, appalled me. Nothing about their behavior fully convinced me they care. And this is the country they supposedly lead.

Facts on the ground. Pence said you can go to your doctor and request a test. But that is what I mean by misleading. What's the point, but to learn you can't get a test? My wife spoke to the New Jersey Department of Health. There is no availability here.

How can we call these men leaders, when they will not speak to us?

Providence