Last at Round Valley Until August Perhaps

Probably my last photo shoot at Round Valley for awhile...I hope to get over in August, though. And I still have in mind a long hike into the back sometime. Once again I brought my St. Croix, but the pond was so crowded with fishermen, I didn't bother. Reservoir was too, and though I could have tried a spot, with chill on the air, I wasn't interested.

I didn't stay quite to sunset. I decided to make it in and out pretty quick. Have a lot to do at home.

It is nice having the park so near home.

Looking forward to Tuesday with Brian. I haven't altogether forgotten that a five- or six-pounder is possible. Last time Brian went to the lake, his buddy caught a 5.7-pound largemouth.

Bleeders

Recently, I replied to a friend's comment on Facebook by saying that we in New Jersey might pressure Fish & Wildlife for stringent take-home restrictions. Afterwards, I told my son I would like to see the limit on largemouths reduced to one per day. He told me the state would have to outlaw keeping any, or sustenance fishermen would just go every day, keeping one each time, and decimate populations anyhow.

Well, not as they can with a limit of five. And I told Matt the state should allow the take of at least one, because on seldom occasion, a bad hookset results in a bleeder. The only decent thing to do to a fish that is dead or will die, is take it home for a meal. Leaving it to the snapping turtles feels like an unmanly act. I also pointed out to him that the state is moving in the direction of more stringent limits. Minimum size for bass used to be nine inches. Also, all brook trout caught in New Jersey must now be released. I do think, however, that an angler is entitled to eat a true native at least once in his life. That's why I would have liked to see the limit on brook trout at one or two a year, but then an angler would have to report his fish similarly as hunters report their kill, and the complication would be onerous. But think about it. For the occasion of eating a single native or two, once in a life, wouldn't registering the take be worthwhile? At least for now, if an angler has the time and the finances, he can go to a state northward and kill a native brook trout.

I hear the howls from people who think sustenance fisherman--or the gravely poor--need to be allowed to fish for their meals, but I am concerned about rapid rates of diminishing returns. The best way to deal with poverty is not to allow fish populations to be decimated, but to change the culture and politics so that no one in New Jersey is hungry. I know I wrote in my last post that my politics aren't those of poverty, and I say the same now, because the politics of poverty might be an underhanded way of keeping the impoverished dependent. But how change the culture and politics?

Much more difficultly than any ideas about it.

Bleeders might sometimes survive. I caught a 19-inch bass last year cleanly hooked on the lip but bleeding badly. My recent 20-incher from Lake Hopatcong got hooked in the gullet but not badly; the gullet was not pulled out, and there was no blood there; by all appearances, the hook will rust out, but the fish bleed badly. I call bleeders like these two--no damage to the gills, no hook damage beyond the usual--shock bleeders. Apparently the stress of the fight causes gills to bleed, but the bleeding apparently stops. Both of these bass I released, watching them swim off directly, and after we stayed on the spots for at least 10 more minutes, these fish never bellied up at the surface. For all we know, they might have lived. On a different occasion last year, a trolled 17-inch bass got hooked badly and bled. I released it, it bellied up minutes later, and since this was after June 15, I clicked on the electric, we netted it, and took it home to apply Old Bay seasoning.

Even though I believe my recent big one might have lived, it serves as just one example of deep heartbreak. I can't easily get away from a fish like that. It haunts me for a few days. Its innocent life, interrupted by my predatory act, seems to ask me questions I can't easily answer. All of these questions might be addressed by an animal right's activist: what right did you have to do that to the bass? But I don't see it primarily as an issue of rights, because the bass doesn't live by any moral code, an aspect of intellect, and what I do is enter into the natural world and participate as the animal I am, too, which of course doesn't necessarily mean I am inarticulate while on a boat. But the bass eats other fish; I potentially eat bass, in turn. That's nature. I do have rights by nature, but I avoid getting involved in that kind of stridency we often hear, because the basic issue is ecological, and I don't pretend I am above it.

That said, I feel compassion for bass. A bass can't feel that for me, but on some mute animal level, it must feel something if my compassion is at all real. Compassion means to "feel with" and I must feel something real about a bass's living presence to truly behold it. A life as sacred as is mine, for if we humans are created equal, the same holds true for the relation between us and other creatures. And for man to be denied his beholding of other creatures would be an infringement of right.

Thought on Why I Use Blogger

Going on five years ago,  I got the idea of transferring Litton's Fishing Lines to a website domain I would own. I worked alone in a building we at the country club called the WH, and I had plenty of down time to research possibilities online. For various reasons, I decided to stay here on Blogger. It's not that any of you would have lost track of the blog; a transfer would have kept site location intact.

I feel Blogger is more of a public space than is a domain the blogger owns. I feel that if you own the domain, there's no avoiding the glare of class exclusivity, which I associate with upscale sites. I don't mean to fault sincere bloggers. I mean to point out that although Google (which hosts Blogger) is corporate, it is so ubiquitous as to possess commonality. That said, I do, of course, retain copyright for my work, crucially important to me as it would be to any writer or photographer with sense.

Most people seem to feel more value exists where class is implied. With respect to cost, true. And yet, since I pay about $22.00 each year to use Blogger, it's quite possible I would pay less by owning a domain. I would have to spend more time, however, to transfer the blog--on research to learn how to go about doing it and about which domain to buy. Hiring services to do a transfer is expensive, and I wouldn't want to depend on my son to do it. It would seem wise to have done more research in 2011 before I began blogging, but because I found Blogger was free (up to so many megabytes of space used), I had very little money, and the appearance and format of the blog appealed to me, I chose it.

And the more I use Blogger, the more it appeals. It doesn't have a fancy organization by which readers can access posts, but then again, all I do is label a post by a simple click, and it's there for any reader to find by clicking on a word or two under Labels. Then he simply scrolls back by order of date. Or he can click on a date range under Blog Archive. Simple enough. As I say, I like the brownish color theme suggestive of November, too. But mostly, the more I blog, the more I become aware that to have a voice in society is a political act. By no means do I mean a voice limited to either mainstream political party. I've always been politically independent, and if my view has a simple core, it might come across as complex, difficult, and as a work in progress, rather than as any agenda put across. Since Google is open to anyone with a computer, the commonality implied appeals to me, because I believe in neither a politics of money, nor of poverty.

Wampum is a Symbol Better than Money    

Pre-Spawn Largemouths to 20 Inches on Lake Hopatcong

Thinking ahead to this outing more than a week ago, I planned on Matt and I targeting largemouths as well as hybrids. I imagined catching a five- or six-pound largemouth, because we might find ourselves in a situation fitting this possibility just right before they would spawn. I don't really know why it would be any more likely to catch a big one just before the spawn than a month before the spawn or a week after, except that big females usually weigh a little less after they drop their eggs, depending on what they've eaten. Nevertheless, having spent nearly 60 years outdoors since I was three years old, I have a sense for things going on out there, and transitions of any kind imply activity. Otherwise, nothing would be changing.

We got to Dow's at 5:30 a.m. Jimmy was loading his boat to go out and fish live herring. Joe came out and got a boat ready for us immediately. We were on the lake just after 5:45. As we crossed its main body, the sun broke over the horizon. It was windy.

On the initial trolling pass, I noticed a lot of fish on the graph, but when we turned around for the second pass, we hadn't got hit. Soon, I realized I was marking more fish than I ever have marked in our favorite trolling lanes, big icons on the graph; apparently these were hybrids weighing at least four pounds. On the eighth or ninth pass, I finally got hit. I had been changing plugs at each turn. Running a Storm Hot 'N Tot, a crankbait diving about eight feet, for a split second,I thought I might catch a hybrid on yet another kind of plug. A couple of seconds after I got smacked, Matt hooked up and the fish ran hard before the Rapala Finesse Sinking Minnow he used pulled free.

That's all the hybrid action we had today, besides a few other knocks on our plugs, perhaps. I told Matt that Mike Maxwell and I once began a long day at these lanes, catching nothing, and then came back five hours later and slayed a bunch of five-pounders. Matt and I would return later but then not only fail to hookup. We saw no fish on the graph at all, either.

Water temperature ranged from 57 in the morning to 62 in the afternoon. The day began as very chilly, especially with that wind I mentioned. Heavy. Numerous times during the day, I scooped water out of the boat. Whitecaps marked rolling waves.

The key to this day was the opposite to all this churning and chaos, as anyone might think of big female bass getting ready to bed. They don't want to lay eggs where moving water will disrupt them. I felt so eager to hook a big bass, I almost had us start fishing the way I'll explain in a moment, before we even gave a favorite shallow cove a try by trolling. In the past, it's been a fish on every pass here, but always when water temperature is at least 70. I did once catch a hybrid at the edge of the cove where it drops off, but most of the fish are crappies, pickerel, and largemouths.

As I expected, nothing happened. I felt much better when soon I had us go into a little cove completely protected by the wind. Shallow, about four feet deep. On my first cast, I hooked my first fish of the day on a Senko, a 20-inch largemouth I weighed at four-pounds, 10 ounces. A fish most might call a five-pounder. In that shallow water, it rolled about heavily on the hook like a pig. It's a fish I expected, and yet I felt shocked.

The big one boated and released, I knew this is where we would fish today--any quiet, little shallow coves we could find. They weren't readily available. Some spots looked great, except that they were impossible to fish because waves carried the boat against the power of my electric motor. But despite the handicap of that wind, we managed to catch five largemouths apiece, a crappie, and a big rock bass. We caught them all over the lake, searching out our special opportunity. My second-biggest largemouth was 17 1/4 inches. The others were about 15, 14, and 11. The crappie was 13 1/4 inches.

On the way home, I decided to pull over so we could fish a part of the lake publicly accessible by shore and protected from the wind. I let Matt have sway. From the boat, he had caught two largemouths. In yet another half hour of fishing, he caught three more, including his biggest of about two pounds.

Lake Hopatcong

Round Valley Trout Association has Stocked the Reservoir

Round Valley Trout Association recently stocked 45 trophy trout, 21-24 inches, 500 brown trout 10-14 inches, and 480 tiger trout, 10-14 inches. These trout will grow very fast, although the trophy rainbows will not last very long.

The club is worth joining if you fish RV. I was a member for a number of years and served as the managing editor of the newsletter for about a year, although as anyone there can tell you, Jim Saccento, the former editor, was still there mentoring me at it. I could edit writing better and faster than anyone, but a managing editor also deals with many other procedures. My work schedule proved too much. Elected to the board and needing to be there as editor, a function Jim had given up, I couldn't make the meetings.

I found RVTA really has the down-to-earth feel of what the trout fishing at the reservoir is all about.

RVTA Trout Stocking

Back to Round Valley

Went back to Round Valley late this afternoon, hiking from the ramp back into the Ranger Cove area for photos. Such a release from the unreality of all you can lump together as comprising life inside, including the work I do at the supermarket, even though the parking lot is outdoors and does relieve me somewhat. (Since my department is closed, I'm pushing carts and spraying them with disinfectant.)

Sadie is an old, slow dog who tried my patience. I admit I conspired with the open breeze to not bring her along next time so I can walk with a tighter step, but that would break my wife's heart. And Sadie's. She sure knows when I'm going out.

That stump in the photo is about 25 feet down when the reservoir is at full pool. Any guesses on how many bass have stationed next to it over the years?

I brought my rod, but Sadie was so slow, I didn't stay to fish. It was chilly out anyway. I spoke to some shore-bound trout fishermen carrying on the wintertime quest, and they had one 17-inch rainbow. 

Hike at Round Valley

We had a great afternoon. Matt, his mother, me, and Sadie. Last time Trish and I hiked here, before she came with Matt along and they hiked, me staying near the ramp and shooting photos, we came short of walking all the way from Ranger Cove to the ramp, and she was pissed. Sciatica in my right thigh and leg was pretty bad, and I was under the delusion that my new Nikon D850 wasn't focusing. In a word, I was a mess. Anxiety was so bad for about two months with everything gone wrong after Florida, that it affected my judgment so I couldn't tell if my camera worked. After I got home and loaded the images, I did change my mind. Everything finally got righted when Covid-19 hit.

Today, I learned that we were much closer to the goal that day than I had felt we were. And the hike back to Ranger Cove was so easy that I understood I can come over here and work from some new spots with ease to get shots with my camera.

There are dozens of trails. All sorts of them are makeshift, more than half of them below the normal water line. It's really cool hiking with so many choices and making the way up as you go. What a different feel back in the woods than at the water among bleached rocks in direct sun. And it's easy to find a way back in under the trees, and then back out. Very interesting.