Few Minutes After Sunset: Lost a Nice Trout

 Went over to the river after sunset with my two-weight TFO and a Wooly Bugger. Since the storm is coming, I thought maybe a chance existed of getting a trout to hit. I also thought other fishermen might not be there. 

I was right on both counts.

Almost. One guy had just set up, bottom fishing. One other fished spinners, and he had caught one. I had already begun probing the bottom slowly when I spoke to him, so immediately, I gained on up tempo, stripping the bugger.

That worked. I saw the fish turn sidewise the moment after it hit. A nice rainbow of maybe 18 inches. It had broken my line. A bad knot. 

Took awhile to tie on another bugger. And I got a few stripping retrieves in the gathering dusk before the line got hopelessly tangled. Good reason to always grab the headlamp when you the grab the rod, if you're going to fish late.

On the way out, we struck up more conversation, the same fisherman along with his female partner, who asked me if I hunt. She does. With a bow. She hasn't caught any trout yet. Says she fishes bass and this is different. I imagine she'll catch on. As for myself, I'm definitely going to do this fall trout thing after I retire in about five years. I'm just fortunate today to have unusual hours--9:00 to 5:30--since I'm covering for my manager.

Fall Stocker Scene

Got to the river at sunset with my two-weight TFO and began casting upstream of anyone else, discovering that my bodacious shrimp streamer had too much weight to cast on that rod. So I tied on a beadhead black Wooly Bugger, and though at first I had a little difficulty casting that, too, I compensated and from thereon it was a little rough but functional.

I covered some water, mostly just enjoying the water and the heavy sound of insects and getting into various patterns of jigging, stripping, and drift. Warm temperatures meant I took off my jacket and remained in short sleeves. Even as it got dark, I felt comfortable.

Nothing ever hit, but I spoke to two young guys who had a couple. The fall stocking had people out fishing in force, and I felt impressed by the guys with head lamps that came on as darkness fell. I was far from the last guy out.

New Jersey Trout Fishing  

Native Brook Trout Action

Oliver Round and I planned on the trip for many weeks, since sometime in August, I think, when October 6 seemed that other world of fall. I thanked him when it finished, especially because he had selected a brook new to me. It certainly has native brook trout, although I'm unclear on whether or not any wild browns. It flows into Pohatcong Creek. That might make you wonder if any browns swim upstream, although the brook is very small. 

We did find a brook trout fully nine inches long or better--the mouth of a watersnake clamped on its tail. I grabbed the snake and held it in front of the active GoPro on my head and Oliver's phone. The snake dropped the trout before he could snap the shot, and I quickly flung the snake aside into the water, it's wide-open mouth having gone for my arm. That snake had very powerful jaws. The trout was sort of towing it around, but the snake would not let go.

I'll post the video on YouTube at a future date.

To add an interesting catch to the story, I had seen the trout duck under a crevice and I was setting up to target the fish--possibly I would wait it out until my presence became part of its environs--when suddenly that snake came out from underneath with it. I thought at first it was an eel.

Oliver caught his on a dry fly. I hooked one on a sinking ant with a little red on the body; Oliver got a good look at the fish and said it was bigger than his. I will never forget the flash of silver catching sunlight as it struck. 

One of the photos below shows a strange brook trout between a leaf and the clump of leaves. Must have been sick. Would not spook. 

After we thoroughly fished the range we had from where we had parked, we drove on downstream and found a very interesting spot. It was the only one, because private land upstream and down was an access problem. I caught seven or eight chubs; Oliver caught one. With polarizers, he sighted eight brook trout stacked underneath two logs. Repeatedly, we tried to get sinking flies to them, but although chubs kept hitting, the trout stayed put.

It makes sense that if you know about holes holding trout on a given stream, you can come prepared to stalk the fish very carefully and even sit and wait long before making the first cast. We were happy to do some exploring today instead.

The elongated grey patch is a brook trout.

 

Pohandusing Brook

 

Restoration of White Cedar

White cedar used to be abundant in New Jersey, but nineteenth century logging reduced the forests in the Pinelands and even in the Meadowlands. Where Fred Matero and I fish striped bass at DeKorte Park with the Manhattan skyscape in full view, we've lost swimbaits on white cedar stumps on the flats. 

Fish & Wildlife

River Slow for Smallmouths

Several weeks ago, John told me he would have today off. I didn't rule us out going for smallmouth bass, just in case plans changed, as they did. 

Yesterday, Trish and I went to Island Beach State Park, and at Murphy's Hook House, I learned the surf would be too rough to fish, but I bought a pint of killies for the smallmouths, also looking ahead to smallmouths at Lake Hopatcong a month from now. (I might be able to keep them alive with an aerator.)

We have chilly nights recently, early this morning no exception, but I expected the bass to be all over the killies. I started out throwing a Rapala, because they're often good this time of year. I gave up on the plug quickly and confidently put a killie out on a few of my favorite spots, nothing happening.

So it was going to be a slow evening.

I lay a killie against the far bank and felt the line tighten--a swing and a miss. John fished from shore. He would later tell me he would have gone in up to his waist if I got into bass, but that otherwise, he didn't want to soil his $30,000.00 Nissan Z. 

I baited up again and took the same cast, felt a tap, tightened the line, set the hook, and began fighting a good bass I thought might weigh two pounds. It came off deep down in the hole.

I didn't want to get skunked, but I already felt parted from this my favorite stretch. I don't know if it's been fished out, or if the shock of these chilly nights turned the bass off. The water was pretty cold. I wouldn't have been comfortable without my waders. I am thinking, though, of finding another river spot for short forays like this evening's.

I did manage to catch a smallmouth not much larger than 10 inches, but besides those other two hits, that's all we got tonight. 

Almost Four Pounds

 

Water Clarity Borderline for Plugs

It's been almost a year since I last fished with Oliver Shapiro, though it doesn't seem as long. During that outing, he spoke of an essay about how fishing slows time, an idea serving as an antidote to how the years seem to wing by as we get older. That much said, both Oliver and myself look forward to retirement. I can't wait for the next five years to pass, as I hope to retire in 2025, but part of me seems wiser than my eagerness. It keeps telling me to appreciate the time I have right now. No matter that I would rather not participate in the hurly burly of a supermarket. That part of me knows I would rather do that than be dead. The wonder of the Great Beyond aside, the point of living can be to do it well, even when it seems as if rewards are slim.

Like pike. I paid keen attention when one of them came after Oliver's jerkbait. By the commotion at the surface, I felt sure it was a pike, though Oliver hadn't actually seen the fish to make a positive identification. Largemouths exist in the river, too.

It was off-color, but not as bad as it gets. We tried a spot new to me, though Oliver had scouted it once about 10 years ago. Trails took us well upstream, and though we found fish as the photo shows, nothing came at our plugs as the pike attacked during the previous two outings I took this year. (The first was far and away the best.)

One comes here with an expectation of "river monsters" like those represented in photos posted on Facebook, but reality offers the best reward. No doubt plenty of big fish exist, but it seems clear that only a very few anglers, if even that many, catch them well over 30 inches regularly. I have no plans to keep treading the mud until I start catching them myself. Pike fascinate me, but I'm committed to my canoes and other species as well. On the previous outing, a big pike probably over 30 inches did come after my plug, and the way the water moved around and over its body reminds me of the poet Charles Baudelaire when he wrote of "the wing of madness" clipping him.

Early Season Pike

Bars Don't Work for Me as Fishing Can

We got out on the reservoir in the middle of the afternoon, struggling against a fairly strong headwind, riding towards the back. I was looking for a line of submerged boulders we had once fished when the reservoir was full, expecting to see it somewhere up on the grass-covered shore. We did see a point not far beyond where Fred cut the engine and we began drifting.

I cast a tube jig, and besides getting one tap that might have been a sunfish, the nine to 24 feet of water we fished seemed completely barren. After a foreboding half hour or so, we motored to that point, where to my surprise we found that line of boulders I had looked for. I cast the jig towards the bank and hooked up a few seconds later. A smallmouth about a foot long leapt and threw the hook.

Soon we anchored near the point, boulders under the boat and to the left and right, along with some stumps and narrow tree trunks. I felt curious about the three- to four-inch diameter of those trunks, because they've been down deep under the surface for many decades now, and they haven't decomposed. Part of the reason they're still there, perhaps, is due to the reservoir's low fertility--less organic breakdown.

We fished there for what felt like many hours, picking away at the bass. Small ones. One of Fred's smallmouths was 13 inches. I had said, "You would think all of the bass in the reservoir would come here, there's so much dead water." Shortly thereafter, action picked up.

But that's not the only spot. It's a really good rocky spot, but I remembered the last time Fred and I fished here from his boat, in 2015. Near one of the towers, I had noticed weedbeds we didn't have time to fish that day. This evening, as we approached the spot, we noticed we would be out of the wind. That calm surface itself felt inviting, because it was a break in the general pattern of choppy surface. It seems to make no sense that calm surface on a reservoir otherwise riled up would make any difference to the fish, but that's not how the situation felt to me. 

On my first cast with a Senko, I caught the largemouth in the photograph above, good-sized for bass here. (Click on the link below for information on the unusual lack of sizable bass.) I cast where it appeared the weedline ends about 12 to 14 feet deep. Soon Fred caught a nice smallmouth. Then he tied on a topwater plug, catching a largemouth as dusk fell. (He also caught a redbreast sunfish and rock bass on the PopR.)

All told, we put 14 fish in the boat. Four smallmouths apiece. Two largemouths apiece. A rocky spot. A weedy spot.

For me, the best part of the day was fishing while anchored on the rocks. We talked more than we usually do, because we weren't involved in navigation. Just casting and slow retrieves. We got out of ourselves. At least I did, and Fred wasn't off somewhere else. Some people do that best at a bar, but bars just don't work for me as fishing can. 

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