Anyone Have Experience with Smart Chargers?

Gave myself a firm kick in the ass, because I discovered I had inadvertently unplugged my C-Tek Smart Battery Charger. I have a panel that serves all sorts of plugs I use in my study. I must have pulled the charger plug when trying to unplug my external photography monitor. I always unplug that after I use it. 

Charger could have been unplugged a day, or maybe a month. I keep the closed cell marine battery I use for my electric motor constantly on charge. When it slightly loses charge, the charger juices it back, so basically it's always fully charged. From what I read, that's what's best for it. I'm not very technical, so I don't remember specifics well enough to explain. 

Two-and-a-half years ago, I bought the same sort of Cabelas battery I previously owned. I used to just charge the old one before going out, and it lasted seven years. I bought the C-Tek for $107.00 and figure it's worth the money, if it adds a few years more than seven to the life of a $265.00 battery. I had to buy a new charger anyway, and that was a good thing, I think. 

Anyone have experience with smart chargers? Any stories of long-lived batteries? Please tell the story in the comments section below, if you do.

Don't Sit Down, It's Time to Dig Another One

I phoned Stanhope Bait & Boat before I left, sure the hours would be the same, and they were--Saturday and Sunday only. I really wanted to ice fish, and I thought if she was open, I might swing by and then head over to Budd Lake. Oliver Round had to quarantine, so our plans to ice fish Tilcon were dashed. Also, I woke two hours late this morning, having set my alarm for pm by mistake. I had to go over to Autosport Honda to get plates put on and pick up the registration. No way would I go all the way over to The Sporting Life--just as well, because I later found they closed at 2. And not Dow's, either. 

So I headed over to Round Valley in a nasty mood for yet another photo shoot. (And still need yet another because it seems I need to focus shift on a narrower aperture setting. In all that brilliant sunlight, it was hopeless trying to see images on the camera's display.) Before I left, I had a quiet moment when I told myself I would go over there and get taken out of the wretchedness.

It did take awhile. You go in and do your damn working-class job day after day and it changes you. Makes you bitter and depressed (anger turned inward). All day long you do little mundane tasks when you're the kind of person to do things that require much more intelligence. You tried to get a better job, but they required a degree. 

As I might have said before, one outing, even a short one like today's, beats a full week of all that nonsense saturated by music like Taylor Swift. 

Home, home again. (I like to be here, when I can.) I felt the certainty--on Sunday, I'm ice fishing. My brother Rick is also quarantined. Brian is going through back treatment and might not be able to go. If not, I'm going to Budd or Aeroflex. Reports from Budd speak of 10 inches and even with the mild weather and some rain, it should still be safe. 

 

Round Valley Ramp Plowed

Didn't see any boats out, but the ramp is ploughed.

Spent time in the Ranger Cove area, and I enjoyed walking more than photography, which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the shooting. True, though. I didn't find time to get a series of focus-stacked shots of the North Tower. 

I'll just have to go back and get the shots.

 

Good Day Ice Fishing Pickerel

2.82 Pounds

Brian and I got to the lake's edge, me having hauled our gear on his Jet Sled through deep snow, and stood on the ice. Since ice skaters had cleared a space nearby, I almost felt emboldened to simply proceed. After all, it's been down to 12 degrees multiple nights since Oliver & I got on State Park ice a long time ago now.

But inevitably, I wielded my splitting bar, because I'm cautious. That's not to say I haven't taken a plunge into 40-degree water. I did once, in chest waders. I cut through with ease and got a hand and fingers into the hole to figure out what was holding me. There was six or seven inches of snow ice, a two-inch layer of slush underneath, and a half inch of hard, clear ice. 

Brian picked up on my nervousness and called Sam. Right before they proceeded directly out from a point less than a quarter mile distant, I said, "I've never seen anything quite like it." I know snow ice and water underneath, but had never encountered hard ice that thin under it. I felt certain it had been thicker when two feet of snow fell on it and had thinned underneath the slush layer.  

They didn't go though, so out we went, and after trudging long through the five inches of snow on top, we found a better layer of hard ice out there. Maybe three inches. Any case, it held us. We often huddled close together. No threat of breakage. 

As Brian and I foresaw, the fishing would be really good. Five of us began setting a total of 15 tip-ups, and cutting holes for three or four jigging rods. My power auger didn't start, but Sam and his friends had a couple of hand augers. I whacked a couple of  holes with the splitting bar. 

We would have caught even more fish, had I brought along another 10 or 15 tip-ups. I didn't anticipate that the gathering would grow to seven of us. Honestly, that didn't matter. And it should only matter now to motivate me to more effort when I might guess it's called on. We caught 11 pickerel, two perch, and a largemouth. The second-largest pickerel weighed 2.72 pounds. Nothing giant today, but the two biggest were nice fish. A couple of others, including my pickerel, were around two pounds, and the perch were 12 or 13 inches.

I lay in Brian's Jet Sled, my coat, which I never wore, serving as a blanket, the sun hot on my face and burning it red. I told Brian, who sipped on a Miller Light beside me while sitting in a foldout chair and jigging, "I haven't felt this relaxed in years."

And I've done a lot of open water fishing this recent years.  

2.72 Pounds

State Park

 

New Jersey Nongame & Endangered Species Program

Fish & Wildlife  The state send me information because the 2020 Beach Nester/Raptor reports are posted, but  they also included the NJNESP program.

Raptors

Beach Nesters

Screwy Ice Season

This has got to be the screwiest ice season I've seen. Have been following someone who's been out on a private lake since about two weeks ago, but he dropped off the radar Monday. The State Park is frozen. I saw a photo of what must have been Budd with a frozen sheet. My supervisor at work tells me the lake is open, though. Gale force winds. 

Five degrees later on tonight. It's been down close to that for how many days now, but the word Brian got is that the lake we would fish tomorrow morning is not safe! Shallow lake at that!

We could go to Budd, but my disappointment, why not admit it, is making me want to cancel for a couple of weeks. That's how much I looked forward to a lot of fish.

P.S. It's an hour later and I had forgotten about Aeroflex. I also hear Cranbury Lake is safe, and I'm sure plenty of other places to the north. Steenykill has interested me for years. It's just the stress of things in my life right now. Don't feel like rising to the occasion and trying Aeroflex, but I want to go out on my next Sunday off.

Probably Brian's lake will be safe in the morning, too. lol

Lake Hopatcong State Park Ice Fishing

Oliver and I met at Dow's, 1:00 p.m., bought large shiners, and drove off for Lake Musconetcong. We got the same news about the State Park at the shop that we read on Ice Shanty. Slow. From the vantage of the shop, most of the lake was open water and heavy with swells from the wind.

My son and I used to do OK when ice fishing Lake Musconetcong before it got chemically treated for weeds. I haven't ice fished it since 2008 or 2009, but I know fish have been getting caught there since the first treatment in 2010, so I figured we might do better there than at the State Park. But we found no way to get on the ice, water on top of the ice near the shore having thinned it, if it ever had thickened enough there. We tried my favorite walk on near the island, from the lot near the dam, the boat launch, and places accessible in the back, driving on to the State Park. Besides, a large percentage of the lake was open water. 

Matt and I also tried the State Park once. I don't recall how many years ago. Ten. Maybe 12. A short stint on a frigid late afternoon at 21 degrees, the wind heavy, when we fished into early dusk and got no flags. It gave me a bad feeling about the spot. That day, no one else was out, but today there were at least half a dozen other parties besides us.

When a couple of older men near to us caught a second pickerel, Oliver said, "What are we doing wrong?' I didn't answer, but when they left a couple of hours later, carrying a garbage bag full of sunfish and four pickerel, telling us they were out since 8:30 (it was about 4:00), they told us half of our tip-ups were set over sandy bottom. 

"So we were doing something wrong," I finally conceded.

I hadn't ice fished for two years, and as I prepared for the trip last night, felt I had slipped out of the habit. Same when I packed the car today, but I had told Brian Cronk that I would probably feel relieved on the outing itself. So when we got out there, I was looking for whatever it was that makes the difference. I have loved ice fishing over the course of the past couple of decades and more, and I cautiously felt that if there's still something out there waiting for me that makes it worthwhile, OK, then I'm open to receiving it. After all, I have felt committed for these more than two decades to doing some ice fishing in retirement. 

The cry of gulls brought me back to earth. I don't think it's healthy to limit activity to a computer screen. Or the specialty counter on the job. Awful music destroying the soul, which the supermarket plays to make people stupid and more gullible to purchases. I heard two swans whistle by overhead. Oliver pointed out a bald eagle to me.

-

2019