Zoo's Open

The cones at North Branch Raritan River's AT&T stretch (the Zoo) and the Bedminster Pond stretches are gone. Access is resumed and I just hope the state goes ahead and stocks next week. I plan on fly fishing on Wednesday. 

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Lopatcong Creek NJ Restoration

Troutscapes    It's been since January when Troutscapes posted the article, but I find it remains newsworthy. Dam removal and restoration makes a great difference in the natural quality of a stream or river. I've paid attention to such work in NJ for a decade or so, having interviewed Brian Cowden and many others in-the-know for articles I've written and got published.

Caught Largemouths and Pike

Fred Matero wanted to catch smallmouth bass today, and so did I. We did succeed in making our way downstream along the Raritan to the railroad bridges. First, though, Fred showed me the Millstone River boat launch. It's functional. Fred told me he witnessed a 17-foot boat getting put in there. We cast for 10 minutes or so. I caught the longear photographed above on a #9 Rapala floater. 

From there, we found a park Fred knew about, hoping to access a trail back to the bridges. This would be a lot easier than walking down from the Manville Bridge. We found the park, but where we would park Fred's SUV and take the trail, it was posted No Trespassing. 

We parked at the bridge. I waded upstream to try a hole I knew about from 2006. My son found it by falling in. He was wading, sauntering along, and suddenly was in over his head. Like that day, also, I caught nothing. 

And on down below, we were able to fish at the first two bridges. (We didn't go down to the third.) Both had deep water we plumbed with jigs and Senkos. I cast a Rapala, too, but all that happened for me were sunfish taps on the Senkos. Fred caught a couple of sunfish, and that was it.

So I forwarded to him the idea of fishing the Passaic for pike. I guess after the two fairly recent trips there, I had bass in mind, too. I didn't express my feeling, but I felt firmly confident that we would catch fish. We just had to get there, do it, and see if my feeling would pay off.

We got swiped by a couple of little pike not far from the bridge. On further down, where Oliver and I have done well, nothing happened besides a 10 1/2-inch largemouth for me on a five-inch Rapala Minnow. It wasn't until we got further down yet that the fishing broke lose, and my feeling that the river must be overfished lifted. On a Senko, Fred hooked a pike of at least 24 inches, I got a good look at the fish. It came off and went for the Senko a second time, Fred missing that hit as well. I caught a little 12-inch pike, and then for 10 minutes or so, I caught fish left and right, ending at a total of four bass and three pike. None of the bass were better than 10 1/2 inches, and the two other pike were 15 and 16 inches. Fred caught one of the  bass of about 10 1/2 inches. 

We had to go, after fishing maybe two hours. 

 

Big Largemouth and More Action

It might have been the last Brian and I fish together for a while, not just because he hunts during the fall. Both of us, though, felt confident things will work out, but for the time being, he's getting Thursdays off, while I get Tuesdays and Fridays. I've lost my every other Sunday. Took paid time off today, and I'm just very glad we got up before dawn, met before sunrise, and rode over to Clinton Reservoir. We fished it some this past late spring and summer, and have got a large portion of it mapped out in our heads. 

It made a difference today. We still have that far shoreline in the photograph to explore, as well as the waters near the dam, but today, my hooking a smallmouth bass where that occurrence made sense, made all the difference. The bass leapt off the hook, but I soon understood that by trolling the deep end of the slow-sloping flat (in about 10 or 12 feet of water), we could probably find more fish. It wouldn't matter if the Storm Hot 'n Tot was always on target. The idea was to troll extensively and persistently. There were acres out there to cover. 

It worked pretty quickly. The largemouth I caught was 21 inches. I tried to weigh it, but I don't think I was able to do that correctly. The crankbait's hooks had done no visible damage, so there was nowhere to hang the bass on the scale hook from the mouth. No way was I going to damage the fish to do that, so I tried hanging it on the gill flap where the scale hook would do no harm. I got only four pounds, 11 ounces on my 15-dollar Berkley, and I doubt that was accurate. As you can see, the fish is chunky. And all the length-to-weight conversion charts put a 21-inch largemouth at over five pounds. 

Brian trolled up a little pickerel on the Hot 'n Tot I lent him. I lost three other fish on the troll and missed a hit. One of the fish I lost impressed me as bigger than the bass I caught. I was sort of playing with the braid with my left hand as I held the rod. Whatever I hooked immediately took off on a run like a hybrid striper's--the line burned my hand. 

Brian and I have had 30-inch pickerel on the brain this whole time. That's what I think it was--a really big pickerel taking off on a power surge that unfortunately ended with the hooks pulled free. 

I guess we did pretty well today, especially considering the fish on and lost, when there was not a cloud in the sky. I noticed no more than a few very thin strands of cirrus. For the most part, absolutely blue from all four corners of the horizon. Later on in the day, my wife and I hung out at Round Valley, enjoying a meal from Meditarranean Seafood, she reading a book and me shooting photos, while the sky overhead had no trace at all of clouds. 

So a classic cold front day. As I drove to Brian's house with blue just beginning to gather in the east, temperatures were as low as 56. When we got to the reservoir it was 64. When we left around 10:00 a.m., it was 74. It got warm later today, but bass and pickerel react to so much sun  And yet every fish we hooked was out in sunlit water.

Fishing means making effort. Getting up when the alarm goes off at 4:45. Or some other time much earlier than that. It means passing between the unpleasant certainties of the work routine, to a freedom that always promises a better life. And there in-between, before you get to where the fish make sense for you--and even in a way you feel gratitude in direct relation to them when you release them--you run up against doubts that threaten the fishing you go ahead and do. Because it's not about the resentments that become doubts. Not about others you think are that resentment's object before that resentment seems to disguise itself and turn on you. Only, all along it was about your own life, and before the water accepts you back, you feel you're only wasting your time. But it's always the water that wins. 

Mountain Lake
 

Mixed Jetty Catches

Fred offered three options: the jetty, his boat, or Raritan River smallmouths. I had to think it over. Then I told him I have yet to catch a keeper-sized blackfish in season. 

Actually, I'm happy I've caught a keeper-sized blackfish at all. I tried for them with green crabs way back in 1982, during September or October when I lived in Surf City and frequented the Barnegat Light Jetty. I never caught one until Fred turned me on to them last year, but I paid only $200.00 a month for the house I lived in that fall.

We mostly caught fluke and black seabass yesterday. In fact, that's all I caught, but Fred also caught little blackfish and two cocktail bluefish on an Ava. I had decided to take a break. I guess only at my age the standing on the jetty rocks for hours at a time wears on you. I sat down in the middle of one of the basalt boulders, because the last thing I wanted to happen--my car keys tumbling out of my pocket and down in-between a couple of those boulders. No, it never happened. Fred had been watching the action at the end of the jetty. Some dude had begun tossing back bluefish every minute. Fred got on them, but by the time I had tied on an Ava and began casting, a couple of boats rudely cut in close and put the blues down. 

When they came back up, they were way out of casting range.

No problem, really. Methinks we make all of our problems up. I stood on a big hunk of basalt and enjoyed the last of my killies. Unlike during the two previous jetty trips with Fred, I fished them on the inlet side, too. (Fred had actually caught a fluke on the inlet side on a Gulp! synthetic.) I found the black seabass liked them, and one of mine was 12 1/2 inches long--a half inch under keeper size and in season. 

One of my fluke was about a half inch under keeper size, too. But Fred kept the two bluefish, which served as a full meal for my wife and I last night. They were delicious. 

When we had hiked out and began loading Fred's SUV, I commented on the dry scales, asking if we could put some water on them. Fred had a much better idea, and I told him, after I had filleted both blues, that his observance of local advantages is spot on. He knows where you can just pull up, get out, and use a cutting board at a bulkhead where you just drop a bucket on a tether and collect bay water. Took care of the scaling problem completely. 

 

Two Fluke Island Beach

I fished for about an hour. My wife and I go to Island Beach State Park with our black Lab, Sadie, twice a year. It's pretty much a lay-out-on-a-towel beach day, but I bring a rod along. Sunday, the surf was too rough to interest me, until it calmed down as you can see in the photo. 

Sometimes there's fluke out there. Sometimes not. Once I caught 12. On Sunday, I caught two. One of them was an eighth of an inch under keeper size; the other a half inch under. I also hooked something really big that I could not stop from running. It finally did stop, though, but when it started pulling again, broke off. Probably a cow-nosed ray. 

There were some others fishing who caught nothing. Bait is important. Fluke love killies. And you have to rig that bait so a bank sinker of manageable weight sits below a short leader leading to, say, a size 2 hook. Beyond that it's wherewithal. Knowing how to catch them isn't an equation in the head. It's a matter of being. We say it's experience, but more than experience, it's a matter of encountering the water in the present, which certainly entails past experience, but is itself freedom.

I know plenty of fluke get caught on Gulp! synthetics, but Sunday there was so much eelgrass in the water, I don't believe trying to jiggle that stuff would have worked. Even the killies got into a mess much of the time, but I was able to keep them swimming freely for the most part. 

More About North Branch

Just got back from a half-hour stint at the Passaic, not a hit. I was hoping that with the weather shift, pike might be interested. Has been in the 90's day after day, although mornings have been cool, and late this afternoon I had 79 on the car thermometer, mostly cloudy skies overhead, and word of rain on the way. 

I threw a 3/8th ounce white Chatterbait. Casts great. 

Spoke to two guys in a canoe, and they hadn't got a hit. either. 

My post about the AT&T stretch beat around the bush. The only way I could express mixed feelings, although I could have spent hours and days perfecting it. What you read is what you get. I probably didn't even have half an hour to work on that post, but I had a strong idea of what it was about. That said, the way I think about the situation now is simple. Why put cone markers up, inconvenience anyone who wants to fish there, when all that has to be done is for the police to do their job? Enforce the law. Cops know suspicious characters. Stake them out a little. Wait until they're leaving--and if they leave trash, issue a ticket. Whatever needs to be done to enforce the regulations posted at the pullover, which I photographed for that previous blog post. If they're swimming--issue a ticket. Etc.

Doesn't a lot of drama with dozens of cone markers making a roadside eyesore seem ridiculous?

It is. 

What? It's too much work for cops to actively watch what goes on there awhile? (Until very soon it's no problem.) 

If so, they should work at the supermarket.