Encounter with a Brown Trout

Got this year's permit, and took a shot of Echo Lake. Then I got in a little trout fishing before I fixed my squareback canoe.

I had wandered down to the stream with my camera. Gazed into gin-clear water from an elevated stance. The pool looked really nice. Three, four feet deep. Rocks. Plunge at the head. 

I didn't see any trout. 

Satisfied with my search, I was about to turn away, when suddenly, like a website pop-up as you reach for the X in the top right corner of a laptop screen, I saw a subdued flash like a knife blade a split second before the water splashed.

I kept still and searched the bottom of the pool. There it was. A brown fully eight inches long if not a little better.

I got my two-weight and worked a bead-head repeatedly, but nothing happened. 

I saw Brian Cronk minutes later. He said I should have used a stonefly pattern. Noted that as something to buy.

Wild and Native Trout  

Elimination of Parking at Bedminster Pond

Notice width of breakdown lane.

I won't say much about it. Too depressing. I put my all into my TO THE EDITOR letter soon to be published in Bernardsville News. Perhaps I'll publish that in the blog later this week.

None of us would believe what they claim about this situation. That they're doing it to protect us. That the situation is too dangerous for us to manage. It's a safety issue. 

Don't we need our politicians....

Just think, without them we'd be so stupid as to park there, as I did days before they filled in the lot.

So wide my long morning shadow doesn't touch the gravel. And I stand only halfway to the white line.

They've marked the road. Parking at the AT&T stretch appears to be doomed.

And that's what the sign implies. Where a gravel parking lot for anglers used to exist, flowers are supposed to be planted. Like a grave. 

Wild and Native Trout

Gave a Couple of Productive Spots a Try

Tried a couple of spots that produced for me in November. I'm still very much new to the cold water river trout. Whether or not I caught anything would be telling. Getting skunked informed me about trout either moving elsewhere in the river or being taken home. Of course, it's possible none wanted to hit my black maribou jig, but I gave the spots a very thorough working over.

A pair of wood ducks flew overhead. A male and a female. 

Seven Points Against Me

Arrived at Neshanic, saw the river, and felt certain today would be a skunker. It's tough enough catching trout during New Jersey winters; to face higher than normal water volume is to entertain factors less in your favor:

• The trout spread out when there's more water available to them.
• And yet they will stay out of the heaviest current.
• Such spots can be very specific and especially hard to find under high water. 
• Every cast results in more approximation with regard to any subsurface target.
• Cloudier water quality means the trout see the jig less clearly or not at all if at a distance.
• You have less control over retrieve. 
• Because heavy current carries both the line and the jig. 

 

Jigged River Rainbows

I think I caught the last two trout from the same spot as a month ago, because I fished it thoroughly after catching my second one. The first was a little over 15 inches and chunky, the second 14 inches and lean. I later found the stomachs of both of them full, however. Packed with scuds, and the smaller trout had some interesting nematodes in its stomach, too. I wasn't fishing conservation water. I do know a spot downstream a few miles where rainbows survive summer, but in any event, my wife likes trout for dinner, and we all know what day it is.

Nice orange flesh these trout had, too. That might not be a hatchery product. Maybe it's from the scuds they eat in the river.

First trout slammed a VMC marabou jig with a little flashabou that really lights up in the clear water with sun overhead. I got that snagged after the knot had weakened, so having lost it, I tied on a black Haggerty marabou jig, and caught the second trout. Sometime afterwards, I waded on downstream, found my VMC on the river bottom, and soaked my right arm to the pit reaching for it. The water's cold. That's a fact. Maybe 42 degrees. Don't know for sure. But it didn't feel so cold, and like once before when I ice fished, I felt that if I were to go in, I could handle it. 

Fact: I'd be dead soon if I weren't to get out. But I think much of the shock and pain of water cold in the extreme has to do with human vulnerability. It's possible to know you have an immediate adrenaline rush on your side, if you will take that side and block out the pain. 

 

 Microlight

Access and Participation

Last night I decided I would drive up to the Dover area, where I keep my squareback, and get last year's registration for it from its safe box. It's perfectly dry & in shape. I compared all the codes with this year's form from the MVC, and they all check out.

So instead of fishing in Hunterdon, I fished the Rockaway River in Morris. The cold was more invigorating than uncomfortable, but my hands felt pained. I must have fished a total of two hours, and I did find interesting holes that would definitely hold trout. Fished on the outskirts of the town of Rockaway and in Denville. 

I drove along the river--best I could stay along the river--from Dover into Boonton Township. The exploration got involved; I was enjoying it, and it served as a deep meditation on given wilds and limited access due to private ownership. I don't believe that the Western way of land owning land is inherently corrupt, but a world is a commonality, and human beings should have abundant access to land and water for recreation. Think of how we tend to enclose ourselves, surround ourselves with objects we identify with, rather than to ensure our health and vitality by participation in the larger world. There are better and worse ways to do that, too, and to only seek out opportunities that cost relatively large sums of money begs the question: Are those activities being pursued for their own and your sake, or does money represent a value you produce only by work on others' behalf?    

As I fished in Denville, I thought of all the trout that must have been stocked where public access was available. Just a few hundred yards of it. Trout we pay for by trout stamp and license fees. Most of them now probably inhabit inaccessible water. 

Hunterdon 

Hoping to Fish

Hope I'm not wasting your time to say so, but I hope to fish a river on Tuesday. On call for Jury Duty, don't know what the chances of having the day free. Forecast is OK. 

I feel work & all else cramping my style. The one exception I will grant to the lack of time I fish, is photography. I've been criticized for doing it. As if someone privileged to write on fishing should fish all the time and do nothing else. 

There's a difference between working too hard...and working smart. 

That said, I had a great day on the job yesterday. All the stops pulled, I behaved like a 17-year-old--at age 62--doing hard labor deftly, and then on breaks noting brilliant ideas in a journal. (I don't write only on fishing, as if I should write only on fishing.)

But I'm truly on the fence. Would I prefer to keep working? I don't seem to have a choice until 2025, anyhow, so why think about it...except to hope I fish at least a little more.