Heavy Northeast Wind Solidity Underfoot

The jetty has a way of returning you to solidity underfoot. It's just that if you take one wrong step, the crevice you fall into will break bones. I've been out there with Fred a number of times now, and every time, I've thought of my job. Yesterday, it bothered me little. Almost not at all. I didn't feel as if my time away from it was too short. 

The interesting thing is, I remember Fred telling me how many days he has to retirement. Each time we fished together, which used to be more frequent when he lived in Bernardsville. I remember that number over a thousand. And then, almost four years ago, it was done, and Fred moved with his wife to the vicinity of Long Beach Island. It seemed to happen so fast, while day to day reality plods along towards my goal as yet.

It's my turn now. And with April coming fast (in some sense, but was is that, really?), soon four years will have passed since I retired. I guess I've reached the point where it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I have to go in in the morning, because so few of them stretch between now and then. Even though it's a matter of some 210 days, which can feel like a lot at any given moment, there's a level in an older person's mind that travels between life events in an instant. It seems impossible to understand how actual time moves fast, when a second remains a second, an hour an hour, but 40 years since when I was 23 doesn't seem very long ago. It could be argued that I'm referring to a superficial level of memory, though, and that if I took the time to really get deep into recollection, vastness would emerge, and with it, a greater sense of time's length. 

Will I fish more, I think so. But between you & me, what matters most is that I keep delivering quality blog posts. I fully intend to keep publishing as much as I do now in magazines, too. 

I thought I'd have the trout book all finished before I would leave work, but that's OK. Haven't touched it in about two years, but I've worked on it since then in my head, so I know the time away is productive. I committed to a big writing project at the beginning of summer I knew would take me away from getting the new website up, but it led me to an even better idea to work on in a year or two or more. A memoir on the absolute need of civilization to have its first principle in nature, and the role of certain individuals who revitalize possibilities by going deep into nature, namely my own role in doing that, having spent 13 years digging clams...unearthing the mind's depths. It is the mind that makes life worth living by linking to possibilities. The liberal persuasion may be the postmodern denial of nature as existing on its own, as if it's a "construction of human society," but nature needs no defense, standing absolutely on its own. It's we who need to recognize its majesty, rather than to imagine we can elevate one of us to that status politically. (What a joke.)

About yesterday, the best part involved my getting an inevitable wind knot in my new PowerPro black slick braid, and having mentioned it to Fred before I would cut that expensive line, his volunteering to untangle it.

"You can't untangle that."

"I can so." 

And a few minutes later, I was fishing the whole length of what's left of it again. I had cut it I think three times during recent outings. 

Again, I got a wind knot. This time, I untangled it. And then once more again, and I untangled it, so I'm confident I can maintain my expensive PowerPro without wasting it.

Wind hauled water out of the Northeast and dumped it on the rocks. After it fell towards low tide, I could finally take my camera out without exposing it to spray, but even then I had to be very careful, as most spots among the rocks were still subject to salty mistiness. 

I fished only Gulp! Jerk Shads on jigs for fluke. Fred tried Fish Bites twister tails and something that looked just like a Jerk Shad. After I caught two fluke, one about 14 inches, another 16, I was told by a couple of guys that the bite was early in the morning when one guy had a four- or five-pounder on the rocks. Fred ended up with one right about 18 inches. We saw one of about 22 inches caught. That spot does get pounded, but so far, we've always caught fluke. 

Fishing the inlet side was difficult with the big swells, heavy tidal current, and spray, but we caught a few tog up to about 12 inches, lots of little seabass. Mole crabs, also called sand fleas. Fred had raked the bait out of the surf. 

Guy's got a short.

Inlet Three Years Ago

 

South Branch Raritan River Wading Attempt

I spoke to a friend recently who suggested an area of the South Branch upstream of one of the bridges. I asked if it's accessible by any pullover nearby. No, Brenden and I would have to wade up.

I stepped out the front door, still dark out, with lure bag, camera, and rod in hand, noticing that raindrop patterns had just begun to collect on the pavement. I took the stuff to my car, getting mildly pelted. A little light rain didn't alarm me, but I checked the weather. Soon, I got a text from Brenden saying it was pouring where he was in Stirling, though not raining in Hillsborough. 

We started wading in relative darkness, relative light. I had put my wallet and keys in my lure bag, expecting to reach waste level. Once, I stepped awkwardly on a rock. When you're really young, not just relatively young as I am now, you don't make missteps like that. You might be able to dance on rocks. I used to. 

They don't make me nervous now. They sometimes put me off a little, though. But we forged on as if we would reach that spot in the distance. We got fairly far. Above a section where the river divides into two, three or four flows. Facing the full width of the lower South Branch, I felt my antennae go on alert. The water was well up on my thighs, the bottom of my lure bag almost touching it. Lots of weeds on gravelly bottom. Some of that stuff at the surface. Where I bombed my Baby Torpedo on six-pound mono, and those casts were long, I couldn't tell just how deep, but deeper. Brenden had crossed some land downstream and taken interest in the flow furthest to my left looking downstream. Maybe he was catching bass.

Immediately, my plug started taking interest from sunfish. A couple hits I thought might have been bass, and then, finally, I caught a smallmouth of about 10 inches, feeling that satisfaction of having made a real effort for a real result. That little bass had leapt three times, as high as three feet. Had to be some depth out there for it to gather the power from below to go that high. 

Brenden caught up to me. He put a Whopper Plopper on. I told him about the big bass I had watched chase something against the trunk of a tree in the water along the shoreline to our left. I had repositioned so I might land a cast there, but Brenden's plug is a lot heavier and he made the mark perfectly. But nothing happened. 

I had caught my bass three or four minutes before it began raining. The water felt good, and while Brenden said something about maybe if the sun came out, the bass would hit better, I said, "I like the conditions just as they are. I just want to be on the bass." 

The one I caught was going to do it for the day for me. We couldn't move upstream any further. Too deep. The overgrowth along the shorelines too thick to break a trail. And I don't think we could have crossed over on the right, anyway, too deep. 

When we got back to the bridge, we fished on downstream maybe a couple hundred yards, but the water was shallower. My plug only interested a sunfish, and Brenden's Whopper Plopper--nothing.

We decided to try the confluence downstream, but the North Branch was off color there. Rather than staying out another hour or two, I was ready to go home and get a lot done. Brenden later texted me from a different spot, having caught seven smallmouths on a Rapala. 

Natirar

 

 

Outsmarting Pressured Fish Because We Enjoy It

 

Flashback to Belvidere July 12th. Mark Licht unhooks a rainbow trout caught while fishing smallmouths.

Writing to let you know I might have done it once before, but I'm not going to go for more than a week without posting, if I can help it. Did plan on fishing the Raritan today, but I'm busy with a writing project I've got to get done as soon as I can. 

Off on Monday, I'm thinking I'll get over to the lower South Branch. Noel Sell gave me a call today. We talked at least 15 minutes, good talk, and he gave me a clue as to where to try. Now living in Pennsylvania, he's very happy with the people over there, who will "bend over backwards to help you. In New Jersey, they screw you and take your money." 

Speaking from my own experience, I love New Jersey, which is not to say I'm blind to its flaws. Anyone who reads my blog knows that, but not because I resent those flaws. Resentment is always directed upward against a superior, be it an individual or a group. Restrain resentment and you don't need to bother with self-aggrandizement to stand straight. Rather than gripe and get sour, I just lay out problems like fishing pressure--frequently lay them out--for what they are. We who fish in New Jersey play the game of outsmarting pressured fish because we enjoy it, not because it "should" be otherwise, even if, on occasion, like the previous post expresses, we feel put off by how difficult it really can be to go without an easy catch rate.

Someone I worked with at Fiddler's Elbow Country Club told me, "In New Jersey, you have to work for the fish." It's nice when sometimes the action is fast. But on the other hand, my catch of four smallmouths on the Raritan late this past July was very satisfying.

Just want to let you know the book on microlight method for trout is still in the works. Hope all of you read it and get the word out, not because I need to get rich, but because the quality of the book is something anglers who enjoy reading will appreciate. I've taken about two years' hiatus from working on it, but once I get the new website up, I can turn back to completing the finish, and then seeking the book's publication. 

I keep getting sidetracked by other writing projects. Even the monthly article I do for New Jersey Federated Sportsmen's News takes some repeated effort over the course of four or five days, maybe a week. I will reread a 1200-word piece entire, just to tweak a word or mark of punctuation. The editor's final copy is perfect, after he asks me for a proof-read. 

That's it for now. Hope I fish on Monday.  

Danny Barker's Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide

Got a voice message yesterday from a fisherman from Arkansas, who had lived in Newport News, Virginia, and fished Currituck Sound. He had found my post on Currituck and wanted to talk. 

I phoned him and we hit it off directly. Danny Barker had grown up in West Virginia, where the New River was home water for smallmouth bass; other mountain streams for eastern brook trout. His family relocated to Newport News, where he began fishing the salt of Chesapeake Bay. Naturally, they learned about the northern largemouth bass fishery of Back Bay-Currituck Sound and Albemarle Sound of Virginia and North Carolina. 

We talked about 45 minutes, thoroughly enjoyed. Barker's been guiding in Arkansas, 77 years old, and he's written a book, Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide. Though it's not published yet, he intends to get it published and advance the proceeds to a children's charity. 

Barker sent me the book in PDF form, and I sat and read through the first 10 chapters, uninterrupted. Twenty-seven chapters in total, the book utterly fascinates me. I can't get over the difference between what seems to me a short time ago--the 1960's and '70's--and the present when it comes to fish populations and fishing pressure on them. Fishing Currituck with his father, the average day amounted to 100 to 200 bass between the two of them, with the best day amounting to about 350. Barker says they weighed between 1/2-pound to 10 pounds, not that a 10-pounder got caught every outing, but on the phone, I queried him on his biggest Currituck bass. Ten pounds is a great fish. He caught an 11-pounder from Albemarle. 

Striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake was phenomenal, too, the Barkers catching as many 200 of them during a single morning. They fished flounder, catching 150 to 300 a day. Big red drum, too.

After jaunting through my reading, I arrived at the Raritan this morning feeling thoroughly dismayed. It's not just what we've done to fish populations. After all, in some ways the Raritan must be comparable to the James and Roanoke Rivers, where the Barkers caught 50 to 100 smallmouths a day as large as seven pounds, but Raritan River bass aren't there in numbers like they must have been only some 60 years ago. At least above Somerville. (There are about a dozen Superfund sites along the lower Raritan.) I think of Stony Brook in Princeton, where I used to catch as many as 40 a day during the 70's. Try Stony now, and the chances are against you catching a single bass. It's not just fishing pressure. Stony never got a whole lot that we ever knew of. Rather than fishing pressure being an all-encompassing evil, consider that ecosystems are delicate. The more New Jersey builds, the more pressure is put on watersheds in forms other than fishing.

I fished this morning...for a single bass. A Raritan smallmouth a little better than 10 inches long caught on a Ned rig. I did hook two other littler ones lost, and missed a hit, but I felt the lack deeply, and I'll add, deeper than I will likely feel it again, thankfully. I'm no different from you. We're used to the fisheries as we have them. Today was a slow one as Raritan outings go, and, in fact, the water was a little off-color. I never do well when it's stained any worse than it was this morning. 

I got out and fished Round Valley in the rain last Thursday, getting skunked. And since I fished only 45 minutes, I felt I had no story to relate on the blog. Flooded undergrowth gave my buzzbait abundant opportunity--45 minutes worth from where I could reach from shore near the main launch--but oddly, there seemed to be no bass among that cover during those favorable weather conditions. 

I leave a link to my popular Currituck post. In addition to Currituck, I refer to canals and "Collington Bay," while said bay is not only a thing of mistaken memory, it's misspelled. The word is "Colington," referring to a certain island and small community. The bay there is strictly named Kitty Hawk Bay. I leave the title as is, so as not to screw up the post in relation to search engines.

Currituck Sound      
 

Holding Fast to Deep Natural Connection

I checked on favorite South Branch Raritan spots going back 15 years. It was hard breaking past a barrier of feeling put off, even though I'm enjoying a series of PTO days off from work, and I felt great about the Raritan River two days ago.

I decided that instead of giving in to a "bad day" and quitting on it early, I would persist, and I made sure I fished a number of stretches thoroughly. At one point, I looked at myself standing in the water, not having had a hit yet on my live killies, and the thought of giving up without a single bass while using live bait felt like a death sentence placed on the river I have loved very deeply. I just let that pass and kept fishing!

I think it's hard to holdfast to deep natural connection while otherwise living in a culture that doesn't value it. I spent many years shamelessly inspired by such connections of many kinds, outings consistently coming to their finales, which I called Grand Affirmations, amounting to engagements with the world inclusive of the naturally given and the humanmade. Some of them were greatly powerful, a sense of radiant energy moving the world from relative staleness to renewed life. An act of redemption involving more life than I can individually contain. John Lennon used to call the like a turn on.

Some would wonder how a man can care about fishing when spirituality runs high, but on the contrary, not only every fish mattered--as the blog attests to--so did almost every cast. Grand Affirmations complete successful participation. More than being a spectator's detachment, fishing involves me with the natural world in a way that elevates my life as a whole. You don't have to be a dumb jock to cast effectively and catch fish, but I'll be the first to admit there are guys out there better at catching fish than I am. I have a need to catch fish like any other fisherman, and I like to do well at the game. But I'm interested in putting words to it in a way uniquely my own, not in catching more and bigger fish than others I will never surpass.

It's the quality of natural connection that contributes to the quality of Affirmation at the end of an outing. The blog turned to relating the process of fish getting caught, but as I remember, I was pretty good at describing such natural relations during the early years of the blog. 

I did catch a few today. Water level was a little high, and carrying a lot of green algae that got on the hook, annoying. I cast unweighted killies, working a stretch downstream, when I decided to try weighting one with an eighth ounce drop-shot weight shaped like a banana to ride over bottom. After a few casts, I had a bass on I lost. I baited up again, cast to the same spot, and came up with the average stream bass photographed below.

I fished the eight-foot depths thoroughly, no more hits. Then I removed the weight and decided to work my way further downstream. On the way, I caught a smallmouth a little larger, and had to return to the bucket for another killie. I did get all the way to the bottom of the stretch, but no more hits. I had spent a full two hours working the long stretch.

I also fished a couple of stretches in-between the bridges and above them. I caught the nice one photographed above. On the way home, I stopped and fished a large pool of the Lamington River. No hits there.  

Algae on the hook with the killie.

Lehigh River

Maneuvering the Ned Rig for River Bronzebacks

Fourteen-Inch Bronzeback

It's nice having a big river close to home, where I can go out an hour after noontime, get involved enough in the fishing to feel as if a full day was invested, and be home at 4:00 p.m. Catching some smallmouths. Soaking in the sun and the heat while wading nearly up to my waste, my mobile device on the bank with my other stuff. Never engaging with that thing. Only having it along in case of any emergency. Using my DSLR camera.  

I told Brenden Kuprel I'd really like him to show me how he fishes the Ned rig, and I followed his lead to various spots, watching how he does it, and figuring it out as I went. As I thought after trying the lure in the Delaware River a week or so ago, there is some maneuvering of it involved. It's not all letting the current take the rig as it ticks rocks and bottom. But I was much less certain on how to work the lure after fishing the Delaware, than I am now after fishing with Brenden. The jigging of it involves some wherewithal in trying to keep it from getting hung up, as well as keeping line straight enough to ensure a secure hookset, though not overdoing that, allowing for some bend because that's going to be inevitable. You will feel the Ned rig tick rocks and bottom, and sometimes you'll feel a knock as it wedges in-between stone from which you can't get it free. But it seems to be the case that when fishing a Senko-type worm rigged Wacky, more drifting with the current happens than when casting a Ned rig.

The jury's out as yet on whether the Ned rig is more effective than a Senko-type plastic rigged Wacky and unweighted. Or when one is better than the other.

Certainly, the Ned rig drops almost straight down to bottom, even with the 1/16-ounce jighead I used today. It takes a Senko-type worm a little while to touch down. Most fishermen seem to throw a 1/10- or 1/8-ounce Ned rig. As you can see in the photo, the plastic worm you use on such a standup jighead is short and stubby. About two or two-and-a-half inches long. Together with a mere 1/16-ounce jighead, it casts very far on six-pound-test mono and a medium power, five-and-a-half-foot rod. 

The only problem with long casts is the bow in the line, which the powerful river current develops. I lost a few bass because of it. By not getting a direct hookset. One of those bass was a really good one, though I believe it was more like 14 inches, rather than 16 or 18, though I'm not certain.

I did catch one 14 inches. From a lengthy cut of narrowed flow where I caught a nine-incher on a live goldfish 29 years ago. I have no idea why I didn't just fish plastics, as was my habit fishing smallmouths during my teens, but I wanted to use live shiners, though I couldn't find any for sale near North Plainfield. I'm sure Efinger in Bound Brook had some, but maybe not, although it seems more likely I just didn't think of them as having any, not being in the loop yet. So I bought some live goldfish from the pet shop on Highway 22 in North Plainfield. 

I caught three other smallmouths: 10 inches, eight inches, and about seven inches. Another one I had on besides the nice one I mentioned might have been a foot. 

"Slow day," Brenden said. He often catches a lot of smallmouths, and one occasion, caught 50 of them. His sole bass today wasn't a big one, though he's caught three-pounders on past occasions.  

I lost two Ned rigs today. I had lost a few of them when fishing the Delaware. Most of the time, I worked the rig free by wading in the opposite direction to which it got snagged. Obviously, that doesn't always work, and I believe fishing the Ned rig is more expensive than fishing Senko-type worms (unweighted), which I believe don't get lost to the river bottom as often.

I think the Ned rig is a valuable approach, but let's see how it pans out over the years.  

 

Brenden fishing from an old bridge stanchion.



Senko Bronzebacks

 

Bushwhacked Thick Underbrush to Get Beyond Where Others Go

We hiked back in October last year, and I don't remember observing the old trails grown over as they are now. Then we did diverge away from the river where a tributary ditch meets it, though. Getting across easy today, beyond the undergrowth is thick. We bushwhacked. When today's outing was done around 10:30 in the morning, my arms and legs were bloodied. I just want no poison ivy. 

Oliver felt like trying a number of spots along the way, before we got far enough back--which in total amounts to more than a couple of miles between bridges--to where I felt others haven't been coming. Much of the undergrowth we broke before us had grown to head level, soaked in morning dew. Forging ahead alongside the river, I hoped any snapping turtle out of the water would somehow let itself be known before I stepped on it. Oliver found bear scat.

No evidence of others fishing back there made itself visible. No trail broken. No marks in the mud. It made obvious sense that most people would not want to break the effort.

We did want a few pike. Back in 2020, I hooked one that immediately took tight drag from a reel mounted on a medium-heavy Lew's Speed stick, that reel loaded with 20-pound braid, the pike running underneath a log jam before the snap of the wire leader gave, having opened somehow. Three of us caught a lot of fish that day, mostly pike. In more recent times, two years ago in September, I caught a lot of small pike while fishing with Fred Matero. That day, we got as far as the tributary ditch and just beyond it, as only I crossed. 

Oliver got hit at the surface. We used floating jerkbaits. Further on, he caught the largemouth photographed below, and I missed the hit I'm sure came from a small pike. The bass photographed above is the largest any of us have caught in the Passaic yet, Oliver's second this morning. I lost another fish, but I finally caught a little bass after Oliver had caught two more the size photographed below. He caught yet another, and a redbreast sunfish. 

Most of them he caught from a hole particularly deep though not large in surface area. Since most of the river is very shallow, you can imagine why, although one of the fish I had on came from a few sticks in visibly shallow water.   

 

Seems to be the foundation of a former bridge

Jerkbaits for Pike