Couple Last Shots at Big Ones Before Cold Comes

With the warm weather, I didn't want to pass up on giving the river near work a shot. I fished only half an hour, and got hit only by some panfish or other. Decided that with the water temperature up, I'd use a floating Rapala rather than a Husky Jerk. Amazes me how fast that #9 Floater rises to the surface with a wire leader attached. 

Water level is very low, of course. I did manage to get the plug next to a lot of wood in the water, but apparently no pike or pickerel were on the stuff. 

Water color was a little off as usual. Not clear as Brenden and I found it far downstream closer to Little Falls. Plenty of carp seem to swim in the area. I remember Kevin Murphy, who worked as seafood manager at Stirling Shop Rite for years, telling me that during a great flood when water covered the parking lot, he stood at one of the doors, watching a big carp hugging the asphalt. 

Getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow to fish bass with Brian Cronk. One last shot at a big one before cold weather descends. 

River Trout Soon

 

Vegetation on the Bottom Decomposes Quickly

At least that's as it seems. I was at the reservoir Thursday for a photography session, and I saw a lot of it that sticks above the surface is dead, dried out, and about to disintegrate. I also noticed clean bottom where I'd expect to see vegetation lingering from when the low-water exposure was a field of the stuff. 

In any event, catching trout from shore is quite possible. I spoke to someone three weeks ago who had caught two rainbows. They usually reach the shoreline shallows in mid-September, when the surface temp falls to 70. 

I haven't actually heard of trout caught since, but it's a reasonable assumption to think that if a couple got caught, more have followed and probably preceded. 

I have no plans to fish for them until late December, when I hope Fred Matero joins my son and me again. I just don't have time otherwise. I'm still busy with the photography, because I'm just doing my best to capture changes in the reservoir landscape. My hope is that I can glean a hundred or more photos from my collection of thousands for a book of Round Valley photography. And if that's too much to ask, the collection certainly exists. 

We've just seen the lowest reservoir levels in its history. We may never again see such low water. I was there, week after week, photographing results. In all those years, I never once met anyone else with a tripod, let alone rarely anyone with a DSLR. 

For your own reference, if you're interested in giving shoreline trout a shot, the reservoir level has dropped a couple feet, which means a few yards or more of space for easy casting. We just haven't got rain, and New Jersey Water Supply Authority probably pumped some water out so Somerville gets some water from the Raritan. 

Big Brown

Tried a Six-Foot Ultralight and Four-Pound-Test for Smallies

Tough couple hours with the cold front. There's a frost advisory tonight. Fished the Raritan in Somerville, trying out a Cabelas six-foot ultralight, the reel loaded with four-pound-test Berkley monofilament. (I'd use less expensive Zebco Omniflex, but I can't find any less than six-pound test, unless I were to pay shipping online, so my plan is to buy more Berkley.) First time I've ever used such a rod, and I have to say it felt unwieldy. Too loose. Whippy. I don't think it casts any further than a shorter rod. The little bass of about 10 1/2 inches put up a great fight on it, though.

Had nightcrawlers leftover from Dow's and from the Delaware River outing with Brian Peterson and his daughter. That's what I used, though I still have some. Just drifted them on a size 8 hook. Worked holes and a kind of flat four or five feet deep.

I had walked in only with Loki and my big camera bag along with my tripod. (It's the first time I've loaded both of my cameras in my car for an outing.) I have a certain subject of interest I'm working on. It so happened that when I walked out after fishing, the angle of the sun's rays had got really low and illuminated that subject interestingly. So I'll be back. I didn't have time to hike it back this evening. Going in there, working with the tripod, and walking back to the car and then suiting up in my waders to carry my fishing gear back in to the river was enough for today.

Besides, again, the main reason I came was to try out that new rod. It is a new rod. Still had the tag on it and the plastic over the cork handles. My brother-in-law Jim never got a chance to use it before he had a serious stroke and then died of an aneurism before his treatment had finished. We used to fish together some, but it's been decades ago for the most part. He's in some of the blog posts from Barryville, NY, though. The Delaware. And of course I came today to use the nightcrawlers.

Now I'm wondering if I'll use the rest over the winter for the river trout. Yesterday, I read a The Fisherman article by Captain Jim Freda about them and he says a nightcrawler will sometimes do it. I've caught so many on the jigs, but maybe after working a spot thoroughly with them and getting no action or no more action, a nightcrawler might be worth a try.

Loki

Flash Forward

 

Sometimes You Find Few Fish Feeding

Big day of fishing with Kevin Murphy. We met at Dow's Boat Rentals shortly after 11 a.m., when I walked Loki the black Labrador, then backed my car down to unload. A couple of guys hung out by the shop, while Joe Welsh entertained them with more of his antics--throwing live herring into the water where dozens of hybrid bass snatch them up instantaneously, splashing the surface. 

I figured with temperatures over 70, today's catches would match October 3rd last year, when Kevin's biggest hybrid weighed nearly eight pounds. As things turned out, Kevin felt really good about the fishing. He caught his first walleye and a lot of panfish and perch. It was a long and great day on the water, but I did feel disappointed. I wasn't the only one. 

"What have you caught?" I asked.

"Fishing sucks," the guy at the controls of a bassboat said. "We've caught two bass. We've been fishing for five hours." 

It happens sometimes that you find only few fish feeding. Whatever you do, results are sparse, so it's up to you to keep trying and make it good day. Perhaps you expected much better as I did yesterday, or perhaps you expected nothing, as I did last week at Sunrise Lake, and instead a little action is a very pleasant surprise. 

We marked fish like crazy along the deep end of the Ledge drop-off, most of them about 30 feet down over 45 feet of water, but even though I had live herring weighted and set under the boat, only one of those fish hit. The drag set loose, I heard the sound of drag giving and looked sharp at the rod tip. Seeing no bend or motion, I figured Kevin must have pulled on his line. Sometimes it really makes sense to voice concern! It was like 20 minutes later when I reeled up the bare hook. Then I asked if his drag had sounded off! No. 

I also saw the rod tip on one of the other herring rods start dancing, but by the time I tightened up on the line, nothing was on. Again, I reeled in a bare hook. On several other occasions I lost herring, too, though we had no evidence as to what happened on those occasions. I caught a couple of tiny hybrids out there. Little fish somewhere from seven to nine inches long. Many of the fish showing up on the graph were small but many were medium size along with some large ones. 

I had fished a Yum Dinger long and fished it hard. Around rocks. Among sparse weeds. Nothing ever hit. I fished the same spots that produced largemouths and a smallmouth last year. And I fished more spots than that. I remember how much I enjoyed catching bass on a couple of Yum Dingers. Enjoyed them a great deal. 

I also cast and cast a Binsky from another rod, and I did get knocked just once. I fished anywhere from about 10 to 35 feet down. 

I did catch a smallmouth on live herring from about 15 feet of water. A little one of about 11 inches.

Kevin caught his walleye within the first 20 minutes of fishing. He cast half a nightcrawler to the depths where I was casting live herring. I said, "You'll do better by casting to the rocks, but you might catch a walleye there." About 20 seconds later, he was hooked up to one.    

Kevin's Big Hybrid

 

Bestow Value on the Adverse Brave the Weather

I should have photographed Oliver Round fighting his 18-inch smallmouth bass. He's had a breakneck busy schedule at work without much opportunity to get out and fish, so it's especially unfortunate he lost that bass, though his having hooked and fought it, complete with aerial display, was a lot better than not. 

Caught the smaller walleye and a hybrid on an ultralight-light power, 5 1/2-foot spinning rod I built from a St. Croix blank that put me back $70.00--just for the blank--years ago. Six-pound mono. What a fight! The big one fought very hard on my son's Speed Stick, but the walleye that I'm pretty sure didn't weigh four pounds--I put it back--put up a great fight on that light rod. "Maybe a catfish," I said at one point, as if 10 pounds was dragging. 

The hybrid was 17 1/2 inches.

That big one in the photograph above? It's the third five-pound, 15-ounce walleye I've had weighed in at Dow's. Unless any of the three weighed six pounds before I had them weighed in, I've never hit the six-pound mark! I was so sure I did today!

Raw weather felt good because fishy. There's no doubt the fishing was good today, and I'm sure because of the weather. I know people think wretched weather is that. No matter how you romanticize it--and I do romanticize it--there's an objective element in its being adverse. I don't argue against that. I just know--otherwise--that you can bestow value on things adverse. And probably live to ripe old age, too...if not live longer than you would had you not been brave. 

Even cigarettes. Jeez, I confess I used to smoke. They are medicinal. I never hear anyone say that or write that, but they not only put off anxiety--if just enough to get an edge over it that lasts a bit--they put you in a meditative space. They will kill you, if nothing else will, though it remains likely something else will. Of course, they complicate one's health, too, so whatever kills you might not have if you didn't smoke. But a lot of medicines are adverse for health otherwise, which is not to say, either, that smoking is wise to take up. I really do not recommend it. I wish cigarettes would go away, because I hate to see people hooked on them. It's better to find out what causes you anxiety and deal with it. It's even possible that the attempt to escape anxiety by smoking only elevates that anxiety. 

All I know is that since I quit three years ago, I've desired smoking very little. It makes me feel I should have quit at age 25, but of course, I really should never have smoked. 

Nevertheless, to attest to smoking's medicinal quality, I began smoking in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, aged 19, while suffering "the most severe manic-depression I have ever seen in all my 20 years of practice," according to the Director of Psychiatry of that Ivy League university hospital, Richard Brecht, who served as my doctor. 

My father knew whatever hit me was immense. He was not wasting a cent on anything less than great care. When Dr. Brecht told me about the severity of my mania, after I had come back around, he held my gaze unflinchingly, a big smile growing on his face. He was truly amazed, and I loved the man for loving his subject matter and admiring such survival of total annihilation. He started to talk about Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway--manic-depressives he admired, but this guy! Right in front of him in his office! 

But I took a cigarette from another patient on the hall and smoked it...Dr. Brecht never complained at all. Ah, smoking did help. But talk about things adverse! Many people think manic-depression is horrible, but if you yourself are manic-depressive, I doubt you really believe that. You suffer a lot of pain, but like they say, to suffer for the fish is a noble thing. Inherent to life itself is suffering, which might involve why the fish symbolizes spirituality, and to suffer all the more might be to move all the closer to life. To have more of it in greater abundance. Why else is suffering so closely associated with Christ? The artistic temperament overlapping with the qualities of illness facilitates the ability to romanticize manic-depression, and no matter what others tell you, they can't take that from you. Sturm und drang! Heavy weather, man!  

I had four days of fighting urges after I quit smoking. I just said no to them. Never bothered with any of the techniques. No drug. No nicotine patch. Just NO.

A little more on the great adversity, the best book on manic-depression I've read is Kay Redfield Jamison's Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament , but according to another book, Manic-Depression and Creativity , even Isaac Newton, the physicist, was manic-depressive, not to mention that the illness is that of the saints. (Often nicknamed the Divine Madness.) And rock 'n roll. Certainly.

The artists Jamison's book refers to are mostly writers and musicians, like poets Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, composers Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Who wants to leave the world without letting his readers know just a little about him? I've got 30 years left, perhaps, but I don't want to pass on the opportunity when it arises. 

But more about the fish. They got caught on small herring. A point worth making. 

I always used to believe the big herring are better, but they told us at Dow's the small herring have been doing it. So we got a dozen-and-a-half small, a dozen large. The small ones proved to be better!

Besides fishing bait, I cast & cast a Binsky. Oliver cast a Sonic. No hits. Oliver did miss a hit along rocks on what I think was a Senko-type worm. My Yum Dinger only got pegged once by what I believe was a yellow perch. 

I did mark fish as deep as 39 feet, which really surprised me, but most were 20 to 30 feet deep. Water temperature 70 degrees at the surface, go figure with fish swimming as deep as 39 feet! All of the fish I caught came on no more than size 10 trebles as weight. The biggest came from the shallowest water, besides Oliver's smallmouth, which came from the same 15 feet or so. Don't know how deep the herring swam down otherwise.     

  

Released the smaller walleye

Teeth! They don't cut line.

Lake Hopatcong in the Fall

 

Bucket Brigades, Pressured Fish, Spot Burns

Yesterday I read old blog posts & came upon the two about Sunrise Lake and also the Burnham Park Ponds. Three years ago, someone left a comment on the Sunrise Lake post that continues to alarm me, about the bass being "gone." The obvious implication is that my post, dating back to 2012, is probably complicit in directing the bucket brigades there. It's not easy to draw the same conclusion about Burnham Park's lack of fish, because the second of two posts about the two ponds indexed by Google in 2012 talks about the absence of fish compared to previous times. (Namely around 2006.) The population had already been assaulted when I first wrote about the ponds in my "Reel Time" column for Recorder Newspapers and then after six months posted the article on Litton's Fishing Lines.

Sunrise was already a pressured pond when I posted about it, but the people I met fishing there put their bass back. Besides, I assume both Sunrise and the Burnham Park Ponds have taken spot burns by Fishbrain for many years. The whole point of that website is to mark spots and present them to account holders. I met someone at Burnham Park today who caught a pickerel there on a spinner and released the fish, and he mentioned Fishbrain, which made me feel relief to have been reminded, because it's strong evidence of more involved than just me being a fool. 

I've always had a conventional streak of personality,     

very free in offering information to others rather than being tight lipped. It makes me a perfect match for the journalism career I never pursued--besides outdoor writing--even though I was offered a newspaper staff position when I was 19. I worked for Beach Haven Times/Manahawkin Beacon as a stringer when the editor-in-chief decided to test me, giving me a big feature assignment on Long Beach Island housing development. I did such a slam dunk of a great job that he wanted me working for him officially and full time. 

I digress, but only for a sec. At Lynchburg College, where I had dropped out after a semester, I had the deep inward desire to find my voice as a writer in the wilderness. I believed mine was a literary quest, and though certainly Jack London's was that, mine might really have greater philosophical import. Mind you, I did not drop out because of poor academic performance. I earned a 3.8 grade average for a heavy load of 21 credits, including a senior level English course I enabled myself to take only because I had earned a perfect 5 on the advanced placement test during high school. (I didn't even bother taking the AP course.) I found the bays behind Long Beach Island wilderness enough, and I stayed true to that desire I've mentioned, rather than to become a professional. That's also why I wasn't in school. School was too easy. A teenage professional I would have been, no less, as a college dropout. You can just imagine my material success taking off with the manic power native to me. I wanted much more than a professional job could offer, which isn't to say that I never tried to land a professional job thereafter. 

I've often spilled beans as news writers do. 

Look at what I did to Mount Hope Pond. Invited every bucket dragger and his whole family to "lunker" bass shouted out loud in the post's title. I photographed a big one I caught there and put that photo on the page. Who can read that post without feeling the urgent need to get up there! More on that in a moment. You probably notice I get away from such blatant spot burning since the early years of the blog, but rather than seeking any excuse, I'm trying to face a little of what I've done. I was moved deeply enough yesterday to commit to driving to Mendham and Morristown and fish a few ponds rather than the Raritan River with its promise of smallmouths. I figured I'd get skunked instead, but I'd take the punishment and maybe figure something out. No way did I burn the place down and never look back. It rained and I loved it.

Well, I didn't get skunked, either. I fished a Yum Dinger along a shoreline that always used to produce, and I didn't even get tapped by sunfish. Didn't see any, either, which is strange. I switched to a MiniKing spinnerbait, and got hit by something small. I walked all the way around to the back, and that's where I had some action that surprised me. I missed hits from a few bass that wouldn't commit. Kind of behaved like pressured fish. I also had one on not bad sized. And I caught the one photographed.

But there's no doubt the population is decimated. 

The pond was plenty pressured before but always yielded at least a few bass. Same with Burnham Park. The ponds there are within the city limits of Morristown and get stocked with trout by the state, so you can just imagine. The spinnerbait got hit there by what was unmistakably a bass. I felt the click and then felt nothing--the bass had hit the spinnerbait by coming directly from behind it and at me. The other guy caught the pickerel. I also saw a bass that behaved like a pressured fish, ignoring my Yum Dinger. Not to mention that a cormorant stood at the back of the upper pond, possibly lingering from springtime when the species feasts upon stocked trout. They eat fish every day, so it's a sign of serious business at decimating whatever bass population remains. I don't know why the fishing ever was as good as it was around 2006, but the cormorant, just for that example, I believe used to be much more of a coastal species. 

About the biggest spot burn of all of them, Mount Hope Pond is tough fishing. When I began fishing there, I would leave the pond an hour later with as many as a dozen ticks to pull off my clothes. Having caught maybe one bass, most likely two at most, though they would be 16 or 17 inches long. Sometimes 18. The two biggest 19 1/2. My arms got scratched. I risked getting my clothes ripped by briars. It wasn't easy getting around, and most bucket fishermen would sit at one spot, get skunked, and not return. (I never saw a bucket fisherman, and I saw only one who braved the sticks and rocks.) 

It's the toughest pond to fish I know. It's also 18 acres, whereas Sunrise is only three.

The interesting thing is the buck stops with me, 

and yet I let be. I could delete the post on Lewis Morris Park that talks about the fishing. The other talks about New Jersey's first governor in a certain capacity, but whatever--governors, bass, and bass killers are all about power. Instead, I'm forever grateful for the guy who commented, reminding anyone who will read it that the bass are gone, a "travesty" that I can't help but see reflected back on my work. I answered the guy, and he answered in turn. No hard feelings there you can detect with any absolute certainty. 

I'm in with all the guys & gals who pressure fish. That's fishing in New Jersey, but we still have the problem of fish getting taken home, even though, and I make the point again, I never see anyone out there doing it. Besides put & take trout that don't count in the same way. Even walleye and hybrids don't count in quite the same way, because, besides the walleyes in the Delaware and Raritan rivers, possibly other moving waters they enter, the walleyes and hybrids are stocked and don't reproduce, though I put many of them back. Why largemouth and smallmouth bass aren't limited to one or two fish to be taken beats me. Look how strict saltwater management is. We can really use it, freshwater. Sometimes a bass bleeds out. I'll take the fish home and it tastes good. But I've never had two bass on a given outing hooked badly like that.    

Sunrise Lake

Burnham Park Lower Pond

Burnham Park Lack of Fish

 

Something More than Us Creates Our Connection

I'm temperamentally suited to using a Senko-type worm. That paid off yesterday, as I caught three bass, two of them pretty nice ones. No northern pike caught, though one about 22 to 24 inches followed my plug to the squareback on my first cast. Brenden caught two yellow perch and a small pickerel. 

It's odd to favor Senkos here. I've never had any discomfort pitching a jerkbait the entire outing on other occasions while on foot, but from the low vantage of being seated in the canoe, it got tedious and awkward for me. Brenden threw a large spinner for the most part.

The invisibility of pike impressed us as strange. Wood in the water, some pads--cover wasn't everywhere, though common. You'd think we'd see some nervous water and fish. Brenden theorized that for whatever reason, the pike were down in the eight- to 12-foot depths. He thought that would more likely be the case in the summer, though. Water was 69 degrees. Besides, on the way in after sundown, I trolled a sinking jerkbait through that deep water and never got hit.

I described the smallest as an "average stream bass," the first one I caught, which hit next to some sticks in the water, shallow. The second one, maybe 14 inches but very heavy-bodied, hit hard & fast next to a fallen tree's shallow end. Once hooked, it ran so fast out into the depths that I thought it was a pike. The third came when 60 feet or so of muddy bank between cover interested me, as if a bass would move along it. My third or fourth cast, I felt my Yum Dinger get picked up in the usual way on a slow, deep retrieve. It leapt twice, maybe 15 inches or so. 

The Passaic stretches some eight-and-a-half miles between access points, but Brenden later pointed out that had we gone far enough, we might have come to trees in the water forbidding passage. Not only that. From the other side, there could be trees blocking passage further upriver yet, effectively creating an inaccessible flow. Unless you were to bushwhack, perhaps necessarily with a machete, or when the river is low enough, hike the mud at the edge you might sink into. 

There's bass back there for sure. And pike. We got well beyond the sound of traffic on I-80. I felt the weight of my concerns back home lifted off me. The surroundings fascinated me as a whole other system of shared interaction. The yellow of turning leaves signaling the inevitable passage coming of the rest of them. A flock of grackles fed themselves along the bank to our left, while an American egret alighted high up on the dead branch of a tree in the water, overlooking us and the flock I had just equated with Hitchcock. 

"The devil to the left of us and an angel giving us guard," Brenden said the like.

"Yeah," I said.

His words gave the scene transcendence. Even if we alone bestow such power on an environment, it no less moves us as something other. How can it be "we" without implying that something more than us creates our connection?

September Pike