As for Friedrich Nietzsche and Prime Meat

I suffered so much unconscious (and semi-conscious or I wouldn't know it) resistance to this outing, I was afraid something would go seriously wrong. I might have fractured my upper arm or elbow, but if so, it's a hairline break I'll just let heal. 

Last time I was hospitalized, it was a fiasco.

It was near the end after sunset when I had all but completely relaxed. Yes, enough to have lost just enough attention to slip. If the arm's broken, it might be why my camera isn't, as, without thinking, I went down in a way to lessen the impact. It hit hard. I had hung it loosely around my neck. Now I know better than ever why they say Nikon's D7100 is a beast. 

Victim of a high-speed motorcycle accident when I was 20, I decided to be less the victim by just letting my cracked rib heal. That time I had no doubt there was a break, but I can't remember exactly how I felt that break. 

I took two Tylenol for this one.

Now about the fishing. Skunked. Like on Cranberry with Oliver, not a hit. Oliver wasn't able to come today, and that got me bummin', because we had had such a great time on the pond recently, and naturally, I wanted another great time. I didn't realize I would go into nature alone and move from real unease into greatly confident self-renewal like I haven't felt in years. Go work at a supermarket if you want to be with people--like they'll tell you you need. That will rob you of self like nothing else will. 

I read Nietzsche on my breaks from cutting meat. 

In my car. 

Puts things in balance.

I'm given a black uniform, so the supermarket must be in on it.

Today at Dow's, Laurie got my shiners...and fatheads. It's the first time in 49 years of ice fishing that I've bought fatheads. I have bought them in the past from Dover Sports Shop (another one bites the dust), to use for stocked brown trout before dawn (and another one down, and another one down, and another one bites the dust, yeah!). 

Fatheads for salmon. The setup was right. But for only two tip-ups. I also jigged a small Kastmaster and set tip-ups with really big large shiners for pickerel. You never know, one of the many bass might hit, too, but nothing hit at all today.

I know fish have been caught, because I saw blood stains at two holes from as long ago as a week, can't tell for sure. 

Fish are out there. 

Another thing I'm pretty sure about. Fish get clued in to what's going on, in their own way. It's why I joked to Kevin Glenn that the flat at Lake Hopatcong State Park is a strip mine operation. Every year the pickerel and perch populations get rejuvenated but within days the action through the ice seems to freeze...not because all the fish get taken home. Only enough for need of good spawning get taken, but the fish that remain, they shun what gets set out for them. 

They laugh at little jiggy-wit-it, too.

As for Friedrich Nietzsche and prime meat, the man had a weak spot. 

He never understood women.  

 

State Park

 

Circle Hooks for Ice Fishing

Today I played out a fish better than many in this pond, and I thoroughly enjoyed the give-and-take on the Dacron, not having played one on it for three years. Just minutes ago, I uploaded an ice fishing video to my Litton's Fishing Lines YouTube channel, and I checked the date. February 14, 2021. I remember it crystal clear. My wife and I had just bought the Honda I drive. I made an issue of my spending Valentine's Day ice fishing, and she made an issue of making sure I went.

That fish, not surprisingly, turned out to be a pickerel of just slightly under 18 inches. I know that, because I took it home. The moment it came through the hole, it came through dripping blood. That pissed me off, and I immediately vowed to stop at Dick's on the way home for circle hooks.

Recently, I read a Chris Pierra post on Facebook, and his persuasion of the use of circle hooks ice fishing all but convinced me. Old habits die hard, and I've used plain shank size 6 Mustad  hooks since I used to buy them by the loose dozens at Brunswick Sports and Hardware of Trenton in 1975. I went online and saw expensive options as expected, but really, size 6 circles hooks for 90 cents apiece? It's obscene.

What convinced me was seeing the blood on the fish as I lifted it out of the pond. Yes, my wife wants me to bring home more fish. I don't have to remind her about the Y bones until later. Maybe I'll divulge in a later post whether or not I was able to remove them. Patience, patience. A lot on my plate and the pickerel won't be much!

Pickerel have white flesh and a mild flavor. Old Bay seasoning will be interesting cooked into it. But I release almost all the fish I catch. All I can say in favor of taking a fairly nice pickerel is two things. For one, most of the pickerel here are smaller. They might be stunted. Harvesting some might help the size increase. And secondly, there's less competition against the bass population.

Oliver out-fished me again. When we fished with Cronk and Kevin Glenn the other day, Oliver caught the most fish, though Kevin caught the larger pickerel and perhaps the larger perch. Today Oliver caught three pickerel, his biggest slightly shorter than mine perhaps, lost a hook to another, while I missed a hit and had fish take four shiners and fatheads from me.

What happened that's very interesting is that on two or three tip-ups, Oliver set fatheads only two feet under the ice on his beloved Jaw Jackers. Something got one of them. It could have been a perch, but then again, maybe it really was a trout.

Why pickerel cruise around out in the middle of the pond, far from the bottom of the sharp shoreline drop-offs down to 15 feet, beats me. But they did exactly the same in the Princeton Day School pond I fished during my youth. 

I got to Dick's, where the smallest circle hooks are size 1/0 and a little more than 50 cents each, which is really expensive. Why someone doesn't compete by producing cheaper bronzed hooks that will rust out easily if they DO gut hook, which is possible, when they would be sharp enough...they don't have to be chemically sharpened and all that expensive jazz...beats me. 

At first, I figured 1/0 is way too big. But I gave two different brands of the hooks a careful look, and decided the ones that are a dollar less expensive per pack will do fine on large shiners, and they'll work for Yum Dingers during summer, too. A 1/0 J hook would be too big and heavy for shiners, and for Yum Dinger's I've been using size 2 plain shanks that look bigger than the 1/0 circles at Dick's. Oliver's using circle hooks of about 1/0 on his Jaw Jackers, and he has no trouble catching pickerel as little as 12 inches. That said, I do want to find smaller ones of size 6 or at least size 4. And I really would like to find a reasonable price, but tonight I didn't feel bad when I squandered 10 dollars of my very hard-earned money.  

Smaller Pickerel

Another Smaller Pickerel

Preparing to Set the J-Hook

Tightening Up with Loki

Slightly Under 18 inches

Nice Bass Through Ice

Mount Hope 2025

 

Ice at the Valley

It got really cold, in case you missed the news. Colder than forecast. My wife had -7 on her thermometer, leaving for work at 7:00 a.m. yesterday. That's Bedminster, not Sandyston in Sussex County, where it was colder. It explains ice all the way across Round Valley Reservoir to the right side of the photo, shot from the camper's boat launch. 

Oliver Round was out fishing elsewhere, in Morris County, where he had five inches of ice last he was there. Friday last week? Nine inches today. 

Also frozen is the corner to the left of the Main Boat Launch. 

There's as much as two or three inches of ice--very suddenly, I was there when the snow began and not a trace--where they keep the park ranger boat. 

I also checked out options for getting on the Swimming Pond, and I found there's a DEP No Trespassing sign where the short trail leads onto the ice from the back of the Main Launch Parking Lot. I asked about it at the office, and I was told that indeed they're not allowing access there. (Another case of denied access.) They have nothing against anyone ice fishing anywhere on the pond, except for along the swimming beach, perhaps, but you have to be off the ice and out of the park by 4:00 p.m.

My suggestion is to heed the law and access the pond only from the East Picnic area. Go ahead and enjoy the long walk in, packing to leave well before 4:00 p.m. I agree, it's not fair to us. Access should be reasonable, and we should be able to fish at least until dusk, but don't upset them. That's what happened in the first place with COVID. People broke rules. People took the power from their control. That's why we have no access near the dike. 

As things are, we're allowed to ice fish on the reservoir and on the Pond. 

That's plenty generous as it is. 

A While Back

 

Wetsuit Boots

Kevin Glenn & 19-inch Pickerel

I never voiced it to anyone, but I expected the lake to be watered over under the snow, and for much of the snow to be melting in the water on the ice, gray-patched. I figured we'd deal with it when we got there, rather than to forewarn the others to no purpose. Brian and several friends were out here on Thursday, finding as much as six inches of ice, so that ice is still there and melting virtually not at all, because that's ice water on top. It basically insulates it from thickening. With temps dropping to zero or nearly that the next two nights, that water on top will freeze and make walking much easier. 

Even this evening as we made our way back to our vehicles, we were able to walk on top of ice nearly two inches thick creating a layer of water underneath it.

I figured that with holes cut Thursday, temps above freezing since then, those holes didn't freeze over thickly. Snow accumulated fast, weighed on the ice, and pushed water up through holes. What my theory might not explain, though, is how water is on the ice a good eighth or quarter mile down lake. Brian did mention someone ice fishing down there Thursday, though... 

I've fished when water is on the ice a lot in years past. What I didn't expect was my boots leaking it in to make my socks soggy. Have slogged through water six inches deep on ice and not got wet, but I've had these pac boots for 25 years. It's time to find a way to waterproof them again. They're great, warm boots.

Once we did get to our cars, temps had dipped from 22 to 17, and you might rightly wonder how I survived some three-and-a-half hours in that environment with wet feet. I felt reluctant to tell anyone, but eventually I mentioned it to Oliver, before I did to Brian and Kevin. Oliver said, "They're wetsuit boots," after I had spoken of how well insulated they are, my feet not especially cold. 

I can't remember if they're 1200 or 600 grain thinsulate, if I have the terms right, but I think 1200. 

Oliver gave me a couple of vermiculite hand warmers when we fished on Thursday, and I accepted them, eventually asking where he got them. (I've had a bunch in my study among my equipment, but I believe they're all thrown out, long ago expired.) He told me Walgreens, so on Friday, coming upon the Walgreens in Bernardsville, I bought a couple. Never had need of them today. In fact, I was so warm after cutting holes with Kevin's electric auger, I felt like taking my coat off. 

Much of the time I didn't bother wearing gloves.

But the hunting bib I've borrowed from Brian weighs on me. Makes walking difficult. Or it did especially because 10 pounds of ice had glommed onto it. Three years ago it was no such trouble. And I did a lot of bending over when setting tip-ups. Crouching and pressing on the knees to get back up is difficult. It all wore on my back and I had a moment when I feared the stress might have been too much. It wasn't. 

We did catch fish and you see photos of some. Kevin might have caught a 13-inch perch, but don't quote me on that one. Oliver did catch one 12 3/4 inches. Both Oliver and Brian caught nice-sized crappies. Other perch got caught. The two pickerel. 

I finally got to see some of the latest ice sonar projected onscreen. Pretty cool to sit comfortably--I didn't try today, I witnessed--and watch your jig onscreen...while a fish nearby takes sketchy interest in it at best.

Easy to imagine that watching the fish take interest and eventually strike onscreen must be pretty cool. 

Most device screens, by what I've gathered, are liquid crystal and fail if they freeze. However Kevin's screen is made, he told me it's a touch screen, too! 

  

Glenn & Cronk

Brian Cronk with a Nice Crappie

Oliver Round and Crappie

Oliver Round and Pickerel

Temps Ranged from 22 down to 17, and ice built up on the leg bottoms of my very warm hunting bib. On the soggy boots, too.

My Only Fish. 

Three Years Ago

 

Natural Surroundings Begin to Take Us Back

On the ice first time this season. Oliver Round had gone out a couple of times and caught a channel cat, perch, and pickerel. He had already pretty much set up when I got there yesterday, and for me, the transition from indoors to the pleasure of standing on a frozen lake wasn't quickly complete. I think a lot of people who would ice fish don't do it because they can't see beyond discomfort to the fulfillment ice fishing offers.

Even when we get skunked, and we got skunked yesterday probably in part because people have been fishing regularly there, the natural surroundings begin to take us back. All of what we do behind walls in heated rooms is protected against that very will of nature to claim us as its own. We might think that would be a horrible, bestial demise, but not necessarily. Just because exposure will make us more animate, doesn't mean reason gets lost, though it can if the mind is weak. 

I remember one occasion. I think during 1977. I wasn't ice fishing, but I fished in the rain at 50 degrees--the temperature right at the mark where hypothermia is a real danger--and got soaked to the bone. I had an eight-mile bicycle ride home ahead of me in the dark, and I seem to vaguely remember how delirium felt as if light somehow blended seamlessly into dark as one thing. As if light and dark flow together rather being exclusive. I got home in a very delirious state of mind, and it occurred to me that despite delirium's being a mental impairment, I was handling it well. I had no regrets for pushing the day beyond limits, no fear, and instead of feeling any kind of rejection of my own state of mind, I felt openly curious about it and paid attention.

Again, reason can persist, even when it is, in fact, challenged. It's a matter of putting value emphasis on reason instead of fearing the impairment. 

We fished more than three hours today. Oliver's toes got cold, but not too badly. I did notice that in the wind my XL parka allowed just a little updraft that was uncomfortable. I still think that once I put on the bib, I'll be glad I did get XL. These Beyond Allta L8 parkas are designed to have four layers of clothing on you underneath. I had only a thin wool base layer and two Woolrich shirts on underneath yesterday, so considering that, I wasn't doing badly. Temperature was 24; I stood on ice for more than three hours and never got chilled besides my face. The fingers on my gloves didn't stay as warm as I would have liked, either, and in the future, I may invest in mitts. Don't know what the wind chill was but had to be pretty low.

And it snowed, which was nice. 

Something did trip one of Oliver's devices, but the baitfish seemed untouched. Could have been a sunfish for all we know. Oliver made a holding tank he keeps in his garage where it's chilly. He managed to save some shiners from the previous outings but very few. He went to a creek in a park near his house. I believe with his splitting bar, because he did break ice. He brought a dip net and caught a couple chub-sized dace and little ones. I thought it was interesting using little ones that did stay alive on the hook, even though as any habit, I would certainly stick to large shiners, medium only if large not available. 

When I had got there, it looked like three parties were on the ice. On a Thursday. Actually, one of them was Oliver, and the others were all in the same party of non-English speaking foreigners. Oliver had asked about catches, and they couldn't communicate what the big one was they caught, but Oliver told me they were very excited about it. Apparently, a good-sized northern pike. I saw them catch a very nice-sized pickerel. 

Caught Three Pickerel Last Year  

Nothing Freezes a River

 

I had to buy an item at Home Depot, so I threw waders and other gear in the trunk, hoping on a short stint on the way home, but first, I would have a look at the river in town. As you can see, there's a lot of ice on the North Branch, even up in the back of the photo where water moves faster. 

I said as much when I posted the same photo on Facebook, but I added that by what I see, there's no river trout fishing available. Within minutes, Ethan Proffitt commented, "There always is," which felt true to me, like a reminder when closure tried to seal off all the edges in my mind. 

I don't really know. I've seen some really serious ice on the rivers. Today? I wasn't going to bother trying to find any trout where not iced over, but I am 64-years-old and I'm not fishing the Dunnfield Creek--"river" enough--in February where I caught a wild brown from an icy edge when I was Ethan's age. 

I fished Lockatong Creek at 14 degrees in February, too, and though we got skunked that day, we got bait into depths despite a lot of ice.

Besides, I've never heard of anyone doing it, but it's possible to fish through the ice of a river, when it does get seriously thick. It's possible to actually catch trout that way. "There always is."

I'm glad I heard it from someone else. After all, "An Angler Always Finds a Way," means "There always is," and in the more general sense, it means there's nothing that can stop us from making it through whatever resists life from going on.

Nice try for me today. Even nicer a reminder that nothing freezes a river, so you can always give the trout a reasonable effort if you work at it.

Smallmouth on the Jig

Outsmart The Therapist: She Might Keep You in a Box

 We had ice fishing, snow, and zero-degree temps this past December. The photograph is from December 20 years ago, when the likes were more frequent.

The rivers in my area today flowed at good brown trout levels, still slightly stained but coming down from stronger flows after recent rain. I could have got out and tried, but the closest I came to doing that was walking Loki along the Lamington River after disposing of our Christmas tree at Branchburg Park where they make mulch of them. Have been busy with stuff all day afterwards, much of the time administering final touches to my article on South Jersey largemouth bass for The Fisherman next month featuring Thomas Wyatt. 

I do believe we will have a sustained ice season beginning soon. I could be wrong of course, but it's like I can feel it coming, and I've felt this way for a couple of weeks. If so, you'll read some interesting stories, I promise. You might see some ice action on my Litton's Fishing Lines YouTube channel, too, and I hope to get time to put up more of the videos I've already shot. I encourage you to subscribe, but read my disclaimer right here and now: I'm a writer before anything else, and I hope your appreciations remain loyal to the blog. I haven't even figured out how to cut video, let alone do any other edits, and so far, I like the rough and ready feel of straight-out-of-the-box video. Some ice fishing is already up on my old channel Litton's Fishing.

I might have a good sense for when to turn my GoPro on and off. It's just that I usually don't think of filming until it's too late.

This past year was supposed to be the year I got my new website up. Naturally, I got tied up in other projects, although the book on trout fishing I've promised you for years is getting rewritten in my brain. So far. Which isn't to downplay the productivity. (I'll finish it once the new website's up.) Often when I'm on the job, I do the physical labor while working avidly in my head on the book at the same time in another space I do simultaneously. I do this for other projects as well, sometimes whipping out a notebook from my back pocket and shamelessly jotting ideas down. I do put the job first. Anyone who gets hired and doesn't do that is a fool.

My wife says I'm going to miss the people I work with. She doesn't say I'll miss the work, but sometimes I feel as if I will. I always end up concluding I won't actually miss it, but there's plenty to be said for working class jobs when you're a writer otherwise. I remember once reading in Poet's & Writers magazine what I took to be the clear implication of working-class life as being like a death sentence for writers, while I can persuade at long length why it isn't. 

The vast majority of writers need a day job, and I'm sure plenty of us are in the working class. To denigrate what we ourselves do is ultimately unproductive and self-destructive. Instead, we should find our strengths lie in needing to do less than 60 hours a week or more. And rather than devoting all our mental energies to professional performance, we're free to think in our heads what's congruent to identify as writers first. Put the job first, yes, but don't believe you are, personally, that. Take pride in what really amounts to being a "food services worker." The standards you set for yourself. I feel like I'm an act for my eyes only, but the customer satisfaction I produce is that of others. And yet the pride includes the freedom! To be a better writer.

I tried to land a professional job decades ago. While preparing to take one on, I found myself completely lost in procedures. I ended up seeing a psychotherapist, because I was completely baffled at what was wrong with me. She had me take three weeks of IQ testing with another psychologist, which concluded I'm gifted verbally. That shouldn't be surprising, but I tested only average at performance intelligence. That's my problem with jobs that demand high performance intelligence, the psychotherapist concluded smugly. 

I've never felt complete agreement with that as final verdict. I've tried to tell myself I do, but the doubt always swam back up and surfaced. (The psychologists were so certain of their conclusion.) I'll cite examples as to why I think the low score has less to do with genetically hardwired intelligence, and more to do with upbringing. 

When I was five or six, my parents filled a room with papers spread out, doing taxes. I saw that and felt overwhelmed with desire to participate with them in doing the math. Instead, my father chased me out and shut the door on me, which was traumatic, because I so much wanted to do the math. 

Flash forward 10 years or so. 

I have never forgotten my algebra teacher telling me something before I dropped out of the class, failing it. "I know you can do this," she said. She said it in a way that reached me as authentic, and part of me agreed with her in a way that was too deep for me to access, given my conscious conviction at the time that I could not do the math.

Recently, I bought an extra spool for a Penn Fierce reel. I need that to load six-pound mono for fishing rivers and Round Valley shoreline trout. I believed I needed a 1000-series spool. I wasn't certain and knew I wasn't certain. But my reel "had" to be a 1000 series. Logically, that's what fits my five-and-a-half foot rod. Or so I thought. I ordered the 1000 series spool. What do you think I felt as I got notification of its being shipped? Whether or not it would fit the reel.

It came, and the first thing I did was check. It doesn't fit that reel. What did I do next? Looked on the spool loaded with braid on the reel to see if it designates series. Yes. 2000 series.

And that's when I understood. It's not lack of intelligence that didn't "perform" in checking the reel in the first place. It was habit conditioned by deep and lasting traumatization. The reel "had" to be a 1000 series, which is nonsense, and I knew it because I felt unsure. But I was blocked from doing the simple act of checking--psychologically blocked, not because of cognitive lack. I knew it might not be 1000 series. 

It made me certain that the issue of my performance intelligence is psychologically complicated, and that simply taking an IQ test gave us no real conclusion as to its nature in me.  

My next thought was of what to do with the 1000 series spool. I decided to buy a 1000 series Fierce reel and put that reel and the extra spool when I need it on one of my light power St. Croix five-and-a-half foot rods. In addition, I would go ahead and buy a 2000 series spool for the reel on the medium power St. Croix rod of the same length. 

The thought of returning the 1000 series spool and then buying the 2000 series spool didn't sit right with me, because what was just wrong-headed in a helpless way--to have not checked on the series of the Fierce I already owned--would have proven to have been merely foolish if I made it Ereplacementparts' problem. 

Again, I knew I might not have bought the spool to match my reel in the first place, and I had the reel in my possession to check on just what was right, but one is not always a fool when he knows better, not if he's prepared to make good on what amounts to a deep misunderstanding, so I thought one step further and recognized I had the positive use for a 1000 series reel.  

So it is I'll be a little better outfitted in the year ahead.

Bass Encounters