Front Came Through and Put Fish Off

If you remember from yesterday, I wrote about muddy water from the Delaware River possibly reaching the Island Farm Weir area of the Delaware and Raritan Canal today. 

I rode I-287 to exit 12, seeing as I passed over it on the bridge that the canal was clear. I felt a little surprised at that. And then I began riding north on Weston Road. Within a mile, almost to the area of the weir where I would park, the canal became muddy. Muddy water had indeed reached the area where we fishing yesterday, but I simply turned around and parked at the little park by the South Bound Brook canal lock and fished there. Water was plenty clear. I saw my shiner three feet deep or more. 

I fished hard for two hours. I grew all the more convinced that because the front came through, the fish turned off. Extreme winds gave that away. The temperature really wasn't bad, as high as 52, but it felt cold out there. Gusts came through of perhaps 60 mph. I saw a fat limb fall from a tree into the Raritan River, enormous splash, and I was careful when standing high over the water at any edge, because I could have been blown off my feet.

When I had got there a few small cumulus formations floated in the sky. When I left, I saw only one very small puff up there. All blue otherwise. 

I usually catch at least one fish when I fish the canal. Any time of year. As it went today, I was just glad I gave it a sincere effort. I did see a large turtle. Probably a slider. 

Near the end of the outing, I went into a mild reverie. Often that's when the fish hits, but not today. I began ruminating a little bit about catching up on a few spots I haven't fished in decades. For what they are, they're a long drive away. I routinely drive an hour to access spots to the north. Mostly, they're promising places. I wouldn't say the two I have in mind are bad this time of year, however. Not when temperatures have warmed. 

One of the spots is a very shallow, very weedy pond that warms five to 10 degrees better than the canal when temperatures spike early in the spring. The pond empties through a pipe into the canal, and while lots of fish can be caught in the pond, they're usually small, although I did once catch a 20-inch pickerel. But at the pipe, I've caught some of the biggest fish I ever have in the canal, which come and bask in that warmer water. A 22-inch pickerel and I have a vague memory of encountering a nice bass. My biggest crappie, too, and lots of that species. 

Thirdly, there's Baker's Basin, which I suspect is no longer fished. I might not be able to fish the pond effectively, because overgrown, but in any event, it will be interesting to evaluate. 

Maybe next year when I have more time. 

Millstone Memories 

Bass from the Cold Delaware and Raritan Canal

The bottommost photo is of the flooded Raritan River. I believed the canal might be clear enough to fish. If not, my idea was to fish Round Valley Pond, which Oliver corrected me on. The park closes at 4 p.m. We'd have no time. 

We met at my house, then rode over to the Sporting Life in my car. Me, Oliver, Brian. Bought a dozen large shiners. Dead ones work, too. 

Brian said he wanted to throw paddletails. (At the end of the outing, he was throwing a Chatterbait.) 

Driving over really wasn't bad. We took 22 East, cut over to 28, went through Somerville Circle, connected to 206. Over to Manville. Onto Wilhousky. Soon we saw the canal. 

Normal color.

It takes a while before muddy water from the Delaware gets over here. I love fishing that canal so much, I want to do it again tomorrow, but it's possible muddy water is on the way. If I get there and that's the case, I'll go over to Round Valley Pond, unless the thought of something else crops up. A really interesting option is Baker's Basin Pond, but Lawrence Township is fully an hour away.

Besides, when I last visited there, trails had some pretty heavy overgrowth, so it's possible those trails no longer exist and the pond is just a safe haven for gamefish that is no longer fished. 

We can't "go back to the 70's." If no one's fishing Baker's Basin, it's not the 70's. The place was hit every day back then. 

It produced, too.

Do you believe for a moment a pond that's been abandoned, possibly even the extensive parking lot grown-in, is going to become the place again, fished every day by local residents? If we're going to fish in the future, we need to embrace the technology of the future, not attempt to escape it into the past.  

It was so nice to forget about all that for a while today. 

I've caught a lot of winter pickerel on crappie jigs around brush, wood, stuff in the water. That's fun, because you see the pickerel bolt out of the sticks and hit. Oliver saw the like today, when he fished a paddletail and got the paddletail bit off.

I prefer live-lining shiners. This time of year. During the summers in recent decades, I've fished Yum Dingers. But I love the cold and cooler weather of the canal, because I like the feel of pickerel taking a shiner sidewise and bolting a few yards. Today, the pickerel that hit one of my shiners bolted from a couple feet away from the bank, directly to the bank, underneath some stuff. I got to feel the fish turning the shiner around in its mouth, but I was sure it was a really small fish, like a 10-inch pickerel. (Little ones like that are common in the canal.) I didn't let it take the shiner too long, afraid of gut-hooking it, and when I set the hook, I simply pulled the hook from that shiner in its mouth.

Brian and Oliver didn't quite dress for the weather. Especially with a heavy wind barreling down the big river, it was especially cold out there. Forty-four degrees felt much worse; it was miserable, but especially after I encountered the pickerel, I felt motivated and happy. 

It was time to go. Brian has Raynaud's disease, and even though he never dipped (Oliver and I did barehanded) into the minnow bucket, his numb hands turned purple without gloves. 

I understood the fishing wasn't going to go further. I would cast some more but not much more, and before I could tell myself to stop, I saw green gills flush and my shiner disappear.

I was standing beside Brian and Oliver. "I've got a nice one on," I said. I felt the fish pulling line out into the canal, tightened up on that line, and set the hook, expecting some fun from a pickerel about 18 inches long, a nice one for the canal. 

Turned out to be a little bass of about 10 1/2 inches. It's always a blessing to catch a bass in the cold canal.    

Brian Cronk fishing for walleye

Raritan River

Romp

 

 

Judging Differences Between Berkley Fishing Lines

Naturally, I returned to where I caught the trout over five pounds yesterday. I hooked up on my second cast and caught the rainbow photographed above.

I had walked hundreds of yards to get there, feeling positively expectant. I examined the feeling and judged that it didn't have to do with yesterday's catch. It was fresh and of it's own origin in things. Next, I wondered if that really meant I'd do well. Doubted that. But "of it's own origin in things," it easily could have had to do with the temperature rapidly rising to over 60, and more than that. It could have had to do with the approaching front, which, of course, I understood could mean active fish. The coming rain could have been just as important as the rising water temperature.

Spinning was appropriate again this morning. As it was the other day when all I did was snag a sucker, the wind even heavier. Fly fishing in 40 mph wind--or 25 to 30 mph as was today--is not easy to say the least. But you can spin cast.

I fished the 16th-ounce jig. Casting the Berkley Vanish fluorocarbon line I mentioned in the previous post was not as ergonomic as casting the Berkley XL. I had had my suspicions, when I paid five dollars more for a 250-yard spool of Vanish, than for a 310-yard spool of XL Oh, well. I like to pay attention to every increment in price and come up with the best value on expenditure, and whether or not I did this time? I think I did OK, but really, I don't like how it casts. It seems just as bad as the older fluorocarbon from Berkley I tried yesterday. Sometimes I can hear the stuff rasp as it goes through the guides! Face it, it's fluorocarbon and it will not be nearly as limp as a monofilament that is specially made to be limp. That's what the "L" of "XL" means.

You can buy Berkley XT and good luck with that stuff, although I've read forum threads and it does have a large fan base, so you might like it a lot better than I would. For good reason, too. Always a trade-off. The designation of the "T" in "XT" is for "tough," and tough it is, I'm sure. Good knot strength. Abrasion resistant. 

Also clear, and I don't like the blue, Stren-like, (another line brand), color of the XL. You have to trade off, and I might trade off Vanish for XL yet.

Vanish also had less diameter, and I do like that. Or at least I thought I did, and maybe I still do. It's .17mm. XL is .20. Here's the thing though. I don't seem to get casts out there any further, although it's true that after I switched to the eighth-ounce black marabou jig, expressly in order to cast further, I did get it closer to the far bank than I ever have, though I thought because I got better umph.

I could be mistaken. Does .03mm improve casting distance by a few inches or a foot or two or does that only mean you have to use up more line to fill your spool? Besides, won't a limp line cast a little further? I would think so. And so does this particular blogger.

So what I will probably do is end up scouring the internet for limp monofilament that doesn't have that blue shade I don't like. And if it has to be .20mm, OK. But I'll try to find limp, clear, and low diameter.

I like Berkley products, though. My scale is made by them and I've tested it on a five-pound bag of sugar. Spot on. Besides, Berkley has been in business since 1937.. I was big on them as a teenager, too, and having a long track record probably means you've stayed in business because you make good products. In Berkley's case, I would say so.  

And so I had ended up catching the second trout, photographed below, although that was before I switched to the heavier jig. I did miss a few hits today, and once came up with another sucker scale on the hook, if you've been reading along with my recent posts.

Both of my trout went back into the river. The five-plus-pound trout I caught yesterday is plenty for now. Unfortunately, the area of river where these fish are means they will, in all likelihood, die before summer, unless someone catches and keeps them. 

You'd hope the trout would have enough wherewithal to swim for the Atlantic.  

Odd-looking coloration for a rainbow trout.

Back in the Beginning

A Technique for Fall Stockers

 

Rainbow Trout Weighing Over Five Pounds

 Yesterday, I fished a 16th-ounce black marabou, getting hit a couple of times and once having a fish on for a second, but you don't really know if you're snagging suckers, unless you really get struck. One of the hits yesterday did feel like the jibber-jab of a small trout. Curious. 

When I got skunked last time I fished the river, a couple of times my jig had a sucker scale impaled on the hook. I imagine big carp exist in the stretch, too, but the sizeable fish I hooked that same outing left behind a scale I'm sure had belonged to a sucker.

Since I get longer casts from an eighth-ounce jig, I switched to one of those, lost it to a snag, tied on another, lost that one. Meanwhile, I had had trouble with the old Berkley fluorocarbon I had loaded onto my Cetus, after blood knotting to the Berkley XL underneath. The stuff was doubling out on the cast, and twice I lost a lot of line and had to retie. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if the Berkley Vanish I ordered is really going to live up to the claim the company makes of its castability. 

I tied a 16th-ounce marabou onto that four-pound-test XL line, and judged that the stuff does cast marvelously--the XL does, I'll give you a review of the Berkley Vanish in the next post. Very soft, limp line, which does pose problems when it comes to getting snagged--you can't expect quite as good knot strength, and it won't do as well among abrasions like rocks and wood. You trade one thing off for another, but the Vanish is supposed to be good both ways. This other stuff I tried, while the Vanish is coming to me through Amazon Prime, might have been on the spool for 22 years, because I have spools of line collected in a plastic trash bag going back that long ago. I've kept them protected from sunlight, so they are still good, but fluorocarbon generally was not as good as it is now. 

Anyhow, I waded back out to my favorite spot within the stretch and worked that jig, getting pounded. The trout made itself visible almost immediately, so I felt relieved it was no sucker. Big trout. It really didn't fight very hard, and this is the second five-pound-plus trout I've caught that didn't fight hard. I caught a 24-inch rainbow at Round Valley Reservoir that didn't. Other big ones I've caught have fought hard as hell, though the 6.9-pounder just shy of seven pounds, which I also caught at Round Valley, didn't fight all that hard, either. 

Yesterday's was 23 1/4 inches, 5.3 pounds. A thick-bodied rainbow.

 

6.9

How to Jig for River Trout Can be Complicated

When I parked, the temperature was 65, and I felt confident it would remain high as I fished, possibly even provoke some of those rainbows in the spot to hit, along with the stimulus of the approaching front. I wasn't exactly raring to go. I didn't like the long walk through a large farmer's field, but I covered the distance pretty quickly, getting over-warmed in the process. 

I wanted to try one of my new NRC Creek Bugz, but I decided to leave the eighth-ounce Kalin's marabou jig on the hook, since it worked so well last time. Pretty soon, I hooked something heavy that began heading downriver, and then I lost it, feeling I had just lost a tank of a trout, but once I had reeled the jig in, I saw a scale on the hook, so I figured I had snagged an oversize sucker. 

I lost my jig and tied on an NRC (photographed above). Fishing one of them, I think, is a little more complicated than an eighth-ounce or sixteenth-ounce marabou. I mounted it on a 32nd-ounce jig head, and though I felt it cast pretty far, I couldn't get it close to the far bank as I did with the eighth-ounce jig, and with the heavy wind this afternoon, controlling the retrieve wasn't as easy. 

It's a much slower, plodding retrieve. It seems as if you can keep it near bottom without getting snagged nearly as often as you do with an eighth ounce. I retrieved the eighth-ounce jig fairly fast by comparison, and I was still getting hung up a lot. The water is pretty deep in the area of the long stretch I fished, too. Maybe one of the main advantages of fishing an eighth ounce is getting it across the river.

I hooked and lost a pretty nice trout last time I fished the stretch by having got the jig near the opposite bank and having just begun the retrieve. But today, I got hit once on my side of the mid-river. I had lost the NRC to a snag and tied on another eighth-ounce jig. It was a definite strike with a shaken-up series of pulls, and it came on the eighth-ounce jig and its faster retrieve. 

I've been told by a more experienced river trout fisherman not to fish that way. That an eighth ounce is way too heavy for the rivers during winter, but I keep getting hit and I usually catch trout. I think most of my river trout have hit that size, rather than jigs of a sixteenth ounce. Some advice is good, and I think I have yet to see if my friend's enthusiasm for NRC pays off in more catches for me.

But sometimes advice just doesn't work out. You need to follow up with and stick to your own way, as curious as you may be about someone else's. Fishing does have to do with hard fact, but there's enough leeway to allow for confidence in certain presentations to lead the way forward for any given angler. Cold water trout will hit a jig that has to be retrieved at at least a moderate retrieve.

They're that active in the winter. Think of all the smallmouth bass in our rivers and that they don't show up in winter catches. It's not the marabou they don't like. They're off the feed in general, because they don't hit NRC baits retrieved much slower, either. They do have to feed on occasion, but trout remain a lot more active than bass do. When its very cold out trout get hard to catch, though.

The temperature was falling fast. When I did get back to the car, it was 57. In the meantime, I felt disappointed the warmth didn't stay with me. I had switched to a sixteenth-ounce marabou--all of the marabou besides one a friend gave me are black--and hooked something that began fighting hard. In the water I saw brown and believed I had snagged another sucker, not hooked a brown trout.

It wouldn't have been impossible, but unlikely. As you can see in the photo, the sucker got hooked in the tail. It was fun fighting a fish to the bank. I had forgotten my net. I unhooked the fish and released it back into the river. Suckers are an integral part of the river's ecology, rather than really being any nuisance as carp can seem to be. As if, just maybe, carp disrupt the spawning of bass. Not sure.

I would have stayed longer and have tried harder yet to catch a trout today, but for the second time, my line came doubled up off the spool and knotted up. So much was lost, I wouldn't have been able to cast effectively, so I quit. Sometimes, to catch river stockers, you do need to double down. Next time, I'll try again. Trying to remember to use the jigs my friend Oliver gave me. 

Last Time

 

Ice Unsafe to Walk on Having Melted From Underneath

Gray instead of white.

I rode up to Mount Hope Pond with a bucket of shiners and fatheads, hoping for nice trout, pickerel, and bass. With 280 trout stocked into 18 surface acres of water, it's a possibility. Of course I knew I might find the ice unsafe, but I really expected it wouldn't be just yet. Again, I pulled into the large parking lot as I did once earlier in the ice season, and within seconds the pond came into view. It didn't look good. That gray off-color, rather than white, signaled to me that I probably wasn't staying here long. I quickly decided to first approach the pond with just my splitting bar. That no one else fished it, and Fridays might draw more anglers than other weekdays do, was also a definite sign that things weren't good. 

Of course, I had to check it out. And I stepped out on the ice a couple of feet from the beach, my feet getting moist because my waterproof boots aren't living up to that description, and I need to try to repair or replace them. Then I reached forward and whacked my way through the ice with two thrusts of my splitting bar. I did this repeatedly out of curiosity, but there was no hope. Three inches on top was slush, and maybe three or four inches underneath rotted out. 

I'm getting older and forgetful, it's true. How many times I've walked a plank to get onto a lake over the melt at the edge late in the ice season, I don't recall, but if I had had a plank, I might have walked it, and then tested the ice, say, eight feet from the edge of the beach. Then, I might have found hope existed yet. But while I was at Mount Hope, it didn't occur to me to think of the possibility. 

It's interesting to me how, quite apparently, the ice melts from underneath. I noticed what clearly seemed to be the phenomenon at Lake Aeroflex two days ago, when, by all we could judge, the ice had melted about four inches from underneath, having been a foot thick Thursday the week before. I only hedge from certain judgment because I want some peer review to back up what I've seen. Here, too. With three inches of slush and four inches of striated rot underneath, that's a total of seven inches. Oliver Round was up here a week ago when it was 15 inches thick.

That rot is a curiosity. I always refer to the striations, but most people speak of honeycombing. I recall once being out on Lake Hopatcong with my son when things began to get sketchy. This was almost two decades ago. The surface was soft, there was about four inches of striated ice, and three or four inches of hard ice underneath that rot, so I considered the ice safe and we fished. But if it melts from underneath, as it clearly seems to, why wasn't it striated all the way through? And besides, how do warmer temps permeate cold, hard ice to rot it down towards that surface underneath? 

I've paid attention to many ice conditions over the decades, but I've never noticed until two days ago that ice seems to thin out from underneath. I've seen plenty of that striated rot--which proves much of the whole mass is affected by the melt--but I've never had the opportunity to measure such differences as a foot and eight inches, 15 inches and about seven inches, as these recent outings have afforded me.  

My splitting bar head was welded onto the iron shaft, a cut having accommodated that chisel head.

Mount Hope Pond Revisited

 

Father and Son Who Know How to Ice Fish

Naturally Oliver and I hit the ice confidently after last week. Nothing was happening after an hour or two, but I still felt confident. Despite my persistent feeling for the back of the lake, where there's not such pressure on the fish. We took position where we saw salmon caught last time, and also set a few devices where we caught the bass and lost the pickerel. 

Someone who Oliver and I had seen in the distance down lake came in. As he was about to pass by, I asked how he did.

"I set up over the deep water and got no hits from salmon or trout after four hours. So I moved into the weeds and caught a bunch of pickerel. None of them were good-sized, though."

Soon a father and son arrived. They proved to be some of the most knowledgeable ice fishermen I've spoken to. Oliver spoke to them independently of me, and he nailed it when he told me, "Goes to show what ice fishing a lake repeatedly, results in." 

True. But Oliver didn't mean that in any derogatory sense, and even if they only fish here, they're good. When they set three Jaw Jackers in shallow water right near the bank of three or four feet, possibly a little deeper if three or four feet is just the top of the weeds, I thought they didn't know what they were doing. I had set tip-ups near the bank but not that near--in eight and five feet of water closer to the steep drop-off than the bank. Within 15 minutes, they had a fish I thought at first was a pickerel, then bass...but I swore the fish looked like a trout. When the second fish got caught from the same hole, Oliver swore it was a trout. Soon we talked to them, and, yes, the fish were trout. They had set six other devices, pretty much all in very shallow weeds, and the son jigged.

In the middle of all this, Oliver and I still waiting on our fatheads and shiners, a bald eagle showed up. It took position in a tree. I approached with my 70-200mm zoom on my Niko D850, and before I could get a shot to crop, it flew off. The father told me, "It wants the trout. It'll be back."

A few other ice fishermen left the lake, all of them apparently skunked. I assume so because we watched whenever one of them tended his tip-ups. No fish. And I later learned the father and son had given another the two trout. And we never saw him catch any. 

Oliver had to leave at 5:00 and he left fishless. I stayed on into dusk, leaving the lot perhaps a little after 6:00. In the meantime, the eagle returned twice, and the second time, the son had caught another trout--they had three in total, lost some hits, and lost something big that "might have been a pickerel," according to the father. 

The son tossed the trout away from him onto the ice. The eagle swooped low, extended talons forward, and took the gift.   

 

Cronk's First Ice Since Boyhood