Smallmouth Bass Escape on North Branch Raritan at Stahl Natural Area

Having shiners leftover from fishing the Delaware this past Sunday, I came home after a marvelous, 84 degree day to find three of the nine remaining dead. I decided on the spot that although I'm pressured tonight, I better go have my fun. I didn't make myself do it. I fully wanted to go try the stretch behind the Stahl Natural Area, North Branch Raritan, here in Bedminster.

In little over an hour's time I hardly began to explore what's back there. In the meantime, two more shiners rolled over, leaving me with two dead, four alive, and I knew well enough to keep the dead. I quickly caught a small bass, eight inches, in the first stretch I encountered, a fairly fast, fairly shallow run. The next shiner I prepared wriggled off the hook into the water before I could cast once. I've always been a fool like that--knowing that the shiner was not on the hook as well as it could be, yet not immediately acting to make correction. Curiosity gets the best of me. I actually wondered if the shiner would shake free, and instead of making sure it didn't, allowed it to happen.

That left me with two alive, two dead. So I put on a dead, not very stiff, shiner. The retrieve seemed so wacky in the clear water, water so cool (60's) and clean I was in love with it, really, as I waded above my knees, the fist-sized, rounded stones under my feet so clean with golden variations of brown coloration they seem to have been--to my memory of it now--like eggs pregnant with aeons of time, as if the millions of years of their existence were about to open with life. Quite an adventure just fell open for me after a day of work, the way music--great music--arises transcendentally, unexpectedly, from silence. A bass swirled upon that dead shiner, then dropped it. I never got it to hit again, and saved the live shiners for a better stretch.

Not far downstream I found a faster, shallower run that still looked like a possibility, and missed another bass on the first cast. Again, nothing more. I climbed the bank and followed a trail to the stretch I could see on down. This stretch, it turned out, is too lengthy for me to have even seen the end of it. Bass water. No doubt. But that live shiner provoked no interest anywhere for what time had passed over into mild frustration.

It's happened before, the habitat undeniably good. I figured the bass here were spread out, although I might come upon one. I had been fishing from up on the bank, and found water shallow enough to climb down and wade. I casted clear up against the opposite bank near a tree with roots exposed--possibly undercut. Immediately a bass took the shiner. When I set the hook, I pulled the hook and shiner out of its maw, then reeled very quickly to cast back. But the bass rushed after for at least ten yards, engulfed that shiner, and turned. I set the hook, felt the weight a second. The fish was gone.

I baited with my last shiner, cast it to the same spot, and took another immediate hit, missed it. Once again, the bass rushed--this time I caught a nine and a half inch smallmouth, with minnow still intact on the hook. Again, a hit, a miss, a rush--a 10 inch bass, shiner still usuable, but I knew I could not keep it on the hook any longer possibly, and when I casted, it flew off. The head was all but torn off, and the flesh I put the hook through soft.

So why not? I had no #9, or smaller, Rapala with me. Would my chrome Baby Torpedo topwater work? I doubted it almost completely. I tried awhile, but it just wasn't as subtle as a shiner, and in about 63 degree water the bass--despite their lightning swift rushes after top speed retrieved bait, and swirls at the surface--would not care to careen into a surface plug.

On a summer evening things might have been different.  

Delaware River Fishing at Poxono Island, and Kittatiny Ridge

Wasn't as expected--we expected the cold and fog, but not high water. The Delaware flowed at least three feet above normal, although water was fairly clear. So we began fishing by struggling against the uncertainty of a possibly ruined outing. I just got myself into the rhythms of working a large topwater plug--Dying Flutter--while my son Matt seemed to do pretty well with a large Pop-R. We come here to try for muskies, since the first time we came, I spotted one over 15 pounds. What reassured us is that just like four years ago when we made the river at dawn, huge carp leapt several or more per minute in this acreage around Poxono Island, and bass broke water on occasion going after shad fry. The only difference was that four years ago shad fry were visible at the surface everywhere. 

I walked up along the bank avoiding thick mud, casting along the bank nearly hiking to the boat launch. I did manage to entice a pickerel to hit that big topwater, the pickerel no larger than the 11 incher I caught at the Delaware and Raritan Canal the other day. Then we marched back to our stuff, and began casting smaller topwaters on lighter rods for bass. I tried hard for at least a half hour, maybe 45 minutes. I could not get as far downstream as I wanted to because of the high water. This range of shoreline where current cuts close, yet leaves a drop-off edge beyond which is still water, seemed as dead as mid-winter, when it has never failed to produce bass in the past. Finally I gave in to using a shiner. Matt had already lost a bass on a nightcrawler, and had begun complaining of cold hands and feet. So I had precious minutes to fish--two shiners it turned out to be. The smallmouth photographed is an average Delaware bass of close to 12 inches.

As expected, as soon as we left the river course, the sky revealed a cloudless, blue sunshine. I don't understand how so much steam accumulates above the river overnight, but on cold September mornings--it even happens in August sometimes to lesser degree--the sky above is such a thick cloud cover you would expect it to pour. It's amazing to think about. The mountains at the Gap were all but shrouded completely.

We drove to Mohican Outdoor Center and kept Matt's snake tongs hidden in the car. We were not there to make a spectacle of ourselves. If we encountered a snake, we would photograph it best we could. At 12 years old, Matt may be on the way to the career in herpetology he anticipates, although of course everyone else concerned cannot be quite as certain as he is. I hope he does it--so long as the world travels he wishes to enjoy encompass a great deal else as well, and knowing Matt, they will.

We did see yet another walking stick, which reminds me: "Words dissemble, words be quick, words resemble walking sticks./Plant them, they will grow, watch them waver so." James Douglas Morrison (Jim Morrison).

Catfish Pond is an innappropriate name for this beautiful, very clear, spring fed glacial lake of about 25 acres. I would doubt catfish exist in it. But bass do, and I'm sure pickerel. We didn't fish today. Some other time. But we walked all about the property. I even took a photograph from the interior of the Interpretive Center. To have an unstaffed place with books on a shelf for anyone (so long as signed in at the Vistior Center) to come in and peruse is wonderful in our current American society regarded as a security state, with historically high levels of distrust, perhaps. I need to get "Timberline!" A Nature Guide! Why this sort of information instead of market stats draws my interest like a sponge involves the innocence of its context as opposed to the guilt of the other. I am not against the free market, but we do not live in a true free market society.  

Lost Lunkers

Besides Hedden Park Lake on Tuesday, I did fish the Delaware and Raritan Canal for 45 minutes on Wednesday. I had hoped to fish it again on Friday. Wednesday the water remained stained, not so muddy as to preclude the use of anything but spinners, but off-color enough that I used a spinnerbait. Having well remembered the last I fished here and lost a good bass by casting a Senko into shadows on the opposite side, I tried to make perfect casts (some made the mark) right up against the far bank, then retrieve through shadow. 

Only once did this work. That small pickerel I caught and photographed got the hook. But it was certainly motivation enough to very much want to try again and perhaps catch a good fish.

Last night I wrote at fairly long length in one of my private, handwritten journals, reflecting a lot on fishing. I thought of a big walleye I lost on Lake Hopatcong two years ago in October, and realized that this is the most meaningful walleye I've hooked. Moreover, I think the most meaningful experience I've had encountering walleyes was a big one that took a big live chub I saved until last for my younger brother on the Delaware River in 1978 (back when I owned a boat and outboard, and even paid for it all at age 17). That fish was lost, too, and very big, having hit a chubb about six or seven-inches long I had collected myself with a bunch of other baitfish. That bass I lost at the canal a month or two ago means more than the pickerel I caught the other day. So many examples could be cited.

It always hurts. No double standard exists here. It's never that you want to lose a fish because that will mean more to you. So this is one of the mysteries of memory, motivation, and value. But you would know, of course, that if you had any intention at all of losing a fish to make it more memorable, you would guarantee that the memory be spoiled. Fishing done properly involves a total attempt at catch. It's just that inevitably losses altogether against our intentions happen. When it happens we feel the loss. I felt the loss of that walleye two years ago at times intensely for about six months. But I had no complaint. It was a curiously pleasurable pain. And it made me want to go walleye fishing October 2010 more than ever.

I wanted to know how big the walleye was. I will never know, and this mystery was produced by the situation of loss--of something. I can't even be certain it was a walleye. Had I caught the fish, the memory would be bright, conscious, and certain. Not unhappy, happy in fact. But less of a deep pleasure. 

I think it's a good argument for doing what really challenges with all your intention to succeed. If it's challenging you will experience some failure. It seem that the most happy people don't try very hard in life, and may seem they know that's their secret. But it could be that those who are happy often enough, so that they aren't actually lost to a morass, yet nevertheless take quite a few losses, lead more meaningful and ultimately pleasurable lives. Their happiness is deeper.  

Largemouth Bass Techniques Taking a Fall Turn

I got almost an hour of bass fishing in at Hedden Park Lake in Dover around lunch time. Although the air temperature had risen into the low 80's, the breeze felt so devoid of humidity it felt like fall. The water had cleared significantly since last I came here in June. The pond looked more like an impoundment fed by the native brook trout stream, Jackson Creek. Surprised to find submerged weed beds (four or five feet at the deepest), I fished these first with a Chompers weightless worm, and then a five-inch Senko. I fished the cove pictured, and down along that shoreline on the right. Then I went to the tip of the penninsula to the left.

I hadn't seen a bass. Not even a sunfish. When I first started casting into clear, vacant water, I had the impression of fishing late in the fall when fish activity has slowed way down. When I came here in June, I approached that cove to see dozens of bass cruising near the surface over fairly stained water. Today I felt afraid I would see no fish at all. But reeling my Senko in very fast, a nine-inch largemouth charged it from the weedbed reaching some yards out from the end of this penninsula I mention. I pitched it back out as the bass turned, and it took, but I missed the hit, not allowing the take so long that I might gut hook the fish.

I had already thought of trying a surface lure. Besides my worms, that's all I had with me besides some U-Head jigs. I rued the absence of a #9 Rapala floater especially now that speed had stimulated a bass. During the fall I typically catch bass on jerkbaits and spinnerbaits, rather than plastics. I simply forgot to regard the change of season and prepare before I came here. To retrieve a Rapala with hard, jerking motions of the rod tip seemed exactly what the situation called for. So I put on my favorite chrome Baby Torpedo and tried a quick retrieve through slight breeze chop. On the second cast I enacted the same retrieve, stopped (I almost always break topwater retrieves irregularly), twitched enough to really turn the propeller, and took a hit right out in all that sunlight over weeds, but missed that too. More casts yielded nothing.

Turns out I had the fire-tail four-inch twister worms I hoped I had in my bag. I broke one down to slightly under three inches and loaded it onto a quarter-ounce U-Head jig. A fast, jigging retrieve did bring fast follows from two small bass, but the closest I got to a hit was one of them taking in only the fire-tail. With little time left, I put the Torpedo back on and tried the calm in the cove. I tried a retrieve so slow that the propeller spun without causing commotion. A tiny bass hit. But I drew no more attention. 

I did pay attention, because in calm water this subtlety of that spinning propeller is something worth remembering. When I observe anglers fishing topwaters, I typically see very lazy, unconscious fishing in progress. Topwaters allow all sorts of opportunities for technique, but technique should never be something mechanical and merely repetitive. You have to make an inanimate object seem like something alive. You need to make it an extension of your own life, a natural life, not a dull servility.  

When Largemouth Bass Lurked in Currituck Sound, Collington Bay, and Southern Shores' Canals

I guess I had read Bassmaster magazine for at least a year before I learned about largemouths--super abundant--in Currituck Sound, North Carolina. The Outer Banks were my family's special vacation place; we had been coming since 1969. I fished from Kittyhawk Pier (now gone after a storm), eight years old, catching 22 white perch on the rare occasion of masses of them schooling in the ocean. They are anadromadous as are related striped bass. I fished the surf, caught a skate and lost a large pompano that took a sand flea. By the time I learned about the bass in freshwater Currituck, I was much improved at fishing, skilled at catching bass in New Jersey and amazed they existed in Currituck. I had expected to do nothing but serious saltwater angling the summer of 1976.

Instead, I hiked from our rental house near the beach outback towards the sound. I discovered bass in the canals behind properties on the sound side. They swirled for baitfish trapped at the end of one of the canals. Big boils erupted, impressing my memory forever. Two or three years later I caught a 39 inch gar--think it was a shortnose--on a #9 floating Rapala. One of my bass weighed about three and a half pounds. I also waded in the very shallow sound, catching a few bass on spinnerbaits. I don't remember how I found out, but Collington Bay behind Kill Devil Hills harbored loads of largemouths, and we caught them as large as three and a half pounds mostly on Ringworms, a 70's idea of trapping air to produce bubbles by plastic ring chambers around the worm's plastic body. We also caught crabs on those Ringworms; this far south of Currituck the water is brackish.

In 1978--I was 17--me and two friends (both of them approached 16) drove to the Outer Banks in my Ford Fairlane station wagon, which I had bought saving money from writing fishing articles for magazines and the Trenton Times, also mowing lawns. I was a member of B.A.S.S. chapter Mercer County Bass, and borrowed a 7.5 horsepower outboard from another member to use on my 12 foot cartop aluminum. At the time I owned an electric outboard. We fished Collington. My friend Jason Roberts lost a bass of at least four pounds. Later someone we met at the campground and I traveled north of Kitty Hawk way up highway 158 to launch into Currituck. We rode all the way across and viewed Corolla Lighthouse up close. We could have landed and wandered around a place that then was completely isolated except for an unimproved, one lane sand spit. We caught bass on spinnerbaits around duck blinds. Everywhere milfoil supported the ecology.

I guess it was 1984 when I learned somehow the milfoil had died and the bass vanished with it. A girlfriend and I spent 10 days camping down the Banks from north of Kitty Hawk to Ocracoke. We took a motel room in Ocracoke. I felt a vast loss when we camped at Collington, the water muddy and no bass anywhere. I don't know how many millions of bass existed in this ecosystem, but 50 bass a day catches were common and the acreage out there is enormous. Currituck reminds me of Lake Musconetong, another great fishery all but destroyed. Both of these waters are very shallow and once hosted enormous amounts of aquatic vegetation; anywhere you went was bass water, habitat everywhere.

Back on the Banks this past summer I wondered if any bass still exist at all, or if perhaps milfoil has returned. I haven't searched the web. (If anyone knows, please share.) In 1996 I did try Collington Bay. The water was heavily stained, no milfoil and no bass. It looked sick. And it seemed unnecessary for it to be sick, although I haven't learned of the cause of this great ecology's demise.

Acadia Memories: Fishing for Bass & Trout but that's not All

 

Since I won't be fishing this weekend with water still high, too little desire to try Round Valley Reservoir, and no ambition to attempt fishing anywhere else, I'll write about the fishing we did in and near Acadia, Maine, in 2008. We rented a cottage for a week about three miles out of Bar Harbor on a property called Eden Village. Exterior was quaint, interior had a woodsy feel with wood paneled walls and wood flooring. To the left of the front door going in, a one or two-acre pond turned out to be absolutely loaded with largemouth bass.

Appropriately allowed to use only barbless hooks and return all we caught, the biggest bass had names as the owners' pets. The very largest was a 20-inch five-pounder. I think its name was Bill; we never caught it. But my son, Matt, caught Gill, a 17-incher with a gill wound. I caught one 16 inches, my son some more that size and over 100 total that week. He could never get enough. I caught little over a dozen, leaving the rest to my son.

I felt much more interested in Long Pond, although I had hoped to find some stripers and pollock in the ocean and bay. I never found so much as a tackle shop. I couldn't believe the lack of a recreational fishing market up. I asked at a gun shop about live bait, told that no one cared to pinch pennies from that racket. I cast plugs from rocky shores--nothing. And we tried under a bridge at Frenchman's Bay with cut bait that I arranged somehow--definitely not from bass in that pond at Eden Village!--for whatever might hit. Nothing. 

Long Pond's great for smallmouth bass. A glacial lake of over 2000 acres, I suppose, landlocked salmon and trout drew the sole attraction years ago. Smallmouth bass have been making it into lakes and ponds almost everywhere on Mt. Desert Island, although introducing them is strictly forbidden for good reason, since it's a good idea to keep the trout populations pure and without competition. I was amazed at how thin the sediment deposits on rocks visible through very clear water which has filled these glacial basins for many centuries.

Mount Desert Island is one of the more authentic places I've been. Even Bar Harbor, as much as it is a catering operation, has a clean, happy feeling to it, along with very high quality restaurants, galleries, whale watching operations and of course the sandbar of Bar Harbor itself, a natural phenomena not to be missed, which at low tide allows you to cross to what is otherwise an island. All sorts of marine creatures become exposed including sea cucumbers, very large starfish (12 inches across or more) and all the mussels you can fit in your pockets to take back to your place and steam (but I don't know if this is legal!). The only thing that seems missing from the local brine is fish, but I'm sure it was just first timer's inexperience. 

I also caught a pickerel in Long Pond, although uncommon as is aquatic vegetation, which pickerel need. Mostly I used Senko-type plastics and the 17-inch pickerel jolted one of these by the Strike King brand. Before I could even name what hit it, I set the hook knowing, no less--a pickerel--and needing to set hook fast to avoid a cut off.

Smallmouths crashed into these far casting, fast sinking worms with cold fierceness. Our largest weighed over three pounds, all of our fishing done in a canoe. My graph recorder helped, and Matt had loads of fun locating smallmouths in deeper water with it, then lowering nightcrawlers directly down; so much fun that I did some of this myself. We would launch at the north end and paddle down lake a couple of miles or more and back. Twice we did this: me, my son, and my wife Patricia.

Doing plenty of internet research, I became aware of Green Lake perhaps 40 miles west of MDI, this was the one lake we could count on for accessing lake trout, which we did sort of access. Matt got a one-ounce Kastmaster down among them at 63 feet; we had loads of markings on the graph recorder, although not one hit. It felt very exciting being this close to lake trout in a canoe--20-pounders common. We back paddled against the breeze so that Matt's presentations dropped effectively enough in among those fish.

The smallmouths we caught on Green Lake added thrills along steep shorelines and giant boulders, but none of them were so much fun as trying for the lakers. 

Arrival of Fall Fishing

Busy with other things, didn't get out yesterday or today, although conditions certainly were good for such enclosed waters as Round Valley Reservoir or Mount Hope Pond for bass. Never got out of the 60's today or yesterday, so it's obvious by comparison to the two previous months that the seasons have turned. Now watch it hit 90 next week--no, I really doubt it will.

Past two biweekly columns I wrote for Recorder Newspapers I estimated fishing situations by guessing that temperatures would be warmer than they have been. No doubt streams have fallen below the 68-degree level critical for trout fishing. I wrote: "...at least in the mornings," in the article that should be published tomorrow. Seems that once streams clear after all this rain you can catch and release trout with no worry whatsoever of their having a lethal lactic acid reaction. I think I'll fly fish the Claremont Saturday.

Anyhow, a good friend finds fall the most welcome season, and to have heard his enthusiam for it, I feel much the same now. In August salmon fishing seems a world away. But sure enough, once Labor Day passed, it did get much cooler all of a sudden. Now Pulaski just seems weeks away. Besides this adventure, I have a date set for walleye fishing on Hopatcong October first--vertical jigging. I couldn't believe it when my friend told me they begin jigging in September.

"But the lake's not turned over until mid-October," I said.

"Ah," he dismissed the relevance.

It will be interesting. Niether of us has an oxygen meter, so I may buy a dozen test shiners.