Third and Last Day for Us on Salmon River this Year

Passing through the kitchen on our way out the front door of the Steelhead Lodge this morning at 5:50 a.m., my son, Matt, and I had the good fortune of running into James Kirtland, captain of the Row Jimmy drift boat on the Salmon River. He insisted that we follow him and his client to Whitakers Sporting Goods, where he picked out three packs of beads, and instructed me to select yellow for low light, tan after the sun came up, as well as the pink-purple, "They don't see a lot in this color."

James put us on fish upstream of the 2A bridge. This passage of moving water is almost exactly like that we fished with Eric Geary, Row Jimmy just ahead of us, on Friday, catching about 10 steelhead between three boats. I know steelhead were there this morning because I had two on, saw several more leap, and witnessed one caught. It's generally understood among Salmon River fishermen that to have a fish on doesn't count for nothing. After all, "Fish on!!" is the common battle cry.

We fished about three hours. Just as Matt and I began to head upriver, James had asked to see my float set-up. It would have passed--five-pound test Drennen leader and all--if my split shots had been lead, not tin. "They're shiny," James said. He also expressed particular concern about the relative lightness of weight. I confess that yesterday I felt concerned myself. But I dropped the rig in front of me a number of times in the current to see how it behaved, and it seemed OK. Nonetheless, I took the shiny, expensive tin off, and put dull, heavy lead in place of it. Again I tested the rig several times and it rode about right down at bottom level, with the bead riding out ahead of the weighted line above the 15-inch or so leader attached to a micro-swivel.

It was a great trip. Now back in New Jersey, we've had a steelhead dinner and much of the putting away of gear is done. I had felt that if we caught a steelhead apiece on Friday, I'd be happy. I sort of felt maybe I'd catch two; this seemed the expected, but I also doubted this. And after all, we had great weather the other day on Friday to make this better than expected catch of five between my son and I--30's, intermittant snow, sleet, and cloud variations, strong breezes. That's proper weather on a steelhead river. The bluebird Saturday and easy sunrise this morning made the fish timid.

I think it's never luck. It only seems luck. It's being. Each of us is individual and hits it differently--there's really no shared standard between us all to judge luck at bottom, despite all of the objectivity of conditions and skills which generally we interpret to make expectations and confirm them after an outing is done. And yet, the world's being is different in relation to each of us, and the quality of individual involvement, regardless of skill, can have a lot to do with success or lack of it.

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Steelhead Success on Salmon River

This steelhead's my 9-pound, 3-ounce wonder.

What a trout! My son, Matt's first steelhead at 5 pounds, 7 ounces, 25 3/8th inches. This fish, fought on five-pound test, headed straight down the Salmon River at top speed, and had gained more than a hundred yards, we estimated, before we saw it break water and then stop. I was surprised how soon Matt got it boatside by pumping the rod and reeling in the tension relief. Without the 10-foot noodle rods to absorb shock and give flex power, line of low breaking strength would have little, if any, chance on these fish.

Once I had the knack, Eric Geary, our SWAT (Salmon, Walleyes, and Trout) Fishing guide, taught me--keeping that line tight against the float as it drifted, and setting the hook quick--I had my first steelhead of the trip, 5 pounds, 1 ounce. Matt was into another, much larger, soon after my struggle had weakened my right arm considerably; I'm not making that up. We knew it was big because we saw it twist at the surface with the sort of deliberateness you see giant snakes exercise on their prey.

He played it for several minutes, the hook pulled, and he reported that he never saw the float disappear with this fish. It simply struck like a lion runs over its kill with accelerating power. Those may seem dramatic words for an eight or nine-pound trout taking a 10-mm bead with a small hook two inches below it, but they typically take these simple lures, which resemble the salmon eggs they feed on, take them firmly. If they eject the offering just as quick, having chomped upon hard plastic, they also sometimes swallow from the advantage of a powerful rush.

All three of my hook-ups using a bead came quicker than conscious intention. When I hooked my 9 pound, 3 ounce trout, 30 3/8th-inches, I reacted as soon as the float went down, without that lag of consciously judging it had. Zen. You have to be instantaneous unless the trout just ploughs into the hook. Most times you see the float go down, it's too late. I missed at least 20 hits. Besides two I caught, and another about 17 inches quickly released, I caught one of about five-and-a-half pounds on a jointed Rapala, also quickly put back. We're allowed one fish per man.

I'm pretty sure I fought my big one a full 15 minutes or more on that five-pound test. The fight felt greater than largest king salmon last year of 20 pounds, 12 ounces on 12-pound test. The steelhead took a couple of strong runs, but never high tailed it downriver as Matt's smaller trout did. It held it's own in mid river, very difficult to pump in and finally have netted. Eric, who has done this for 30 years, made, I think, five netting attempts before we finally had the fish. I breathed relief. Every time that fish got away from the net, I knew it added to the stakes and drama. I was grateful for the catch.

Once our photo taking was over and things settled down, Eric told me the hook attached to that fish "by the skin of the teeth."

"If you had relaxed the tension on that fish, it would have been gone."

Seaside Park K Street Striper Pursuit and Some Mysteries at Ocean's Edge

Cold front conditions persisted today, although temperatures rose into the 50's. I arrived at Seaside Park K Street at 2:30 to find the surf rough with waves breaking far out, beyond casting reach, as high tide approached. It didn't feel right at all. Within minutes I got the scoop from an elder angler who seemed to have got it from everyone else a half mile down the beach--no fish at all. I fished until 5:19 after sunset, had no hits, nor did anyone else in sight.

Fished an Ava 17 with teaser fairly persistently, but not as hard as I would have if I suspected fish would move in. I set up my bait rod--an 11 foot heavy duty outfit--right at the edge of the bar and the inside sluice. Most of my casting the fish finder rig and five ounce pyramid sinker was short and directly to that deep sluice into which the beach banks sharply. I couldn't cast over the furthest breakers with either bait or the Ava. Had I got five yards further into the surf wading, I still wouldn't have the reach to whip weight over them, and I didn't try--especially avoided where the beach slopes sharply--since my right knee is still very bad and threatened to give out with unstable sand underfoot and jarring heaves of surf wash.

The most fun was snapping about 50 photos. But the contemplative moods I visited along the way for those three hours satisfied the most. I wish I had the time to upload my memories of them and share them with you. I do recall recognizing at one point that even when grand ranges of ideation are present in mind, the reality is subtle, and it's difficult to retain a grasp of what had been thought. This is because such thinking is primarily intuitive and almost subliminal--you're always aware of a great deal that does not quite cross the threshold into consciousness. And that's the beauty of it, not that you are a computer that doesn't function well enough, but that you can become aware in ways a computer can never even approximate--it can only store and organize information--and best of all the mysteries seem to have a life of their own and do not throw themselves upon you. But they are related to you. They will return some other time, and you may become more clear about something in your life than ever before.

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Nice Crappie, Hybrid Stripers: Lake Hopatcong Cold Front

Walleye weather, no, not with no clouds at all above, from shortly after 9:00 until 4:15. We struggled under as much angling adversity as a cold front ever gives, except that temperatures weren't terribly cold--36 when we began and about 50 for the high. As we raced out of Woodport on Lake Hopatcong, I knew the 45 degree water temperature was due to the shallows--six, eight, about 10 feet at most--of the entire Woodport acreage. I was curious how much warmer the water in the deep points region remained, and relieved to find it at 51. Perhaps a greater relief came in the form of relative calm compared to the weather forecast. We had brisk breezes for short periods of time, but even longer periods of complete calm. So motionless the boat would remain that instead of jigging in place, I casted the Rapala ice jig, and Gotch jigger, to work it back along the bottom through intervals.

My friend Joe Landolfi caught the first fish after two hours or so, a good sized crappie from the Great Cove side of Chestnut Point, 34 feet deep on the bottom, Gotcha jigger. We raced here and there before I caught a yellow perch by one of those casting maneuvers, Rapala ice jig, three inch. No big deal with that, but a dash of interest. I can't remember for certain, but believe Joe's hybrid came off Elba Point. Think I remember noting that I finally witnessed a fish here, having never before, but having tried a number of times. Gotcha jigger, 40 feet deep. I jigged up another crappie on same at Pickerel Point, 38 feet deep, an 11 incher. Both of the crappies came to the surface with their eyes bulging out as if they had the bends, but are these depths sufficient for that? We've never noticed walleyes or hybrids with the same condition. Finally I hooked my hybrid in 40 feet of water at Sharps Rock, Gotcha. These weren't the big beauties which frequently enough make dreams real on Hopatcong. Both were about an ounce or two over two pounds, and a half to an inch over the legal size limit of 16 inches.

A great, long day. It had seemed so tough at first that I feared we'd be skunked. No walleyes seemed to stir, although we'll never know what the few hits we missed were. 40 feet down is dark and remote from open skies. But I always believe barometric pressure has to do with it somehow. Perhaps I am superstitious about this; I have no specific evidence for the belief, but I do know that nature is much more subtle than what we see and what we can reason and compare on such a gross level as the darkness of those depths and the clarity of the sky. I had said to Joe within the first two hours that my bet was we'd catch no walleyes--but that we might catch hybrids.

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Miles Davis and the Return to Fishing

A frequent flyer on the right side of my brain, this half, owing to a right stuff of chemistry, behaves like a powerhouse. I've never believed it's abnormal, but different. Our culture is more suited to accommodate brain functions that serve ordinary means, rather than the wonder of why we ultimately do anything. A true culture of the arts and philosophy--not excluding angling, the outdoors, and business--allows for discipline without any crisis or conflict between how-to and the happiness of realization.

The right and the left sides of the brain can sort of reverse politics in a way that's confused, since the whole brain is really the actual fact. The left side is preferred today for its commonsense. But the right side represents or symbolizes the true home of productivity (including job creation). It's been thought to generates original ideas, passion, and love, although further research suggests the comparison between the two halves is not as divided as previously thought.. The right side was also thought to be responsible for authentic sexual response, intuition, and appreciation of beauty and value. It goes without saying that "the right side of the brain" tends to be marginalized as much as we remain trapped in cynical and uncaring attitudes, or caring, rather about getting things done in an unhappy way that would question why, desperately obsessed rather than experiencing happiness and joy. Surely a drive to get at the cause of our discontent--which is what the obsession really amounts to, if the notion of achieving understanding is repressed--could end with finding answers. 

On November 17th, 2004, I disembarked with my son, Matt, then five, for the Delaware River between Barryville, New York, and Narrowsburg, New York, Narrowsburg is about 110 miles from home. I remember the morning was partly sunny, fairly mild, maybe 50 degrees--the snow in the bottom photo is actually from March 2005 across the river from Barryville. After driving several miles up route 206, I put my Miles Davis, Doo Bop, c.d. on. The music never stopped until we arrived at the bait shop in Eldred, New York. I was on one of the most exquisite journeys I had entered into for years.

Matt felt perfectly happy. Although we spoke very little, he beamed with awareness every time I looked back upon him in the rear seat. (We hope this strange rite of distance from our young children--for their safety of course--hasn't affected them adversely.) It was as if he were cradled in my euphoria generated outward, connecting with him and my total environment.

I remember how the road fit in my hand. No longer bang, rattle, boom down the highway, but a seam of energy. Not coarse energy, like coal burning, but cosmic infusion, love itself. I hear nuance in music anytime, but it can strike hard and be in dissonant relation with other variations in the instrumentation. On that day the music's source gained transcendent resonance, with no loss of my awareness being anchored in the road. Matt's favorite piece on the c.d. is "The Doo-Bop Song." And if the most poignant passage of the entire collection is wondrously paradoxical when Andy Griffith's simple whistle (recalling fishing) rises over the drive and rage of the Davis band. Davis's subtle trumpeting over rages of instrumentation is reminiscent of Griffith's whistle.

And the deep bass drumming seemed to pound years of fishing left behind back into me. This trip--we caught a number of good sized smallmouth bass, a largemouth, and a pickerel--as exquisitely mystical as it was, seems most importantly to be the turning point in my life back to fishing as a serious recreational pursuit. 

During my teens I fished an average of about 285 days a year--I keep a log which records every day I fish since the start of 1975. At 18, I abandoned taking fishing seriously and fished only on occasion, maybe 30 days a year. I had undergone a conversion to interest in literature, philosophy, and psychology, studied all these subjects in college, but quit before I would have graduated to study and write while maintaining a shellfishing business. It didn't demand much time. Essentially it provided outdoor recreation. And it paid pretty well.

I never lost the outdoors. But it's good to be back at fishing. I'll never recapture just what I had in my teens, but that's not exactly the point. In a way it is the same American mainstream now as in 1978, which I departed from to do my writing and self-employment--very different from the high school to college to corporate job track. But now I too am a corporate employee, another phase I hope to grow out of into full time writing.

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Catch Marine Fish near the Gulf Stream: Outer Banks North Carolina Memories

The Outer Banks, North Carolina, is protected by both wise policy, and perhaps in an ironic way, nature. Hurricanes threaten all built on these islands and penninsula as if to make sure we never fully abuse their natural presence. Many dozens of miles of protected National Seashore allow for solitude even in mid-day summer sun. The Gulf Stream courses near, so mild weather visits during winter.

Fishing can be fantastic. I was eight in 1969 when my father took me to Kitty Hawk Pier, now removed after fatal hurricane damage some years ago. I caught 22 white perch, anadromadous fish rarely present in the Atlantic, but on this day enduring in droves. I had begun fishing that year, first in New Jersey's Delaware and Raritan Canal. I have forever after loved fishing North Carolina piers.

My son, Matt, and I have yet to try the end of Avalon Pier for king mackerel, but we may in the near future. The plan is to buy stern tackle for amberjacks beyond the reef of the Florida Keys, possibly next summer. Add very large groupers to the mix, possibly. I learned how to tie rigs with piano wire-like leaders in the summer of 2007. But we went out with surf rods! Whatever hit my ballyhoo--surely an amberjack--melted my 11 foot surf rod into a noodle. The fish absolutely slammed the bait drifted 25 feet down or so over 80 feet of water, dove into bottom coral, and ripped the line to shreds, all in a matter of seconds. 

Once we're done in Florida, we'll have most of what we need for the end of Avalon Pier. Then it's the matter of competing for space with the locals. I'm honestly not sure how this will work out if we do try.

So far, I've most enjoyed working a jigger, a Gotcha plug-jig, same used on New Jersey's Lake Hopatcong vertical jigging walleyes. I've caught weakfish and blues, but from the age of 17 have never brought a Spanish mackerel over the rail, the principal target of this approach. Many have slashed at my jiggers, but none have stayed on! It just raises the ante on my expectations every year we visit the Banks. 

We've got them trolling Clark spoons, which is plenty fun itself. The world record came from Ocracoke Inlet, 13 pounds, but most are closer to one and two pounds, some three. I've never heard of any recent over five. Cero mackerel are sometimes present in the Inlet, and these do average closer to five pounds. All of the Banks inlets, even the Oregon Inlet, are wild and free compared to ours in New Jersey. Fishing in Jersey is good and sometimes great. But in North Carolina you can virtually have an entire inlet to yourself. Likely you will see a few boats, but not much more.

I am myself a mix of straightforward, honest, factual conventionality, and also remote, strange, symbolic, visionary idiosyncracy, but the "idiosyncratic," at least in my case, is much more objective and open to being shared, than would be popularly supposed. It's sort of like that first photograph up top--you see it too. Perhaps you wouldn't have shot it, seen it to shoot. But now that it's produced, there you go. For me the Outer Banks somehow suits this paradox where I am in some ways better than anywhere else I've been.

Douglaston Salmon Run Full of Fish: Lots of Persistent Success

Never thought I would see dragonfiles while fishing salmon near Pulaski, but today's temperature rose above 80 I'm sure. We fished the Douglaston Salmon Run from just after 6:30 a.m. to almost noon, and then from about 3:00 until 6:00. My brother Rick wanted to catch a steelhead more than a salmon--his first time here--and did just that, catching a six-pounder in no time. Dennis is here his first time, and until this morning had never hung a trout over four or five pounds--his pre-dawn eight-pound brown set the bar a lot higher. In the DSR all trout must be released, and that's fine with us. I saw a steelhead in the 12-pound class caught. My son hooked one about eight pounds--strikingly silver as it lept. We saw a number of others hooked, and heard of anglers who had caught as many as five. Matt and I return to the Steelhead Lodge in November to take a guided drift boat down, so I'm hoping the presence of so many steelheads is a good sign.

My nephew Kyle had three coho's, one of them very good-size at about 10 pounds, my son a 16-pound, one-ounce king. Dennis and Rick both caught a number of kings and cohos. Fish are everywhere. The run is late for the obvious reason of heat, but fish become abundantly present throughout the length of the river from what I hear.

I had a tough day, catching a very small steelhead, and losing upwards of 20 salmon. Everyone loses much more than they catch, but I was jinxed today.

People did very well with fly rods. According to my brother Rick, they hit anything--some used Wooly Buggers, others stonefly nymphs. Sometimes they don't hit--the line catches between open jaws and the hook catches on the outside of the mouth. But even Rick concedes that sometimes they hit. For example, he found a salmon in eight inches of water yellowed near the belly, apparently from digging a redd. This salmon went out of its way to attack Rick's egg sack. 

I spoke to people who caught 35 salmon, having fished all day and not left for lunch and a power nap as we did, and hoping to get some salmon on a smoker. Next time we'll fish all day, bring lunch and water. But that's irrelevant to the fact that we have a lot of knack to pick up on yet. It's the third year for Matt & I. We've caught some fish, but we're still amazed as yet at how well veterans do. If I get a king or two tomorrow, I think I'll be very pleased. In the future I'd like to catch a lot more. Possibly I'll purchase appropriate fly rods for myself and my son, the same that we could use in the surf or on boat at the shore.

Expect another post on the salmon run possibly Tuesday night. We'll be out tomorrow morning beforre heading back to Jersey.

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