Catch Smallmouth Bass Now and Later: Delaware River Shad Fry Forage Soon to Descend

Delaware River Shad Fry Forage Soon to Descend

Catch Smallmouth Bass Now and Later

          Thanks to Interstate 78, the Delaware River in Warren County is little more than a half hour away from the Bedminster area. My son, Matt, and I have done well for smallmouths from the bank and wading within city limits of Phillipsburg, and The Fisherman magazine has on occasion reported walleyes, muskies, channel catfish, and late at night—striped bass over 20 pounds. If you want to get away to quieter stretches, River Road from Carpentersville south to the Hunterdon County line at Riegelsville and the mouth of the Musconetcong River has many access points along its length.

          Smallmouth bass are the Delaware’s main attraction from Callicoon, NY, to the tidal zone in Trenton. My family enjoyed our annual float trip from Sparrowbush, NY, to Port Jervis, NY, last year, and despite off-color water we caught plenty of bass on Rat-L-Trap plugs. Tomorrow we may enjoy better water. These rattling lures prove effective wherever fish lurk in the river if water is stained, and are great for walleyes as well. I managed to get a typical walleye—about 18 inches—alongside our raft last year, about to net it when hooks of the chrome Rat-L-Trap threw. The trick is to retrieve the plug near the bottom without snagging.  Rat-L-Traps sink at a rate of about a foot per second. Since you won’t always know how deep the water is, let the lure sink as you count until line slackens only on the first cast. If you’re lucky, it won’t snag almost as soon as it takes bottom.

          Diving crankbaits work great for smallmouths and walleyes, so long as you feel the diving lip trip on rocks every so often. You can modify retrieve speed so that you don’t dig the lure directly into bottom (you’ll feel it!) and get snagged, but stay very close. Crankbaits come in varieties that run three to six, six to 10, even 12 to 15 feet deep, but the deepest diving crankbaits give great deal of resistance, so they're meant to be retrieved on heavier baitcasting tackle.

          The best way to try the depths—some holes in the Warren County stretches are as deep as 35 feet—is with quarter-ounce jigs tipped with Berkeley Gulp! synthetic bait or live nightcrawlers. You’ll lose jigs to snags, but buy them in quantity wherever you can get a good price and you won’t feel the loss as snapping the line on an expensive plug stings. Soft plastic Mister Twisters, etc., work well on jigs and make less of a mess than synthetic leeches, but synthetic bait does put a powerful fish attracting odor in the water. In dark depths that may be an advantage.

          However, smallmouths in particular like shallow water: pockets of calm water near fast moving currents, eddies behind boulders, edges of shoreline calm, exist as reliable holding water, and in fast water, smallmouths benefit from increased oxygen levels in warm late summer temperatures. My personal favorite for such spots is the #9 Rapala floating minnow plug, but all sorts of minnow imitations work, as well as small spinnerbaits and in-line spinners like Mepps and C.P. Swings. Spinners work best by a straight, moderate, steady retrieve, close to bottom if some depth is encountered. Minnow plugs come alive by erratic twitchings of the rod tip, virtually lifeless without this action.

          We are nearing the annual tail end of an annual river season when the food chain is based on insect life. Until late September, fly fishermen catch smallmouths on nymph imitations otherwise suited to trout, and the bass do feed on larval as well as hatched and terrestrial insects, as well as small, molting crayfish and a smorgasbord of immature fish species. But shad fry will soon descend downriver on their seasonal trek to the Atlantic, and smallmouths school and herd these Omega acid-rich forage for their greatest boost in yearly health.

          I’ve never seen it happen, but reputable writers have reported that sometimes the bass attack the fry on the surface in sudden blitzes the way hybrid stripers go after alewives in Spruce Run Reservoir or Lake Hopatcong in June. A half-ounce chrome Rat-L-Trap casts forever with a medium power spinning rod and six-pound test line, resembling a small shad very closely. If you spend a late September or October afternoon scouting the scenes along River Road and catch sight of such action, don’t be without a few of these plugs!

         

Grunts: Fighting Panfish of Southeast Coastal Waters

 We've caught them from Outer Banks, North Carolina piers and from a bridge and boat both inshore and at the reef in the Florida Keys. As humble by name and size grunts are, they fight very hard on light tackle for fish without pelagic build (but look at the shoulders), and they taste great from the pan. That photo of the open mouth reminds me of a philosoraptor dinosaur. The coloration is for their peculiar kissing behavior, actually a territorial face off. Fish do some weird things; the grunt also is named for the pig-like grunting sound it makes. They don't sound exactly like wild boars the way Floridian pig frogs do (amazing to hear at night in the Everglades), but the mandible features without the mouth opened wide like that in the photo vaguely resemble pig snouts. The blue-gold wavy patterns on the head give a stunning view, and the eyes seem as innocent as a Pollyanna cartoon figure.

Most of them measure about 11 inches long and take shrimp, frozen or live, with a firm whomp. Set the hook pretty quick or suffer it swallowed. Even with 20-foot depths, unless current is strong and/or wind brisk, a good-sized spit shot is sufficient. Since grunts have no disarming teeth, mono is fine, and we go with six to 10-pound test. Ten-pound test relieves the nerves when a big fish opts for a shrimp, which happens in the Keys inshore waters and certainly the reef. I hooked something five years ago I may not have been able to hold had the hook not pulled. But light tackle is light tackle and you can't compromise if you use it. The best you can do is turn the key on the outboard and follow along. Perhaps if the fish does not dip into coral and fray the line hopelessly, you'll gaff it.

If wind turns the boat into a trampoline, go with a half-ounce egg sinker, possibly three-fourths ounce. A size 2 plain shank hook is all you need besides a disgorger on occasion. Drift or anchor. Either way produces, although anchoring can draw fish in that become interested in the action rather than spooked. From piers--again--shrimp is best. And avoid those heavy sinkers. Conventionally named "saltwater," they're just conventionally convenient, the default choice against the extra step of thinking that lighter may be better--and usually is.

Action with grunts can be episodically non-stop and typically alternates with runs of other species like snappers south, and spot and croakers northward. When we fish shrimp, we hope for an unusual, large fish and almost invariably hook up with one. We also take a few grunts or other legal panfish and use them for cut bait, which results in fewer but larger fish. And some more grunts. 

I like to take a few for dinner and breakfast. Scaling a grunt is like scaling a bluegill. The large, abrasive plates resist difficultly, and like sunfish, the fins can smart. Just make sure the fish remains moist or take them directly from the live well to the cutting board. No reason to grunt even if you bloody your own skin a little.

King Mackerel, Spanish Mackerel, Cero Mackerel: East Coast Near Shore Speedsters

Growing up, I got fascinated in stories of huge Boston mackerel catches (by number) just off the Jersey coast in May, but my impression was of smallish, not very gaming fighters. So when I encountered my first Spanish mackerel on Kitty Hawk Pier, Outer Banks, North Carolina, I felt doubly stunned: the fish hit me awestruck by the beauty of the blue side and golden spots, and I felt no doubt by the shape that it was fighter. They are.

King mackerel, like that photographed above, are fished off the ends of Outer Banks piers, for just our familiar example. A spider anchor is cast with a stout surf rod--a 12 rod is a good idea, these anchors weigh a lot--and the line from a big game rod and reel gets lowered on the clip line with a small live bluefish hooked with a treble hook/wire rig, a tailor blue of about 12 inches. Other fish like pompano serve when blues aren't around, caught from the pier on light tackle, sometimes volunteered by other anglers. It takes all day to get a king, but it does happen, and usually does, although cobia, tarpon, barracuda, and sharks show as alternatives. Kings range from South Florida northward past the Banks: nowadays some of them frequent New Jersey with the warmer climate.                                       

                                                                                              Cero

And so do Spanish mackerel, fully regulars along the Jersey coast now, dashing into the surf as far north as Long Island perhaps. Mackerel pelagic sight feeders, they have dangerous teeth, but use wire and they will avoid the lure or bait. Twenty five-pound test fluorocarbon is maximum, tied directly to braid without swivel attachment. Hard to catch in the surf, irregular schools dip in and out, staying mostly a couple or few hundred yards out. As quick as they come, they're gone, so trolling is highly productive, although in southern inlets where great congregations may amass, live-lining baitfish is extremely fun and effective. Just about all that goes for trolling are Clark spoons, size 0 or 00, although thin, flashy casting spoons like Deadly Dicks and Sting Silvers catch surf Spanish. From the piers, Gotcha jiggers are all that gets used for Spanish, rods turned downwards over the rails, depth achieved. Some mornings fantastic action results, others slow, although most summer mornings--and evenings--see some. Spanish usually run not much over a pound to about three pounds, although five- pounders get caught every summer with some frequency. Schools tend to be uniform by individual fish size. The world record is 13 pounds from Ocracoke Inlet, Outer Banks, North Carolina.

That's a cero mackerel just above that my son caught in Bahia Honda Channel, Florida Keys. These fish more often run in the five-pound range, although the world record, I read, is only 11 pounds. This one about 21 inches, the pelagic tailfin impressive, also the gold, horizontal line and small gold spots. Cero remain mysterious as yet to me, although I've known a few things about them for years and Matt's catch came as a very welcome sight. I don't know what kind of schooling presence they have at Bahia, for example, which is just inside the Atlantic and prime territory for pelagic race runners to streak in and out. We didn't try trolling flash spoons; this one hit a live shrimp on retrieve. Light tackle fun, the fish captivated us both when it came in sight. Captain Ryan O'Neal, who charters at Ocracoke Inlet, told me that cero come on occasion, but no one has spoken of them in New Jersey yet that I know of.

Spanish Mackerel

Round Valley Reservoir Bass: Summer Success

After work outing on Round Valley Reservoir with Fred Matero resulted mostly in smallmouth bass on jigs and Senko-type worms, although I got a largemouth, photographed. We ran straight to the back of the reservoir to rock bottom near vegetation clusters, plenty of deep water nearby of course since no place on this reservoir doesn't drop away.

This was my first experience on Round Valley catching more smallmouths than largemouths, but for Fred it's the usual.

I have a hunch that next time we go, sometime in August, one of us will catch a good bass. Fred lost a pretty good sized smallmouth this evening, and anyone familiar with Round Valley bass has heard about huge bass, and knows that plenty lunkers and good fish exist.

It was good to be catching bass on Round Valley again since May. I never seem to be able to connect fishing from shore after Memorial Day, but I caught more this evening than any one time out so far this year on the reservoir, most about 12 feet deep, thanks to Fred and his deep V-hull. 

Whitewater Bay, Coot Bay, Florida Everglades National Park Service Naturalist Tour

Whitewater Bay is Florida's second largest body of water, second to Lake Okeechobee. It extends for many miles; the photo I took  is merely set against a flank. The bay has long protrusions and giant coves making it quite possible to get lost. We got there by Everglades National Park Service tour boat, a trip that felt a lot better than I expected on a guide boat for anyone to pay $26.00 and get on. No one of the six or seven others onboard annoyed my wife, son and I; we all developed something of a rapport, including the two guides, and the places we visited--the length of the brackish canal to Coot Bay, across Coot Bay to the creek that leads to Whitewater Bay--fascinated us, spoken about at length and in telling detail by the naturalist.

We did see six crocidiles in the canal, one of them 13 feet long or so. Water clarity darkened by a high tannic acid level, we spotted no fish. But the fishing in this region is reported to be outstanding. What crosses your mind when you view the mangrove roots I photographed? Possibly snook hid right there among them. And mangrove snappers are abundant. Tarpon scout both bays and bull sharks use them as nurseries. Many other shark species frequent the bays as well as many other fish species. Especially the much larger Whitewater Bay is an estaurine wilderness of the first order, just like a womb of the surrounding Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic. It is connected by an inlet to the Gulf many miles from where we entered six miles above Flamingo where Everglades National Park reaches Florida Bay. The park service rents boats with 40-horsepower outboards to ride up the canal to Coot and Whitewater bays to fish.

We walked many trails between Port Royal near the entrance and Flamingo; my son and I even drove 40 miles into the Glades and back at night. Matt photographed snakes on the road, including a 10-foot Burmese python. He grabbed the tail, getting sprayed like a garden hose with musk as his hold on the snake slipped, the python turning on him. By quickly evading a strike, Matt gave himself a Charlie horse he didn't feel until the encounter was done. He semi-circled back, grabbed the tail section and got the snake on the road to photograph it. Nor did we notice the cloud of mosquitos around each of us, and that our bodies hosted hundreds.  

Crocodile

Alligator (In freshwater elsewhere in the Everglades)

Looks as if shot from space...

Burmese python

Iguana

Banded watersnake

Scarlet snake (this series of three snakes we photographed on road to Flamingo at night, and the python we found at Flamingo).

We called this a chameleon while growing up, anole.

Cooter (Freshwater elsewhere in the Glades)

Five lined skink, I believe, unless a Floridian look alike.

Key deer on Big Pine Key

Alligator elsewhere in Glades

Bahia Honda Channel: Cero Mackerel, Groupers, Snappers, Bar Jack, Florida Keys Bridge Sharks

 Our third day boating, we tried once again to make the reef and beyond, only to turn back, sure we would, but I had to give it a try for my son. Better that a 13-year-old learn by experience than by being told. Once again, he felt it was best we go back, in fact wise, seas just as high as the previous day. Fishing inside the Bahia Honda bridge was a rough experience itself, whitecaps rocking the boat constantly, although neither of us really felt much discomfort. First consideration against reaching for the reef was not how unstable the boat would be for fishing, but whether we would make it there or not. But certainly if we did make it: 1. The boat would be extremely unstable. 2. To go beyond over deep water (sloping sharply to over a thousand feet deep) would have been tantamount to suicide as seas gathered height without bottom resistance. I wonder how high seas may have been over the reef, since those high swells would have been rolling right into them.

Lots of memories of manning my 17 1/2-runabout craft through enormous bay swells many years ago as a commercial clammer. But a bay can only roar so ferociously, because shallow. Nevertheless, the 15 to 20 foot deep Bahia Honda Channel never pitched up and threw anything at us as fierce as Great Bay and Little Egg Harbor used to challenge me on occasion. I loved that action with a passion rooted a lot deeper than the bottom muck reached. All there with nothing in reserve, I didn't feel it with any affectation. No one fishes the bay when the wind hounds that hard. But a few shellfishermen did.

Five years ago, we got to the reef and beyond in a 19-foot boat with a 90-horsepower outboard. That's how light the seas can be. But even on that day I refused to go further out than 120-foot depths not far from the reef. The swells very widely spaced (not so these two days this year), they sank deeper and rose higher the further we ventured away from the reef. The 23-foot Mako could have gone well out beyond; we could have fished Mahi with reasonable seas. 

A nice cero mackerel by Matt. Hit on the retrieve, not surprisingly--shrimp. We used live and frozen. All real anglers feel an affinity for at least one fish species. I have felt affinities for different animal species from early boyhood; I desired to go to the Arizona desert to find gila monsters, for example, something uncannily compelling about these creatures. Since I was 17, I tried to catch Spanish mackerel on North Carolina's Outer Banks, having seen one laid out on the wooden planks of Kitty Hawk Pier, feeling awestruck by the beauty. Those golden spots--like gold for a second. I fished the Outer Banks five or six non-consecutive years before finally catching Spanish on a charter trip trolling, and they were wonderful. This is when cero became distantly fascinating to me, just enough possibility of hooking one in Ocracoke Inlet to tantalize interest. It is uncanny how these affinities take hold, and I doubt psychologists understand the phenomena, although it involves intuition. It is almost as if it involves a complex, but greatly simplified foresight, because it's a gut feeling and must have origin in our ancestral foraging. But to me, a cero felt worth more than I could assign value somehow; here, my son caught one, that golden, horizontal line edged by gold spots suggesting some arcane code by which nature teases the mind and tempts me to proclaim that the pattern is absurd, without meaning.

More groupers, grunts. As the photo demonstrates, grunts have large, narrow mouths. They have a kissing ritual. Those mouths open as they face off. And yes, they grunt.

That's a lane snapper with the red tail, nearly a foot long. My bar jack was a real pelagic fighter on the light tackle, also hit on the retrieve after I missed the strike from another (can tell), schooled obviously.

The cero got my thumb; I guess that prompted the camera close-up on the teeth.

This was a long, deeply involved yet simple day of fishing. As a clammer I had spent day after day for most of 13 years on the water in the hot sun as well as bitter chill of January, which both simplified my life enormously and awakened me to complexities I couldn't have begun to approach any other way than by prolonged exposure to given nature. But the complexities came about through intellectual stimulus: I would come off the water and go directly to my notebook and write. And I would read, often hours each day.

I haven't felt so closely reacquainted to how I was those years, since those years.

That night we went for sharks with our head lamps on, casting from the No Name Key bridge. Nothing this time; five years ago Matt caught the bonnethead I estimated at 25 pounds. Perhaps it was 18, but if so, a big bonnethead.

Nurse sharks beneath Keys bridges are often eight feet long.

Bahia Honda, Bogie Channel, the Gulf

Big Small River, Stream Smallmouth Bass and Little Swartswood Lake Nesting Eagles

Some things aren't meant to be. And then misfortune, even by a second twist, works to the party's favor as it did for my son and I.

At Little Swartswood Lake near Newton, New Jersey, we found nearly a full third of the 152 surface acres off limits to boaters for the sake of a nesting pair of eagles. This troubled me little--plenty of weedy depths remained to fish--but I'll get to my thoughts about it in a moment. For the time being, I troubled myself with inflating our inflatable boat, which is a pain. And I found that mice or racoons had taken large bites out of the vynyl, or by whatever means, there were holes. That's when my son and I agreed we should just look for a 12-foot boat. We really need a 16-foot, but a 12-foot will replace this chore of inflation even if I can repair the boat. I'm probably looking five years down the pike before I can buy a lake sufficient craft with an outboard.

I knew exactly where to go with the bucket of large shiners I bought for my son to fish pickerel, a dozen-and-a-half. But I want to type my thoughts about the eagle situation before I relate more. I'm never one to blithely accept people's actions as given, as if the choices people make are just facts of nature like sticks and stones, no judgement and evaluations involved. And plenty of people are like me: they see something done and they examine, question, and evaluate for themselves. 

I agree that wildlife should be protected. Birds, for example, are living creatures like us. This is why, viewing the statistics on loon, other waterfowl, and eagle deaths attributed to lead poisoning, I think it's a good idea to use tin split shot. They die needlessly from lead when tin is a suitable use. I know steelhead trout shun the shine of tin shot, but the Boss Tin company, for one example, produces a tin/bismuth mixture that has a duller finish than new lead shot. 

I'm only posing the question, because I don't know the answer: Why close a third of Little Swartswood Lake to boating (which is limited to electric outboards) for a nesting pair of eagles? It seems to me that less space could have been secured. But here's the rub. Do you remember those environmental films in the late 1960's and 1970's that always referred to man in ominous tones and posed him as the cause of nature's demise as if he were evil? I thought of that, and it only seemed to me as if environmentalists had won a little victory here...over man. That it had more to do with excluding people than actually protecting this pair of eagles. But I don't really know.

Enough on that issue. We drove to the Paulinskill River. Matt had the first cast and a smallmouth bass tangled with it as I cast mid-stream.

Now I know shiners can be more exciting than topwater plugs--beyond a doubt. A big smallmouth bass exploding the surface with great splashes and spray four distinct times, once leaping clear out of the water on a quiet, clear stream is something I beheld singularly in a way to last in memory. A shiner on a light wire hook knows how to dodge a predator. 

But I caught this bass so easily having just arrived that it was sort of la de da. I admired the bass, but not only had it come easy, I still felt the loss of our Little Swartswood endeavor, which I had planned since about January. That little lake has a personal history for me. In 1992, a friend who became best man at our wedding lived on Little Swartswood. I rowed the boat he owned to enjoy outstanding topwater action, freshwater quality I hadn't experienced in over 10 years. Months before, I happened upon a mail order ad for wooden Dalton Special topwater plugs. I had the intuition to buy and did. What for, I had no idea. But the Dalton Special was a favorite of my fishing mentor many years before when I fished freshwater constantly. I used the Dalton Specials that day on Little Swartswood. I also ice fished a couple of times with my friend's son. 

We caught a few more bass in this particular stretch of the Paulinskill, and then Matt discovered more very nice bass well downstream. This is when things got screwy. He had missed three, he told me, about three pounds each, setting the hook too soon. I fetched the bucket and camera and hiked. A bass of about a pound broke his line. I found it frayed and retied his hook.

"Is your drag set right?" I asked too casually.

"I think so." He pulled on the line.

I took the rod, pulled, loosened a little, gave it back. As he turned, the words sort of escaped whatever had me confused below the level of my awareness, consciously I just felt relaxed.

"Loosen it if you have to."

But why on earth would I think that--the truth is, I hardly really thought it, a loose idea. Why wouldn't I have just grabbed the line and pulled it from the rod tip to be certain? A friend of mine used to say, "Excuse me, I was temporarily insane."

Matt's first cast I thought came short of where it should go. His second cast landed exactly where I told him to aim. A smallish bass struck at the shiner several times, then a great whoosh and the very thick tail end of a big bass rose high above surface for a split second and slipped under.

"That's a nice bass." I said. 

Hooked, it came into view--this bass much larger than the one I'm photographed with--then turned hard and sharp exactly as I know big smallmouths do. There is no escaping the likes, only preparation for the eventuality. The line snapped loudly.

We had caught and released 17 bass and I fished the last shiner, the baitfish now debilitated and barely alive. Another nice bass of nearly three pounds took it, and rather than set right there and then as I should have, I hesitated. Just that instant, the bass ejected the shiner. I then followed the bass in the clear water. I got a cast off and the bass rushed the shiner. My next thought: Why is my line limp? The shiner, debilitated, simply got knocked off the hook.

That ended our foray. Yes, I tried plastics for ten minutes, taking a couple of hits, and interest from a foot-long fish that stopped short. But I didn't want to play that game. Earlier on, before Matt hooked and played that nice bass, he had seen another become fully visible, a lunker risen into view from the depths of the same hole. He has no doubt this bass was larger than the one he hooked. He knows what a five pound bass looks like, and he claims that's what it was.

The moral of the story is: getting jinxed is no superstition. I was too complacent about my first bass and mixed up within and that set not the mood, really, but the attitude in so far as attitude or approach is more than what is in conscous control. How we consciously go about fishing is only a relatively small part of our total attitude or approach, our actual moves in what we do. And that approach, consciousness and unconsciousness together, is what determines how we will perform except for what chance elements get involved. A good argument for solid habits, really, but sometimes in my experience, I've got taken for a ride, and there's humor in that.

We left the Paulinskill in very high spirits. It had been a much more intense outing than we expected of Little Swartswood, and we learned much more about this river. We had achieved some resolve about a boat, and just as we got home and had unloaded, we got hit with a severe thunderstorm that stretched all the way up and beyond the state line. We would have been blown off the lake anyway when the whole point was to fish topwater plugs around sunset.