Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway on Fishing: Both Pioneered Big Game Saltwater. Dubious Ice Fishing Conditions in North Jersey

Felt like early spring. I pretty much gave up hope for further ice fishing once the temperatures shot into the 60's a few days after we had ice fished Hopatcong. Years of experience gives me a sense of what's likely, but ice anglers have got out on lakes in North Jersey this past week. The Round Valley Pond remains frozen over with unsafe ice and I guess the Knee Deep Derby that is scheduled for Lake Hopatcong Sunday will get by on the skin of the teeth. Fifty degree temperatures likely tomorrow, temperatures are forecast to plummet to the mid teens overnight and rise to only about 30 on Saturday. 

That's enough to firm up what's there perhaps, but with the snow melt it could be dangerous. A layer of water usually gets between the ice and the false snow ice on top of it, which insulates. In that case, nothing is added to the ice thickness; it melts slightly. All that would firm up is the false layer on top.

With the snow melt, the tulip pokes in the yard are shooting up and my sense is that we probably won't get another prolonged deep freeze and temperatures have slightly begun to moderate.

Read most of the introduction to Zane Grey on Fishing in the car with my line out, second time I'm reading this book. I love his writing. Personally, his covey of young women, who he took along on exotic fishing trips to the exclusion of his wife, is questionable to me. He certainly could afford to raise eyebrows.

Between Grey and Hemingway, those were times less than only a century ago, yet of virgin adventures. The sea had hardly been penetrated for marlin, tuna, and many other species that these two men pioneered for sport angling. And both of them wrote like the devil, Grey a lot more than Hemingway. In the end, Grey published 89 books. Many say his best books are on fishing because they're grounded in realism, whereas the Westerns go over the top. But don't fail to credit the man. His novel Riders of the Purple Sage is the seminal work of the Westerns genre.

Reach the Goal; Let Time Follow

I've been fishing this spot for a long time now, and the pathetic shot I got of my rod today shows how it's starting to feel. True, when I walked down and crunched stone under my boots with a mild, sunlit breeze on my face, I felt wonderful. What a release it always is to breathe freely in a wild place. It makes me feel absolutely present in the moment like the taste of reaching a lifetime goal. Not that my life's goal is to go away and live in a wilderness, but it certainly involves getting out of wage work by publication earnings. That's just a dream, but it's impossible to achieve such a goal without belief.

It helps to state the goal in writing and publish that worldwide, too. As a matter of fact, I recall that a study was done at Princeton University, I think it was, which concluded that people who write down what they intend to do have better odds of achieving the intended result.

So another lunch break at Round Valley passes without trout. 

I spoke to a fly fisherman. "I didn't expect any, but who knows, lightning could strike. Perhaps I'll be appointed Pope, too." We laughed. If I remember rightly, I first fished here at Lot 2 on December 5th, and caught a 23 1/2 inch rainbow. I had fished at the main launch some since mid-October. Two more trout since: December 31st and January 3rd, back to back. The trick is to fish with three rods and spend some time. But I must have fished almost a dozen times about an hour each since January 3rd. It's slow going for everyone, but beautiful.

Round Valley Reservoir Trout Fishing as Big Snow Arrives

Weather seemed gritty enough for trout to feed. I fished the hour just before the snow really began to fall, so I suppose barometric pressure fell, a good sign for action, but I had none. Another guy came down to fish just as I left. He carried two rods with four or five-inch Redfin floater/diver plugs and told me he's been catching especially brown trout on the retrieve. I've avoided buying shiners because of the inconvenience, but kept them in mind. I did catch a brown on marshmallow and mealworm last February, but I've heard more reports of browns on shiners.

Ruddy Ducks, Loon, Bufflehead Ducks and Coots at Round Valley Reservoir

Spoke to a man with a monoscope, waiting for a loon to come up from a dive across Round Valley Reservoir. He insisted I scope on the ruddy ducks that caught my interest. A few years ago, I went birding with a naturalist I know with New Jersey Audubon at the Round Valley Pond (about 30 acres). We saw buffleheads, green winged teal and another specie I forget, but no ruddy ducks I remember. Ruddy ducks are small and I had mistaken the large flock for the coots that are typical here. Coots were across the acreage near a distant point. A few bufflehead ducks had departed from the ruddy flock, flashing their white wing bands like strobe lights. I asked the man if ruddy ducks dive, he said no, then asked his wife in the pick up. She had a field guide and confirmed that ruddy ducks are stiff tailed ducks that dive and use that tail as a rudder. We saw none of them dive over about 15 minutes' time.

Ruddy ducks are the cutest among the whole lot. They have tails that open and spread like turkeys' and make me think of a woman's dress. And they're small and vulnerable like Cornish game hens; the species name, ruddy, makes me think of a Tomboy. Silly sentiment, but it's there.

Acadia Maine: Armed with a Paddle on Long Pond

A fun fish tale originally published in The Fisherman

Armed with a Paddle 

It’s not every day you get a chance to fish in Maine, but being prepared is important anywhere. So I had phoned months in advance to make sure we would get a canoe rental for Long Pond, a narrow lake stretching seven miles on Mount Desert Island with abundant smallmouth bass.

My wife, Patricia, our son, Matt, and I loaded rods, tackle, a portable graph recorder, drinks and sandwiches, and Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. Patricia would spend most of the day in the 19^th century instead of this gorgeous lake with rocks so clean and visible through clear water it seems no sediment has accumulated for a thousand years. We paddled persistently to mark shallow, flat depths on the graph for several hundred yards figuring that paddles served this single purpose of getting us on bass and within photo distance of a covy of loons, if you can refer to a few water birds by this name. We soon came to a pass where opposite shores merged close. Sure enough, drop-offs on either side to 17-foot depths were accompanied by large, jagged rocks.

I was into a 14-inch smallmouth on a Senko-type worm right away. Matt persisted with his nightcrawlers.

“It’s big!” He said. “But it’s a weird fight. Slow.”

I saw what would soon prove to be the culprit come into view. “It’s a snapping turtle,” I said.

I cut the line and the big snapper sank away.

Patricia said, “I wouldn’t want to see one bigger than that.”

Hooking snappers wasn’t new to me, and Matt had encountered plenty otherwise. Just to be sure we were done with this awakened mud monster—if any mud exists in Long Pond--I lifted anchor and we paddled away about 15 yards and anchored again to vantage the same drop-offs.

I cast the worm for all it was worth beyond the drop-off to my left way up in about three feet of water.

“Yeah!”

My excitement raced ahead to the question I had hoped would leap up—is this that five-pound-plus smallmouth I’ve wanted to catch? The bass had bulldozed the worm after no more than a second. With water that clear, I sight-measured the fish about ten seconds later—a good one, but no five-pounder. I figured about three-and-a-quarter pounds, and I was right on the mark.

Matt caught a small bass, and I remember shifting the lunch cooler to give myself foot room. Turning my head slightly to my right, I saw the slightest hint of shadow and motion in peripheral vision, something just barely irregular in relation to slight surface wave rhythm. I looked directly and the first thing I noticed was the size of the individual claws, but the first thing I thought—without words—was big, chuzzling snapping turtle beak about to embed its cutting edges in my naked thigh by a long neck. This was the turtle’s aim exactly—about eight inches from lake surface to my skin.

I remember how quick I had the paddle and thrust it into the front of that yawning space between carapace and plastron. Once, twice…it felt like a shovel breaking ground; the turtle went down. But even though I knew without contradiction that I had to use that paddle with uncompromised force, I did feel a quiet voice within me speak as I used it. The voice represented respect for creatures of any kind, yet didn’t diminish or hinder the force I pitted against the turtle because I knew the decision was me or it, and I struck hard enough to turn it back.  

“Who would think!?” Patricia said. “Why would a turtle go for a guy?”

“Better me than you.”

Pines Stand About Like Sentinels

Pines stand about like sentinels guarding the thin presence of winter life, reminding me of photosynthetic green that has already begun to emmerge in our garden two weeks ago in the form of tulip pokes. A month from now the mass of wild plant life will have begun to break forward, but for the time being, Round Valley Reservoir feels in part abandoned, a cold vacuum that hasn't yielded me a trout since January 3rd. Nevertheless, to crunch stone gravel underfoot with sunlit breeze on my cheeks creates a presence personal and enlivening that doesn't feel put out at all. A few vehicles came into the lot and they were the loneliest aspect, people sitting back in their seats and doing nothing.

Early Beginners: Fishing from the Start

This piece was published in Pennsylvania Outdoor Journal a year or two ago.

Every Kid Would Love to Fish

          When I see a youngster fishing with a parent, I consider that child lucky whether he or she catches anything or not. Every three to five-year-old introduced to fishing loves it. The first good-size largemouth my son caught at age three, a 13-incher, seemed to give him the sense that the world is his for the plucking, and to care for as well, as he released a living creature himself. When he grew just a little older, he wanted to fish almost every day after pre-school. And I was willing to take him for an hour or two a couple or several evenings a week after work. Since he truly loved to fish, his total intent was infectious and I found my own desire to fish fully reawakening after a 25-year slump. Suddenly he caught as many bass as I did, a five-year-old with masterful finesse of plastic worms.

         I had done something right in how I had introduced him to fishing. And from that advantage he had developed very much by his own efforts, yet by always being visible to me, and with me as his own source of know-how.

        At ages two and three, a parent or guardian needs to do all the casting for a youngster. Not only is such a young child simply too small to put a bait or lure out there, he has very little idea yet of the pursuit, the placing of the lure or bait where a fish might be. Buy him a rod of his own. Cast for him. The ideal lure for bass, if you’re not using nightcrawlers or shiners, is the plastic worm since you can help him retrieve it slowly. Let him reel in a fish; help him if it’s big.

          I went ahead and built for my five-year-old a 3 ½-foot spinning rod for trout, the same size rod I use with salmon eggs. When he was three, I cast salmon eggs for him on the same rod he used for bass, and he caught some trout. He had not yet caught a “pickerel pike,” at five; but he felt very eager to do so. So late in April I took him to a pond I knew had pickerel in it, and baited his hook with live shiners. He caught one that afternoon, all he needed to fill his day.

          Kids are interested in catching all kinds of fish. My son is 12 now and hasn’t yet caught a carp, very much wants to. Without time to fish for carp early this past fall, I did at least buy a mulberry purple bait concoction and gave it to him to add to his wide selection of lures and tackle, a promise that we will go this next year. It’s important to show kids very different methods that varieties of fish species require to be caught. By age three a boy or a girl has a rudimentary grasp of many differences of approach; how it is you fish should be pointed out. So long as a three-year-old grasps that there is a way to do it, by the time he is five he may be on top his game with at least one method, and possibly more.

          By the time a child is six, have him learn to tie knots. Kids this age become interested in such skills, want to do such things. To know the Uncle Homer knot or the uni or both are notches they can cut on their belts. It’s the same with different lures and methods. A six-year-old wants to know how to use these devices so fascinating to him. As long as you relate to him at least one way to use each of the lures he owns, he has a basis on which to build upon variations of method. Tell him there’s more than one way to do, but show him at least one way.

           For example, with weightless plastic worms I told my son to cast and count slowly to 20 before he twitched the worm off the bottom, then to count to 10 and twitch it again by moving the rod tip about a foot or two, and so on. He got that down pat after a couple of outings. Seeing this under control, I told him so. Always confirm with your son or daughter that he or she has it right:

          “By now you know what 20 seconds feels like, don’t you think?”

          “Yeah.”

          “So now just fish that plastic worm by what feels right.”

          And as I noted earlier in the article, he was a young master in his fifth year, very intent upon catching fish while watching his dad doing just that. So, besides how I instructed him, he imitated me. The best you can do for your son or daughter is be an active, open model from whom he or she can learn by observing.

          As kids grow older, all sorts of other life influences draw them in many other directions. Fishing for them may seem removed from the mainstream of life. And we older adults always used to speak glowingly of getting away from it all. Today kids don’t seem as much to share that value of getting outside; they seem to want to be very much with their generation’s technological involvement. However, older kids are very environmentally aware. If you train them to recognize that equipment, tackle, methods, approaches, environmental appreciation, and successes are like any other endeavor in life, they might understand, as they grow even older, and that they really got their basic education and appreciation of life out fishing with dad.

         

           

Matt's Uncle Jim points out how to use a particular camera.