How Explain Fishing to Someone Who Doesn't Fish?

Think I'll fish the canal soon. Winter felt very long as I tended the rod here in the middle of it. It's been good, every visit, but I think once or twice walking the tow path and pitching for pickerel will mean more involvement and interest. How do you explain that to someone who doesn't fish? 

In everyday life, there's never occasion. Fishing's like music: rhythm, tone, variation (of melody, instrumentation, voice). Fishing involves rhythms of walking, casting, wind, responses from fish. Involves water tone. Temperature has a sort of tonal quality. The sky has tone, and plant life, rocks and soil. All sorts of inner emotional responses to environmental variations can elicit melody. There's nothing like stepping away from distractions (road sounds tend not to be healthy and countering this by radio or c.d.'s can tend to get desperate). You move into a natural environment where ideas emerge without the performance demands of the road. There's a difference between highway thoughts and thoughts when you slow down and absorb a large environment. We all know about road rage. I've never met a fellow angler out here in such a mood, not even in stormy weather. The closest we come to that involves the exuberance of fighting a really big fish, but rage? Nah.

Thoughts on Temperature, Comfort, Civilization, Outdoors. Bluebird Skies and No Trout at Round Valley Reservoir

Bluebird skies and no trout. I did see a dad and very young son on the dock with rod and bobber by the gravel launch to the left. Funny seeing a red and white bobber in use with 28 degrees. Now it's goodbye to cold weather, so enjoy it while it lasts. I just wish I could get out on the ice, and I suppose some were out today to the north in New Jersey. I loved the enveloping pressure of cold on me today aided by breeze, and while I detested cold as a boy, once I tried ice fishing at 15, I began to like it. As a boy I enjoyed a lot of comfort at home and I was very conscious of how good all that felt. Hot weather felt exciting as if comfort at 70 degrees was keyed up in the way that comfort is the prerequisite to energetic good times. I'm just imagining things, but it's interesting to speculate on. Why does any temperature feel good? Just because we can survive without clothes at 70? Perhaps cold is punishment and guys like me who enjoy it have a need to feel the oppression and like it because they honestly desire and yearn for redemption, the cold being a strong dose of penance. How about the old phrase, "Put him on ice"? This seems really crazy, but I went to church every Sunday as a boy and teen (besides at age 14 when I quit choir for a while and fished instead), and I'm only human. Anyone exposed to all that solemnity will have a hard time of it, especially when his father is an employee of that church. At least it was Episcopal. But I usually have no resentment for that. If it made me capable of enjoying cold weather, that's a plus as far as I'm concerned. I certainly appreciate the comforts of home, but I wouldn't want to feel I could only accept life behind walls. I want to feel I belong with the planet out there. I go out on my own terms, but I develop that logic right out there participating in the real world. So sometimes I'm not sure if I'll return home to that sweet sense of security, since the outdoors has no limits and if you go too far, it takes as long to return. But walls and bars, the kind that keep prisoners in jail, have a lot in common. So if enjoying the weather is penatential, if I spelled that rightly, at least it's out in the open without guard towers looking down on you, but I had forgotten about our government's domestic drone project for a moment. Oh, well. It's still a nice try. And you never know, maybe a better genius than Foucault will come along--all could Foucault could do was tell us that our civilization is an incarcerarium. A genius who can actually liberate the prison. I guess he would have to return from a very faraway place.   

A Summer's High in Deep Winter's Discontent: Leap a Writer Captured

 Sometimes you wing it. Second post I've done today. Happened to go into blogging functions and review post-viewing numbers, and opened the post on Whitesides Mountain from August, including this photo of my son looking up at me catch this unexpected photo. We had a number of series of grand times all summer. I remember that after this day's adventures, it felt like I would never come down as if I had permanently escaped the absurdities, strife, and disappointments of everyday life, and I have to work a wage job, mind you. I didn't miss a day of work all summer and fall besides for vacation and bereavement. That's saying a lot for outdoor and writing discipline: that it can elevate a sensibility enough to see through and over what most complain about. It's how we all feel life should be.

And although since November I've been down deep in dark valleys--it seems that every winter on the road is pretty tough--during this time, I've been caught in a vicious circle of doubt about life only once that I remember. Even with feeling as if the death is nearby, a writer can have the power to find the process interesting and not succumb to fear, even with a winter's deep discontent. Interest engenders hope and calm acceptance, because even things that suck gain as a value by thought, and in the case of one's being a writer--get captured.

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.