Jerkbaits For Largemouth Bass

 

 

Jerkbait Triple Play

 

The Early Largemouth Game

 

 

          You can throw curves, but it’s better to be on base and take a cautious lead early in the spring. You can’t steal without stop and go. Bass seem yet in training, warming muscles to allow them to give chase once water temperatures move well into the 50’s. Until then, you’re more likely to score by practicing patience. Three general types of hard-bodied jerkbaits or minnow lures serve as proven pitches as soon as bass begin to nose into shallows, and they score on through the prespawn period: suspending, floating, and sinking.

          Suspending plugs like the Rapala Husky Jerk, Daiwa TD Minnow, Smithwick Rattlin’ Rogue, and Jackal Squad Minnow, among many other brands, draw all the rage, applause dimming over the floating and sinking types of plugs. In cold water, you can tantalize bass by barely moving the lure, seeming to mesmerize bass into doing the obvious—sucking the plug down. Particularly in clear water, bass get drawn from a distance, but even stained water may result in hits, because a bass’s lateral line sensory organ detects subtle motion from yards away.

          This said, don’t rule out a floating jerkbait like the Rebel Minnow. Popularity cannot and never will mean everything. Especially so, since the Rebel Minnow is an old standby with a longer reputation than any Husky Jerk. Since this simple example of a highly effective plastic lure that rests on the surface at an angle is under the stadium lights, watch that it can be twitched with rod tip lowered to raise the rear to the surface, as the tail falls back with a little slack.


          This is a method every bit as subtle as barely moving a suspending jerkbait. It’s worked for me in water as cold as 47 degrees. But only during late afternoons or evenings after a sunlit, mild day has water temperature increased to 47 degrees or slightly higher, when will bass respond by taking the lure at the sunken end, making a surface dimple as slight as a trout’s sipping a fly.

          Most of the shallow flats and shoreline action happens after water temperatures hit 50, when bass get stirred into striking out after forage fish, and erratic jerkbaits spur reactions. Sinking plugs like the Rapala Countdown, Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow, and lipless varieties like the Old Faithful and Pesca do allow the option of fishing deeper, but you have to reel the plug at a fair clip or it loses depth. At minimal speed, you hang up on bottom. Nevertheless, even when water temperatures reach the 50’s, particularly the biggest bass may be staging at depths of six feet or more, and sinking plugs wobble along very effectively if not too much cover like residual weeds or timber is present, although fishing over the top reach of vegetation can break your rod—or shatter the bat, if you will—in low light with falling barometer. It just might take a big, bruising female to sock the plug hard enough, and the game isn't softball. 

          Impart action to that plug. A rod tip is not only there to set a hook or to just reel a lure back in a straight line. Fast action rods serve best, since the stiffness in the middle and lower sections gives you better power and control by letting the tip make the lure dance, the rest of the rod transmitting hand motion directly to the top. In turn, you can feel the lure’s action in your hand much better and enjoy a quick hookset.

          With warmer temperatures, crazy action is generally best with floating and suspending plugs. You can drive bass nuts jerking them around. Don’t throw them an easy pitch, get bass to swing wild, and they’ll swing again until they hit. Especially with increasing water temperature moving through the 50’s to around 60 on a warm day, bass may be powerfully motivated to feed, and a minnow lure behaving like wildly frantic forage attempting escape can result in jarring strikes.

          Why is this? No baitfish is so obvious as to behave like a wisecrack.

          A combination of two factors may be responsible. For one thing, bass become aware other bass swim nearby; each is competitive. Have you ever noticed—when fighting a bass—another attempt to steal the plug stuck in the hooked bass’s maw? I once landed a double header. When a jerkbait comes crazy, bass have no time to notice whether or not another is after it. They immediately react as if another might get it first.

          The second consideration is sheer aggression. A minnow plug is really far from an exact replica of a baitfish of any kind, although lures of all kinds especially resemble actions of forage to some degree far from perfect. Nonetheless, lures especially seem to trigger something like territorial aggression by which bass jolt into fierce desire to kill.

          For shallow water success, many companies make jerkbait floaters. Smithwick makes a floating Rogue, as well as the suspending version I’ve mentioned. Kevin VanDam won the 2005 Bassmaster Classic at Three Rivers, Pittsburgh, with this time-tested plug. Famous Rapalas feature balsa wood resulting in rapid, smooth pulsations and jerk responses unlike any other brand.

          It’s fun to experiment and develop preferences. I’ve used Rapalas for more than 40 years, and for a long time the #9 floater was my favorite lure. Lately I’ve appreciated the Rattlin’ Rogue because I can work it deeper, though without the instantaneous response to the rod tip as with the Rapala.

          Early spring is perhaps the best time of year to tempt a big female, not just because she’s full of eggs, but because she feeds a little more than she would with the same metabolic rate, as she would feed in the fall, so that those eggs grow before released.


Among lure choices you can employ April through May, jerkbaits can have you covered.

Shiners for Lake Trout, Why not Power Bait?

So I finally got out and fished Round Valley Reservoir, first driving up Route 31 to Paddlesports in Washington to buy kayak racks, finding it's closed Mondays. So I salvaged the drive by photographing Spruce Run at Glen Gardner. I later found my best shot ruined by the lens hood getting shifted out of place and vignetting two corners of the picture, but did not fail to notice the Glen Gardner Inn beyond the bank and across the street at an angle from where I shot. I will return to this scene.

At Round Valley, I found Mike Petrole fishing his favorite spot where he can sit in his car and read the newspaper. I had a couple of photos for him from last winter, and then told him I had to go buy shiners. He offered to give me half-a-dozen. I gratefully took four. Last week he caught a 24-inch laker off a nearby point, so I took his direction and fished that, as he drove off to do some banking. Just before he turned to leave, he said he's caught two lakers on Power Bait this year, and they say only stocked trout take the stuff.

While I waited, a rainbow got caught across the way, and after an hour or so, I felt uncomfortable in the chill. I went to my car and read. When I noticed my 11-foot noodle rod had shifted position, I ran at top speed over the rocks for about 75 yards, but careful not to twist an ankle. Most of the line had peeled off the spool, frightful, because another minute or two could have meant a lost rod and reel.

Line tight, I lifted, closed the bail, and set the hook--into nothing. Took forever to reel in the empty hook and sinker. First thing I felt was an intense desire to get back here and do this again, and then I felt the inevitable: Do this again and not screw up. And you know how that is. It gets to gnawing on you. I felt like a fool for having sat in my car. And that was a big shiner the fish took.

So, stay or go. I decided to fish another hour. I still had shiners on two other rods. Yup, all along I had foldout chairs in my trunk. So I got one of those, took my book and sat there, waiting. Instead of reading, I found sitting still and listening to water lapping very soothing.

Pretty soon I saw Dave DeLucca setting up to my right, called out and walked over to see him. He's caught more than a hundred this busy season, but says the trout have moved out further from the bank, no surprise. He caught a rainbow on Power Bait within three minutes and offered to let me bait up. He's setting the bait on a short leader, maybe 18 inches.

"Early in the season, they hit marshmallow & mealworms, and then they just stopped. I noticed guys getting them on Power Bait, so that's what I've used since."

By the time I got back from my car with my noodle rod, Dave had missed two more hits. We fished another half hour and no more happened. Rainbows travel in pods. And they often pass on shiners, but will take this orange stuff that disgusts me.

 This guy trolled very slowly with an electric.

Slab Crappies Big Baits: Top Techniques Jigs Plastics Shiners

 

 

South Winds Pack Early Season Slabs

 

Greet the season with positive feeling for early spring, and don’t discount little signs of more to come. Big crappies may convince you the vernal transition is here. Once ice is gone from ponds, lakes and reservoirs, the water is open to sudden temperature spikes brought on by March and April warm fronts. Crappies invade coves, timber flats and shorelines with residual weeds in numbers fitting of an army. Action can be so easily enjoyed that perhaps it makes sense to enlarge your offering and concentrate on big fish. Crappies longer than 17 inches and upwards of three pounds are possible in some places in New Jersey including Spruce Run and Manasquan reservoirs, lakes Hopatcong and Mercer. Other reservoirs and lakes across the nation may produce even larger fish. A 14-incher is a good one, but if you catch one this size, more may add to your fun. Large crappies move in pods of similar-sized fish, and although numbers won’t be as many as in schools of dinks, you may anticipate the slabs with a lot more interest than would motivate catching smaller.

 

 

Bulky Baits

 

 

You don’t need a heavy jighead, no more than an eighth ounce, and lead can be shaved to less than a sixteenth ounce while retaining a large hook for a big plastic or synthetic bait. Wide hook gaps are important to ensure hook sets. The additional width between hook shaft and point means more grab relative to the plastic body of the lure. Bulkier plastics, synthetic baits and live shiners may best interest larger crappies with mouths plenty voluminous to accommodate wide gap hooks and especially by using a lengthy rod, they cast further. The typical tiny crappie jig is not the conclusive choice, not for slabs. Synthetics like four-inch saltwater Gulp! Swimming Mullets, tube jigs, twister tail and paddle tail plastics just as lengthy all serve the purpose of slowing a jig’s descent through the water column.

 

Why is this important? Two reasons. The longer the lure is in view to fish yet moving slow in relatively cold water, the more time the crappie has to react. And secondly, on retrieve you can keep the bait swimming above bottom where crappies likely suspend. So have a pen knife handy to reduce lead weight.

 

I got interested in large shiners for crappies while fishing for northern pike. For pike, I like to set bobbers using a couple of rods while nearby live lining a large shiner with my favorite St. Croix. Most of the pike take the live-lined shiner presented on a size 6 plain shank hook through both lips, used with a barrel swivel to tie the leader and add little weight. I cover range bobber fishing can’t accomplish. One blustery, warm afternoon with wind blowing up from the south, I got into a bunch of big crappies on these large, live-lined shiners, a very convincing experience. They took the bait whole, and the fairly small size 6 hook was sufficient for hookset, otherwise allowing the shiners maximum liveliness. Don’t set the hook instantly when fishing shiners, but don’t wait more than five or six seconds, either. Avoid gut hooking.

 

 

Southerly Blows

 

 

While fishing lakes and reservoirs, not only the warmth rising from the south matters. Finding downwind coves or shorelines means the shallows are turbulent with water warmer than any coves less exposed to the sun, which positions on a more southerly axis this time of year. Turbulence itself provokes fish into further activity.

 

Crappies have lateral line sensory receptors which make them aware of commotion at the surface. Sunlight on the water goes through the chop and gets dispersed at crazy, random angles. This means a light show goes on underneath, and forage fish lose inhibition, since they sort of blend in with this disturbance, or are at least a little less likely to be spotted, or sensed by predator’s lateral line receptors, since so much noise is generated above. For comparison, imagine a perfectly calm surface with brilliant sun penetrating straight through. What forage fish will venture out in that, made visible in high definition? The sun-scoured aquatic environment is simply inactive compared to warming water in motion caused by south wind, which gets the entire food chain accelerating—at least for the afternoon and evening—into spring activity.

 

In some situations, waves crash against a muddy shoreline and discolor water, which gets pulled out and away from the bank for several yards or more. The edge of discolored water should always be fished carefully. Even if water is only two feet deep or so, crappies may be feeding especially on invertebrates such as aquatic worms. A worm-imitating paddletail like the four-inch Keitech Swimbait is a big offering that may trump the interest slabs have in smaller.

 

 

The Quantum Leap

 

 

A lake, reservoir or pond can be understood as quantities in relationship, and things can equate to action so fast in early spring the situation can seem to have the quality of magic. Lake Hopatcong is probably one of the best examples in the nation of a lake with many coves. It’s a very small lake compared to some, only 2680 acres, but perhaps the best of any to score high at pattern-seeing on the Rorschach test would fail to draw an analogy to anything else by the lake’s outline. No amoeba could ever roll out into so many shapes and diversions. River Styx is a huge cove, productive for perch and pickerel ice fishing all winter, but sort of suffers a lag after ice-out until water temperature spikes, and suddenly crappies leap from outside the weedline up into shallows of four or five feet, initiating the first stirrings of the pre-spawn period. Likewise, flooded timber shallows of Manasquan Reservoir would light up a computer screen, if any could scan acres just for crappies suddenly present and turned on. Whole ranges of many lakes and reservoirs come into play as entire populations of crappies take the leap from relatively inactive waiting, to critically needed feeding on baitfish among residual weeds to spur the growth of eggs for spawning by late April or so.

 

Ranges—untold acres—of residual vegetation may be full of spots to consider, although some reservoirs, like Spruce Run, have little weeds, submerged brush, docks or timber yet produce very large crappies. Since the acreage of a cove like River Styx is enough to be a small lake in itself, break the possibilities into manageable units. Fish docks or any submerged brush. Plenty of vegetation—sometimes too much even this early, perhaps—exists in combination with these structures. Manasquan Reservoir has, instead of megatons of vegetation, a daunting array of flooded timber. Get back in the relative shallows downwind, especially where you find shallow edges of timber in relation to deep water.

 

A lot of what the game is all about involves dropping the electric motor and covering water to find pods bunched in spots you discover while on the move. Casting bulky plastics on wide gap jigs is a fish-finding method, although some anglers prefer a bobber arrangement with shiners hooked near the dorsal fin, dropping the rig into tight spots and allowing a short wait before trying another configuration of stumps or patch of brush, getting in a rhythm, a work flow that produces. Ultimately, personal preference combined with a desire to experiment may win the day.

 

 

Taking it Slow but Ready to Game

 

 

Remember crappies are not as eager to give chase as bass or pike. They will on occasion strike jerkbaits, but this early in the season the fairly slow retrieves of bulky baits or shiners work better. Sometimes a crappie gets caught and no more come aboard. Was it an individual straggler, or did the pod move on and out of range? A good idea is to fan cast the areas near the catch site. Crappies in a pod cooperate by staying together, yet like all individual creatures, they game one against another. When a lure or shiner is presented within the sensory range of more than one predator, the likelihood is that all involved will be alerted to discriminate if they can give chase before any other does. This tension of interest within a pod as a whole increases the likelihood of getting a hit.

 

That’s something to consider further, this competitive nature. An evolutionary biologist might say any individual of a species behaves in ways that advance the species as a whole, but fish can seem like utter fools for lures and bait, and when reluctant, may yet be provoked into striking. Impart a little finesse to shoot a ripple of interest through a pod. Observe that tube plastics have squid-like tentacles, twister tails undulate in the water and paddle tails vibrate in a way similar to the muscles at the base of caudal fins. Put possibilities to advantage. Don’t simply retrieve these lures in a straight, steady line at the same speed. The likes of an all too regular retrieve does little to send a message to crappie’s senses, because forage fish aren’t zombies; they pulsate by impulses of fright and flight, and at the heart of these responses is life beyond the facts at the surface of things to which they react.

 

True enough, a plastic tube hardly looks like a minnow, but if you twitch it subtly, irregularly, giving it life, the action is something like evading forage. All you need to do is once strike a nerve in a big crappie and it will take. Quivering animation may get every crappie in sense range interested if they have any inclination to feed.

 

A Stony Brook Fish Story

The Bend

Yet another reflective story as winter seems to wind down now, ice-out perhaps coming very early and ponds, lakes and reservoirs remaining open hereafter. My best friend from my teens emailed me from California last night, and suggested I write a story around the four-pound smallmouth he caught in Stony Brook, Princeton Township, back when we were 15 and 16.

"Steve, you're dreamin'!" I replied. "It was two-and-a-half."

Something flashed through my mind when I read his request. Now it occurs to me the theme involves concrete essence, a most radical idea introduced by philosopher Aristotle about 2500 years ago in ancient Greece. All the more radical, when you consider his best friend was Plato. For Plato, essences or Forms were out of this world. But instead of agreeing with his mentor that the body is a prison, Aristotle seemed never to forget the enjoyment of his partying days, and pointed to ordinary things and creatures as important.

About that riotous youth he enjoyed, when he got it together after long, hard nights to mind business, peddling herbs brought in the money.

When I look at the photograph of my second-favorite Stony Brook spot, the Bend, it makes me want to be there, slate knocking under my feet, assuring me of life's value as I cast a mellow yellow Mr. Twister, a foot-long smallmouth hammering it.

Now imagine if I were Platonic, had died and escaped the "prison" to dwell among the Forms. According to Plato, you're supposed to behold the Forms when you're dead. Suppose I did something naughty and looked the other way, back down to earth, to see something "corrupted" like the photo I've included with this story. What if, for all the Platonic High, what if those weighty rocks, supposedly no good for their tendency to go downward, made me remember how good it is to be somewhere? Plato's eternal Forms aren't really in any place since they're not concrete.

I'd come straight back to earth and be reborn, if I had the choice. Maybe if you're a real stoner, you can deal with being so high it doesn't matter being nowhere, but I think the root word of the self-description would imply inescapable gravity.

My favorite Stony Brook spot is called the Eight Foot Hole. A number of us still call it that on rare occasion. A spring release at bottom is good for both bass and holdover trout. Sometime during the past decade, my nephew once caught four rainbows there in August, and it's where in 1977 Steve caught his two-and-an-eighth-pound smallmouth. Even I had embellished it, when I wrote Steve back.

A number of us camped in the woods streamside, and on a number of occasions. Fair bet kids don't anymore, and even back then there was never anyone else doing it, but no one ever troubled us. Steve caught his bass in the evening, and I had come prepared with a wire-mesh catch bag for just the event of a big one caught. We also caught some 10-inchers--back then legal size was nine inches--and put them in the bag, too, keeping them in the water overnight.

And then before dawn, we got up, fixed scrapple and eggs by a nice fire and hiked the mile to the Princeton Day School ponds...with the smallmouths that survived out of water the near-jogging pace, to be stocked in the lower pond. We know at least one lived, because I caught the big one a year later on a Hedden Plunker off the surface. We even loaded a section of water with rocks, hoping the bass would reproduce.

We had permission to fish the ponds. The school Headmaster sang in the Episcopal choirs I sang in. But stock them? Well, we were kids.

Who knows. Maybe both Aristotle and Plato are right. Maybe this earth gets "stocked" with naughty people from Nowhere.    

Ice-Out Largemouths Top to Bottom

 

           February typically features ice-out throughout most of the state, if ice fishermen still catch largemouths on tip-up baited shiners on north Jersey lakes into March. I recall an 80-degree afternoon with bass caught from a shallow pond’s surface, and heard later about ice fishermen the same afternoon on Lake Hopatcong. It’s not impossible to tempt largemouths on the surface late in February, so long as water temperature is rising and at least about 47 degrees F. There’s a way to do this that may be as tempting to you as it is to bass.

          Some plastic jerkbaits, like the Rebel Minnow, rest on calm surface at an angle with the plug’s rear submerged. The head portion is the only part breaking the surface. A very slight rod twitch raises the rear and quick slack allows it to fall back. That’s all the action needed. I only fish this way with 2 ½-inch plugs when water is cold, sometimes waiting 15 seconds or more between twitches, keeping alert because bass don’t clobber the plug. They dimple the surface by sucking the plug down at the rear, subtle as a trout’s sip rise.

          I’ve only found this method effective for fishing ponds towards evening after a mild afternoon, the surface calm and water cold, yet having warmed perhaps six or seven degrees compared to the previous afternoon. Bass feed more opportunistically in springtime cold water than during fall, because they need calories to nurture eggs and milt, whereas all the science and research they do not put on fat for winter. They’re cold-blooded. They need no additional fat to insulate the body. With water temperature spiking in the upper 40’s or perhaps surpassing 50, especially a pond’s northeast corner may be a shallow hotspot. Since the sun positions on a more southern axis this time of year, its warming rays will especially fall on such a corner.

          The same principle holds true for lakes and reservoirs once they warm sufficiently for bass to invade shallows: try northeast. Use another technique, however. Suspending jerkbaits have been all the rage for years now, and with water temperatures still on the cold side, the ability of these plugs to remain stationary a few feet or so beneath the surface lends them well to slow moving bass. Larger 4-inch plugs may be effective, since they run a little deeper, cast better and may attract bigger bass. The trick is to impart subtle life-like action, not by simply twitching the plug in place every 10 seconds or so, but by sending a message to largemouths’ lateral line sensory receptors that this hunk of plastic, which doesn’t really look much like a baitfish, behaves a little like one. Try making a fairly pronounced twitch, followed by the lightest touch of animation you can give the plug. Break action irregularly with teasing intent since baitfish pulsate electrically with tiny flight impulses. They’re ribbons of life, and if you can make a plug seem nervous, you’re more likely to provoke an aggressive reaction. Don’t be obvious; it’s hardest to work a plug with finesse, but if you get results, well worth the effort.

          Shallows may yield a few bass and big ones, but nevertheless, at this time of year bass typically hug bottom structures in deeper water, water too cold to move metabolism and motivate bass into shallow ambush positions. Baitfish aren’t very interested in venturing to feed on zooplankton or what have you among residual weeds, either, yet ways to catch largemouths deep on lures instead of live shiners may be of particular interest.

          My favorite method employs an old standby. Any jig and spinner arrangement will work, but I keep a dozen or more of the old Johnson Beetle spins, 1/8^th ounce, and while obviously this is going light, it works. Some swear by full-sized spinnerbaits, but I’ve never been able to fish a large Colorado blade slow enough. The Beetle Spin features a removable wire arm, which is like a spinnerbait frame you can detach from the jighead. For our purposes, leave it on. The tiny size 0 Colorado blade doesn’t spin, not at the rate I retrieve the lure. It barely sort of waggles. Fish the lure right on bottom, barely inching it, working it even slower than surf fishermen drag Ava jigs in the fall surf for stripers. And they say you can’t fish an Ava slow enough.

          Obviously, this bottom method won’t work in residual weeds. And on the face of it, it looks like a method for smallmouths, but I’ve caught more largemouths this way. The ideal situation is a sandy, gravely or clay bottom right at the edge of residual vegetation about 10-20 feet deep. It works in the deepest water of ponds—so long as bottom is not slimy or silted with residue that will foul the blade—and it works in lakes and reservoirs. I called it tick spinning way back when I was 14, because I could hear my watch ticking at a quicker rate than I seemed to turn the reel handle, while imagining the ticking of the tiny Colorado blade making little flickers, not pulses of vibration. Believe me, that crawling of this lure on hard bottom works, and don’t worry about the blade not really spinning.

          So much is written about tube jigs because they work. The plastic tentacles are perfect for teasing cold water bass, the appendages seeming to come alive in subtle, alluring ways on their own. Bass don’t only feed on baitfish this time of year. Nematode worms are the perfect example of food that resemble these plastic feelers, nematodes sometimes existing in clusters, and like all living things, emitting subtle vibrations through subtle movements, captured by the amazing sensitivity of bass’s lateral lines. Bass sense monofilament or braid line motions too, which is why I regard the first cast to a likely spot most critical, although not so urgent as to hurry subsequent retrieves. A bass will likely be more interested in the alluring motions of a tube jig than be distracted by line—a proven fact, since bass get caught! And fishing real slow, shaking the jig right on bottom to make it nervous, doing your best to keep the jig in place while tentacles vibrate, works.

          You need quality braid line. Since braid transmits motion from the rod to the jig more directly than monofilament, don’t compromise. Don’t even use a monofilament leader; use fluorocarbon, since fluorocarbon is a better quality connection. Tie the two by uni to uni splice. Don’t complicate the matter with a barrel swivel. Ten-pound test braid will tie six-pound test fluorocarbon just fine. Larger 4-inch tubes, as well as smaller, may be effective depending on the size and weight of the jig, depth fished and size of bass pursued.

          Bass fishing is usually tough this time of year, but not as tough as open water during unrelenting winter. Early warm fronts can make bass vulnerable, and in any event, if you want to get a jump on the season, fish ponds. Especially shallow ponds with somewhat stained water ice-out first and warm faster than any other waters you can choose. Before you know it, you’ll be retrieving full-sized spinnerbaits at a moderate clip.             

Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park: Mule Barges, Rough Men, and Bass

Delaware & Raritan Canal

The Basin

Coal barges pulled by mules, maneuvered into Baker's Basin by muscle, took refuge here from the Delaware & Raritan Canal current. Rough, wearied men rested on the 10 or so acres overnight, not so exhausted. They built bonfires, partied and drank. The stories told here are legend no one will ever know. Nineteenth century history never printed. Free as the air we breathe. The lusts that gleamed in fire-lit eyes as men rapped back and forth about women must have been enough to power a tractor trailer.

I heard about bass caught here when I was 10, so I cajoled my father to drive me over to have a look, having memorized directions from the father of a girl I knew, a father who cast big bass plugs into the pond.

Dad drove me over. There were about a dozen black men hanging out, and I felt deeply curious, because they didn't seem in the same space I came from at all. One of them turned and glared at me with wide open eyes holding great power. Mine didn't flinch. From the passenger seat, I held his enormous gaze, and analyzed it as I concentrated. Not exactly hatred or negativity, though that was there with rage just behind. I swore I saw the faintest glimmer of desire to know, rather than destroy.

"This place is wild!" My father said. Without saying another word, he simply swerved the station wagon around before he ever stopped, and vacated the grounds.

I understood and said nothing.

Four years later, by my request, a friend's father drove the friend and me over. We fished. Maybe that's when I first noticed the Allied Van Company immediately in front of the gravel lot, off U.S. Highway 1, loaded with tractor trailers. One form of commerce transportation to another.

I caught a bass and couldn't believe fishing as good existed so close to home. I had caught bullheads in the canal downstream, crossing Route 1 on my bicycle as a 12-year-old. But largemouth bass?

I fished here often, completely unafraid of my neighbors from Trenton. I don't know what Dad thought. Probably nothing. Most adults repress their fears and hope for the best.

It's good I went that first time with Dad. Then, the original mule entry existed. Four years later, a mere ditch pipe exchanged water where the open swath had been filled in. I saw something that existed since about 1830, when canal construction completed.

Now, not mule barges, but bass cruise in from the canal and winter over in the calm basin water, deeper and better habitat for bass in cold water, water in which they don't have to expend such energy with low metabolism struggling against a current. Just like the barges at night.   

 

Remembering the 1970's and Fishing as an Eternal Verity

I've understood winter as a time to reflect and read since my teens, so it's no wonder I've been posting stories more than accounts. Having missed out on the ice fishing, because I got caught up in other things, Round Valley Reservoir yet awaits laker fishing, specifically. Even more to the point--from shore. I might catch rainbows instead.

I like to get into the technicalities of the game and see how these lead to natural effects, how a creature of nature responds as the focal point of an ecosystem, me included in that particular system in which I participate. It all begins at home. After all, ecology and economics share the same prefix, and the word economics originates in ancient Greece, oikonomia, meaning the organization and management of the household. I pick up on facts like this from reading. In an uncanny way, they're native to me, just as a Litton's Lines post on Ancient Greece and Round Valley Reservoir relates a wildly weird experience I had there. Broad and sunlit, mind you.

When I'm at home arranging tackle for an outing, I always seem to start by thinking concretely on just what to gather, sort, and prepare. I do all that sort of piecemeal while clues tend to lead on to how I can fish, like little things. I find the spinnerbait stinger hooks that got lost for a year and don't need an awkward bluefish hook in the place of one of them. On and on it goes, and I start to remember other things, like the 17-inch bass caught the previous year on a certain black custom quarter-ounce Colorado-bladed job. Before long, I'm in a deep reverie, enjoying some theme or other about the outing or many of them.

That's why, once and awhile, I post themes rather than accounts, and why my accounts themselves tend to be thematic. More than how-to, where-to, tactics and patterns--why we fish matters. None of us would have done it in the first place, unless we had a basic desire to feel what it's about. And then, once we inevitably got frustrated at the difficulty, we began to piece out how to do it. But this led on for each of us who kept at it.

The more we get into it, the more we desire to experience. And if this isn't personal experience, fishing's becoming meaningless, rather than becoming more of a story.

So that's my lead and I'm going to try and keep this post reasonably short, since after all, it's only a blog through which I'm writing.

Back in the day, those world-famous 1970's when 75% or more of high school seniors smoked pot much more openly than they seem to smoke the stuff today, when rock 'n roll was in it's heyday--arguably, '70's music is better than '60's, but not as good as classical--when the weather always seemed warm and sunny--if you're my age, I bet that's how you remember it--when everyone was usually in a good mood, and if not that, in a great mood...the 70's were a time when a few friends and I--besides all this other stuff--fished the early season for largemouth bass.

Typically, it began in late February on the bottom. At least I used to crawl a Johnson Beetle Spin so slowly on gravel I noticed the second hand of my watch seem to turn at about the speed of the handle of my Penn 716. I don't recall anyone else trying this technique. It probably required too much patience. Whether or not, I do know I came up with it. Next, we got them in the mid-column with water warming a little, in between the bottom and the shallows, reeling in-line spinners slow to moderately. I think all of us fished this way. But I made my own out of knock-off CP Swing components that worked just as well. Size 6. So did an older mentor, who showed me how to do this. Brunswick Sports and Hardware in Trenton near the Lawrence Township line sold the parts, or was it Andy's Sports Shop in Trenton? Most likely, old Andy had the equipment. I'm certain now, because my mentor hated Brunswick Sports and Hardware.

Finally, when bass barely nudged into the shallows, we got them by slightly twitching 2 1/2-inch Rebel Minnows on the surface.

Why do this, when so much partying went on? I remember just once, one afternoon I hit Baker's Basin high. It was sacrilege. I really don't say this ironically, because the guilt felt palpable. We, the immoral majority who broke the law, had our ways and means of sharing the sacrament of mother nature, the bones we burned to offer togetherness.

Who knows, perhaps we released the wrath of great spirits, who would have preferred we engage other arts instead. After all, at least the spirit of great works remains with us, and to ignore this fact doesn't make them go away.

Fishing, for one of its qualities, was a way to preserve purity. I knew whatever insights I momentarily gleaned by looking askance as we got into the Dead, these insights rarely, if ever, amounted to anything, because forgotten. I never fully gave into the counter culture, as a few of my friends did and still offer everything up in smoke.

Fishing was much more important. Again, for one thing, because it was unambiguously real. I bet anyone who smokes that stuff is uncertain of reality sometimes when on it. I remember two incidents, one on an island during a calm night of camping on a lake, another in a cabin by a pond, when reality felt more certain and positive than usual, and yet so many times we teens fell prey to confusions about what deeper levels of mind informed us, while the ability to stop action and consider had got let loose like a tape we couldn't stop and rewind. And then we felt as if missing something important, since stuff happening to us we couldn't control didn't seem right for good reason. I guess adults exist who have come to terms with pot and have learned how to let control go, but I've come to good terms with life without the stuff, so it's pretty much a non-issue for me.

I fished all the time during my teens, and avoided those who smoked all the time. I gave up my closest friend--who later came back--because he went too far into the haze. The rest of us teenaged fools and pseudo-intellectual Honor Society types, after freshman year in college when I dropped out to begin in the shellfishing business, it took me three troubled years of conflict with friends to finally write them off as full of---

Is the mind's standard reality or not? If not, it can be all sorts of things, whether you smoke pot or not. Things all of which amount to social prejudices of one sort or another.

So were the '70's Purple Haze or clear sunlight? If I wrote sunshine, you might think of the code designation. I remember the sunlight.

Nevertheless, I make a confession. I honor the Dead. God save the child who rings the Liberty Bell. Robert Hunter's "Franklin's Tower" stems from his passionate love of history, which says a lot for the power of the human mind under duress of agents that destroy it. Ultimately, we can't blame the drugs as the agents. They're chosen in the context of a broader cultural power structure.

Go away and fish. You stand outside it all, looking in on the whole world of folly.

Here's the link to that Round Valley post: http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/10/round-vallley-reservoir-and-ancient.html