Better a Bass was on than None

U.S. Highway 206 is in front of our house. Matt and his mother just came in as I begin writing, telling me about the huge convoy of secret service, state police, and Donald Trump that just now drove by. "Did you give him the finger?" I asked my son. "No, Mom wouldn't let me. I didn't want him think we were out there gaga over him!" 

Bedminster is notorious for the golf course. Other than that, I feel it's a really good town. I even had a better opinion of Trump, before he ran for a job he couldn't do. But now that I know of serious criminal evidence against him come to light, I think at least his becoming President might mean a bust and jail time for him afterwards.

We never mentioned a word about him fishing today, though conversation ranged over numerous topics. Andy Beck has spent a lot of time on Long Beach Island, too. I lived there for 13 years, but today I didn't recall the names of bars he reminded me of. And now I remember the name of the big one in Bay Village--The Tide. We both had forgotten. 

His first time fishing, I showed him how to cast, verbalizing each detail, and felt amazed at the distance and accuracy of his first. From then on, he had no trouble fishing a Champers, though he didn't get the worm on any bass.

I caught a little largemouth. 

After not very long, I suggested we move to the right towards some little pads. In past years, weedbeds have existed where apparently the heavy rain thinned them, although water clarity today was good. Experience at casting worms is like the machine artificial intelligence my son is becoming expert at creating and doing. Of course it is, because experience at casting worms, so long as intelligently practiced, is an example of living intelligence. Every cast done by conscious intent is registered in the brain's computer and alters the program, which further suggests why each and every cast counts. The result is what some people call instinct, but I call intuition. For example, the ability to put a worm directly where it needs to go in order to score on the first cast to a new spot. That has some but relatively little to do with external senses. It's about the brain's intelligence producing a best guess. My approach to the pads today is a case in point. My first three casts failed--nothing took the worm. And the fourth cast resulted in a big bass leaving a big surface boil after the worm sailed over the fish closely. The worm needed to touch down a foot in front of where that bass lay. 

I distinctly felt my guesses were off. They were off.

We moved even further to the right and more pads, nothing happening there, when it was about time to go home. I would fish two spots along the steep bank where tree trunks and brush in the water hold bass. I understood Andy would not want to slip down the high, steep dirt and gravel, and I haven't yet checked for ticks. Before I got to water edge, I cast to make sure no bass lay directly in front that would spook. Then I got into position to put a Chompers directly on the edge of a bush in the water. Underneath that edge, water must be at least four feet deep. I let the worm sink and settle. Then I brought it up, over weeds (rigged with an inset hook), and let it drop at the edge of the weeds and sink.

Andy kept talking. I listened closely, interjecting words. A minute or more passed when I was not in focus. That worm was in perfect position for a take, and I did not give the situation the respect it needed. 

Always, always lift the rod tip carefully to feel if a bass is on, and if you feel the resistance and slight tug that indicates a fish is on, set the hook! Hard! Instead, I just lifted on the rod and thought the worm had weeds on it. Until I felt tugging. My rod, already lifted high, could not set the hook. The bass surfaced and I saw how wide its body; it looked like a beautiful 18-incher. And then it came off the hook.

So I struck out twice. Especially the second time. A lack of awareness on my part resulted in loss. And it didn't feel good.

Even so, better a bass was on than none at all. And on the whole, it was an excellent day on the water with a friend who is soon moving to Texas. 

Nice Fish Marked

This post wants to be a big one, but I'm not sure I have the energy to do it tonight...which might even mean I wait until tomorrow night to finish.

Michael Vandenberg and I made plans to fish Hopatcong on August 2nd months ago. We would try fishing largemouths with Senkos at the bottom edge of weedlines, but also buy live herring. Towards sundown, the plan was, we would anchor at the Ledge and liveline herring as I would leisurely shoot photos of boats in slant sunlight. We probably made the plan before Matt got back from Boston and had to stay, but once I knew he would be here, he was onboard. 

Or he would have been. He had a molar removed the other day, and this morning he felt really out of it and decided to stay home. He very much wanted to fish with Michael again, but not if he couldn't really be there. I hope there's another time, but Matt probably won't be living in New Jersey.

We met at Dow's at 2 pm, the wind in high gear, carrying what felt like tremendous heat. I saw the forecast for 90 today, but it felt at least 95. We took our time crossing the lake instead of taking on a lot of water. Michael told me he's getting a lot of paid writing assignments online. He also told me, amused, that an editor told him the use of the word "get" is informal and to be avoided, so count me in as an informal writer, obviously. When we entered a large cove, I set up the sonar, finding the water temp at 83, and soon marking a lot of what I am sure were hybrids--they were fish on herring--mostly at 16-feet, about as deep as oxygen goes now, above 22-foot bottom. We tried nightcrawlers, saving herring for later, but though we never got hit, it was interesting and I took note for any possible future reference. We continued towards the back of the cove. I looked for any sudden rise and found one. The bottom had gradually become shallow when suddenly the rise steepened. Just behind, 13- and 14-feet deep over bottom 15 feet down which quickly rose to 12 feet, nice fish marked, probably the largemouths we sought. I quit the outboard and we cast Senkos. 

We fished them pretty thoroughly as I became more and more convinced that with boats riding directly over the fish, direct sunlight, and very warm water, nothing was going to hit. I put the electric down so we could explore even shallower water and easily cast, and though I did mark a lot of fish, even one or two big icons came onto the screen, none hit. I knew what to do next. And as we left the cove, I thought about where exactly that drop we found exists in relation to landmarks. Sometime I would like to ice fish there. Once Joe Landolfi, me, and Matt ice fished about a hundred feet from it, where I did catch a 24-inch pickerel, but by setting lines right behind this drop, we might catch more some other day.

We had fished this next spot for about an hour when I said to Michael, "There are two ways to fish Lake Hopatcong. Extensively and intensively." Earlier I had remarked about how "violent" it was out there, boats passing us at full speed not 50 feet away, wind pummeling us, our anchor not having held bottom until we let out a lot of anchor line. It was loud out there. We discussed the futility of trying to fish weedline edges or docks with the water in motion. I could have added that from a bassboat with a bow-mount trolling motor, it would be doable, but even though my stern-mount electric is plenty sufficient on relatively calm water--not in water like yesterday's. I told him about how well Matt and I did in May. Ten largemouths on a day just as windy. And big ones. But the middle of summer (already) is here now, and I said that for us to go into little tiny coves, while family's sit on their docks 10 feet from us, might feel awkward. Those coves aren't legally private. No problem exists when no one's around. But on a hot summer day, I wouldn't think of it. 

The bass probably wouldn't either  Those coves are three to five feet deep. Perfect for prespawn bass. Now those bass go as deep as they can. 

Matt and I fished extensively that day in May. When I made the remark to Michael, we had just begun to catch fish after feeling initially as if none would even hit live nightcrawlers. After awhile, it didn't seem so loud and disturbed out there. We went from feeling as if no fish existed, to feeling as if we could catch yellow and white perch constantly for the rest of the outing. If perch will bite, so will bass. It was probably only a matter of time. We had stayed in place an hour before I decided I may as well put two herring lines out. We had a dozen live herring intended for the Ledge, which we would move to in another hour-and-a-half or so. I figured we had enough to fish some beforehand.

"When Matt and I first tried this, we didn't know it would work," I said, referring to the live-lining. That first day we tried, in July, was also tough. Panfish refused nightcrawlers for hours before we caught one, but we caught two smallmouths over two-and-a-half pounds on the live-lined herring.

Fishing intensively means you stay in place, where you're sure a strong possibility exists that fish are there. Even if at first it seems none are there. You work on them until they start coming.

We had nearly caught 15 fish when the cloud bank descended from the north, and though we saw no lightning and heard no thunder, it looked very threatening and I didn't want us to stay in place to see what it would do to us. We reeled in our lines and headed in, hoping to stay ahead of it, which we did. But had we more time, plenty of experience tells me the live-lined herring would "work on them" long enough to eventually yield a smallmouth or two. And out at the Ledge, a walleye would have possibly hit. 

Back at Dow's, we unloaded, placed things out of the path of any rain coming, and then picked up the ultralights and fished the docks. Almost immediately, I became aware that the usual sense of these docks as not fish-worthy, because busily traveled, is an illusion. They're actually quiet. Most of the time they're not in use, and since they go well out into Great Cove, they're a fish magnet. 

I spoke to someone else who docks his bassboat on one of them, and he showed me a photo on his phone with his son and a four-pound largemouth caught from the docks recently and his nephew with a 12-pound channel cat caught from them recently, too. "The other day," he said, "Jimmy (who works there) caught a 20-inch hybrid off the end. 

His used bassboat cost him an amount that would be affordable for me. How much I would have to spend to keep it docked on the lake and stored up there during winter is another story, but I think about the likes, even if I will never find a way to actually do it.

Don't take my description of the docks as an invitation for the public to invade private property, though if you rent a boat, Dow's staff might not mind. For us, it ended the day nicely. I caught a green sunfish and a half-pound crappie. Michael caught his first bluegill. I spent more time trying to shoot quality images with my camera. Light became interesting. Some rain fell through sunlight, but not much. No lightning flashed. Clouds broke and sunlight cast in upon the scene at low angle afforded me a few shots worth keeping.

Until this outing, I hadn't fished Lake Hopatcong during the summer since 2017. It did feel like a long time ago, and once as I walked the docks, I felt it all coming back to me. I shared a little of that with Michael, but even more of it came back to me as I rode into Bedminster, listening to a piece of classical music on WQXR, a deeply emotional romantic theme which I used to hear on occasion during some of the best years of my life, years when my son and I fished Hopatcong every summer. It made me realize how much exists in the past I can return to only in memory. Matt and I began fishing here when he was eight. He's almost 22 now, and it's quite possible he and I will never fish Hopatcong during the summer again.  

 

The Cloud Bank We Evaded

Lake Hopatcong Fish Photos

Bass Return to Neighborhood Pond

Got off work an hour early, and before long decided I did not want to reduce desire to fish the pond out back to temptation. We had a couple of super-severe winters in the middle of the past decade, the second of which greatly decimated the pond's bass population. The pond is so shallow that most of it froze to the bottom. For a year or two thereafter, we still caught some bass. And some nice ones. I recall one April evening when I caught eight within a half hour, the biggest about 17 inches, most of them 14 or 15. We figured the pond would bounce back. Why not? With that many adults laying eggs, you would think so.

It didn't play out that way. The fishing went from so-so, compared to how good it was before the big freeze, to almost non-productive. Any of  us here in Bedminster would go and get skunked. I don't know why. No one else seems to, either.

Good news tonight is that there are quite a few little nine-inchers now.  I caught the one in the photo, and missed hits from three others, the third taking my worm. That's when I quit, before 10 minutes were up, because I didn't bring along a second. I grabbed my rod, already rigged, took my camera and fishing license, keeping it simple.

Whether this pond ever again yields 10 bass over two pounds in a half hour, who knows. Many years ago, when I began fishing it, average size was about 11 inches. Why that average increased to about 16 inches, again, I don't know.

Maybe before we moved to Bedminster, it had a fish kill like the recent. I do know the winter of '93, '94 was severe.

Frog Idea Gives Way to Senkos

Brian had a great idea. We would get on the lake well before sunrise and retrieve weedless frogs over and among the weeds. I held onto the idea as if it would really work, but when we got to the lake, Brian said, "I think we're going to get our bass on worms."

We got there plenty early, but didn't find any weeds besides mats of them behind the island where we've never done especially well. It's a mystery why weeds we encountered weeks ago aren't there now.

Nothing hit on the surface wherever we did try, including behind the island and in close to the bank. The sun came up, and where I found myself felt much too lit, so I quickly paddled back to near where Brian and Lisa had left. I took my comfort where trees on the island cast a big shadow. Using a Senko, my first cast resulted in a bass too big not to quickly measure. Twenty inches. Since I sat in my tippy canoe alone, the photo (above) is the best I could do without changing lenses.

I lost a smaller bass before trying a worm that floats on the surface when rigged with only a 2/0 worm hook. I weighted it with a large split shot and quickly changed it out for a Chompers, because the weight just resulted in a heavy mass of weeds reeled in. But the Chompers didn't do much  better than the Senko rigged Wacky, even though I used a worm hook to keep it "weedless." I did catch a 16 1/2-inch bass on it,  and kept using it for awhile, but after Brain and Lisa returned to the area, things changed.

Lisa had caught a 17- or 18-inch bass where they came from, Brian a perch the same size as his Rapala. Soon we enjoyed a better bite than during low light. Within not much more than an hour, Lisa caught three more bass--17, 19, and 18 inches--and Brian two pickerel and a crappie. I caught a pickerel and missed setting the hook into another bass. Most of the fish took Senkos and blue seemed best. But rather than switch to my favorite blue Chompers--I had no blue Senko-type worms--I wanted to see if my red/black Senko (actually Strike King brand) would do as well.

The bass and pickerel hid among weeds. Had I paddled further up the lake before sunrise, I would have found the territory appealing for fishing a frog,  but that's no matter.

As a finishing thought, or you could say back to the day's beginning, I shot sunrise with a 24mm lens, not yet knowing how to select both aperture and shutter speed, so a high ISO is selected automatically. I selected f/14 for depth of field, noticing that the shutter closed much slower than it had for my 50mm lens a moment before. The trees are out of focus. A monopod might have been another way to solve the problem. I do like that sweeping wide angle you can appreciate better by clicking on the photo for an enlargement.

Floodplain a Mess

"You would think an alligator would crawl out and come after you," Matt said about the river. Once it floods, it seems as if it will never come back down. The tropical storm that dumped so much water on us more than a week ago is responsible. At least the river has some clarity now, but so much water is on the floodplain, access involved a lot of messy trudging through mud and was very limited. We could not get very far up or downstream, because water had filled deep gullies.

All three of us got hits, but only Oliver and I caught pike. His was about 18 inches, and mine might have been 21. I had another on, very small, and missed three other hits. I tried a spot Matt was reluctant to claim ahead of me, where I had to stand on a rotting stump. A pike that must have been at least 28 inches long rushed my plug, bulging the water largely and leaving a huge boil. The encounter with the fish sank into me deeply, I want to bank a pike like that.

It's one thing to know really big pike exist in the river. It's another to have stirred the interest of a fairly good one. Merely to know isn't enough. Even a 28-inch pike, much smaller than some over 45 inches in the river, would be a good start on something more for me. The 20-incher I caught last time felt good. So did the  pike I caught this morning, but the big one was an invitation to the next level.

Like last time, I practiced both my casting and retrieving. I have plenty to learn, but despite abundant wood in the water I cast to, I never lost a plug. That could be interpreted as evidence of my not getting close enough to it, but you will just have to take my word that plenty of times I did get the plug right alongside. On one occasion, Matt had cast alongside a big branch in the water that collected stuff and scum to create a perfect-looking spot for a pike to hide under. "I cast that spot a dozen times," he told me later. After he had abandoned it, I cast alongside, performing an almost perfect retrieve. I felt as if I knew just how to tease the pike I felt sure was there. By giving the plug slow, loose jerks. A 20-incher grabbed it and got hooked a second. I knew immediately that my loose retrieve had a flaw when it came to getting the hooks well-set, but it was just right to get the fish to come out.

I tried again three or four times. But the hooks had grabbed for a second. That pike wasn't coming back.

 Oliver's Pike on white spinnerbait

Water on the floodplain


Big Bass

Manville Raritan River

Duke's Park

Had to shop in Manville today, so I brought my tackle tote and a rod. Didn't have much time to fish, but I began at Duke's Park, municipal land owned by the Borough of Manville. Someone at work told me more than a week ago that he had tried here the day before. He showed me a photo of his three-pound smallmouth.

Some deep water--maybe four or five feet or a little more--exists in this stretch. I cast to shadows formed by trees, walking the bank. I did have a couple of small bass on and a sunfish.

I wanted to try near the bridge. I day or two after I had spoken to the guy at work, he enthusiastically told me that his friend had gone back and tried near the bridge, catching a four-pounder on an ultralight and four pound test.

I felt amazed at the extent of open land. It's all too easy to think the Manville-Bridgewater region is all built up. I never got to the river here. I tried, but wearing boat shoes and shorts, I didn't want to get muddy. I still had to go to Michaels to buy frames and mats, and besides, I don't want to ruin my casual shoes.

About 14 years ago, Matt and I fished by the bridge. It was easier to access the water. I never forget Matt, six or seven years old, walking into a deep hole while wading. He went over his head and the surprise wasn't pleasant for him. But I helped him out. No tears--nothing that bad. And we continued fishing.

Open land

Coming back around to my car by the bridge to Manville.

Delaware

Stanton to Flemington

As this day approached over the course of the past couple of months, I felt my apprehensions, because I would have to get the Great Canadian canoe at Brian's, and then drive all the way to Flemington to meet my brother Rick. After paddling four or five miles of the South Branch, I would have to take it back. Loading it on alone, taking it off alone. Rick was enthusiastic about using mouse flies he bought from Etsy. We found the tail action is fantastic, but today he would catch no bass on them. There might be another time ahead when he does.

I found fetching the canoe some 40 or 50 vertical feet above Brian's parking space easy and loading it easy, too. All this is better than doable. We all know how "doable" can mean less than zero, as novelist Bret Easton Ellis put it. The drive to Flemington was complicated by a detour, but otherwise, the length of the ride allowed me to sink deep into listening to Jean Luc Ponty and thinking over all sorts of things. Very pleasurable. The ride back would prove to be even better. All told, I drove 135 miles, many of them over twisting and hilly county roads. Rick must have driven about the same mileage, coming from Wall Township at the shore near Brick. Hauling the canoe up those steep 40 or 50 vertical feet alone was easy, too. I huffed and puffed deeply when I stopped pulling, but that felt great. After all the years of smoking cigarettes, I felt very reassured that my lungs are good. After treading clams for 13 years--deep aerobics, you breathe all the way down and hold that breath as you dunk, not to mention the jogger's pace for four or five hours--I have strong lungs. Today, we would often have to get out and haul the canoe through the shallows, which is no comparison to the strenuousness of clamming while wearing three layers of wetsuits in brine near its 29-degree freezing point, the thermometer near zero F, the wind chill falling far lower as 40-knot winds pushed immense swells over my head. It's just to say I seem to have a future on the river.

We had found the river somewhat off color where we met downstream, but that was as I expected. Now as I got in the canoe with Rick, I felt nervous as hell. He's heavier than Matt, though really not by all that much, but for all I knew, the margin might be critical. The canoe is tippy. I had nearly $10,000.00 worth of photography equipment in that canoe. "Maybe you should get a plastic bag," Rick said later. I never will get a water-tight something or other for it though, because that's too much a hassle. I do zip the camera bag every time I put the camera back, but I need to zip it open easily to get the camera quickly.

I imagined how I would grab the camera bag and keep it above the river surface if we went over. I probably would have failed. Later on, I felt I had been unrealistic. It was probably just the trauma of what happened in Florida, when the kayak my wife and I had paddled rolled as she got out, and I lost $3600.00 worth of equipment.

I like the river when it's clear. Usually, it's not until September. Afraid we would get skunked, since we came only with fly rods--Rick brought two of them--I was all the more afraid. I'm not much experienced fishing this way, but it didn't take very long before I hooked one about 10 inches long. It took a subsurface fly six or seven feet deep or more. A Haggerty's Hell Raiser. I lost the fish, but it was the first my St. Croix seven-weight has played. I missed a few knocks and taps that could have been sunfish, then further downstream played an eight-inch bass for a couple of seconds before it got off. That one on a white sculpin fly with a helmet head weight.

Rick meandered on downstream. We had beached the canoe. I got word from him that he had missed a hit on a small popper, and he also told me had seen three bass leap out of the water for damselfies. Before I could turn and go tie one of mine on, he hooked a bass on the popper of nearly 11 inches. "They fight so hard," he said before lipping it.

It seemed as if we had paddled too much water, because the highway was visible and I figured the bridge was right around the bend, so I felt especially good about all the time we invested in the stretch. But after we got back in the canoe, we found no bridge. Even so, it seemed to me we were making good time. Rick caught another on a popper, and then yet another on the popper at another spot where we got out of the canoe.

We finally did pass under the bridge, and further downstream I caught my first bass on the Hell Raiser. Another of mine came over the side minutes later. Rick caught some sunfish on the popper. He enjoys catching them. It makes me think of the times I've gone to the river over here near my family's condo with my two-weight.

The river felt set deep down where real things happen. The highway is situated above. So are railroad tracks. All that high speed activity seems to zoom about in hyperspace. Imagine space travel with no destination. I have no doubt traveling in space would be cool. It can be cool to travel a highway. But with nowhere to go? Nowhere real to go?

I don't find the words tonight to match the quality of our experience. It's just after midnight and I feel beat. As easy as each task proved to be, I did feel some stress near the end of our paddle. We finished about a half hour before sunset. It wasn't that we had to hurry. We had paddled the typical length of my family's Barryville Delaware River floats.

I know how exertion works. When you do it well, it doesn't feel very hard, but I guess especially when you're about 60 years old as I am or older, you feel beat later. But it never stops me. The experience was worth a lot more than being left spent, and obviously I'm not all used up as I write this post now.

Listening to Ponty as I flew back to Brian's house, I became aware that I have a whole decade of floats like this one in front of me yet.

Sculpin 

Rick supplied cigars from his humidor.

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