Bait is Visceral When Visceral Needed

Actually, Kevin Murphy's pickerel catch gets first mention. He caught it on a piece of nightcrawler weighted on bottom by a large split shot. Can anyone imagine a pickerel picking up a piece of worm from the bottom? 

My heart was set on the Binky. I gave my arm a workout, but only to become more and more certain the fish were deeper than the 33-foot depths where I could work the lure. I've used outboards since I was 16, but I can't remember if the ones I owned at the shore had kill cords. (I do know my first outboard--a 1955 Evinrude I believe was the brand--did not.) Dow's outboards do have them, and I failed to realize that was why the engine wouldn't start. We stayed on that relatively shallow drop all morning and early afternoon, trying intermittently to get the motor to turn over! 

The water temp was 58. At 56, the lake should be completely turned over. That means oxygen was very deep today, so the fish had opportunity. 

I wish we had had more opportunity ourselves, but the three-pound, 13-ounce hybrid I caught was a good one. Kevin had a great time, too. A lot of sunnies, crappies, yellow and a white perch, and a rock bass caught. Also, a pickerel about two feet long engulfed one of my Binskys boatside, almost immediately cutting 15-pound fluorocarbon leader. I managed to lose two other Binkys to snags. 

That hybrid sure did awaken my interest in live herring. I was thinking of throwing only lures next Tuesday, but I've thought again. I guess a lot of fisherman think bait is nasty stuff, messy and not as sporting as playing lures. But especially when it gets cold--and 40 degrees this morning in the wind was cold--bait is visceral when visceral is needed. 

Enhanced Fishery

 

A Brother Fishes Out West

Fished a little and caught another sunfish on the fly rod. Didn't expect so many others out fishing. The leaves in the water seemed to be more of a problem than yesterday, but I thoroughly enjoyed the fly casting and feel ambitious for more. I have a brother who fly fishes out west. I'd like to go with him out there and beat him at casting, numbers of trout caught, and size. I have only three more years at the job.

Can't promise you, but I might be back out here early in the morning soon. 

 

Near Where George Washington Staged his Army

Nice to be back. 

First I came with both the newly owned fly rod and the ultralight I built from a St. Croix blank. I got in the river and threw a little Rapala Countdown, the rod catapulting it very far on six-pound mono. The situation did not feel right for catches. And there were almost a dozen others and one trout caught. Word is, they got stocked yesterday.

I got out of the river and went home until sunset neared. I live close enough to walk there if I want. 

Then I returned with my fly rod. Began under the exit bridge. I heard my friend Brenden calling me from downstream. He was fly casting. I went downstream, crossed the river, and joined him.

We talked and talked. When the sun had set, the guy fly casting upstream a little asked if I were Bruce Litton. He knew me from the blog. I asked him for his name. Doug fished, if I rightly recall, a pheasant tail, and definitely an egg fly, under an indicator. It went down and he hooked up, but he lost the fish. We also call it the Magic Hour because two guys downstream of us landed trout on plugs. I got hit and had one on half a second. I used a big blue-purple nymph with four white rubber legs just trying to irk a hit. Besides that one hit I got, I caught a red-breasted sunfish. 

Maybe three weeks ago, I wrote Bedminster's mayor about the cones that have been gone a week or so. Our boys were in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and it was nice to catch up with him a little. I believe wild access is a sacred value in America. It took me some doing to come back home to this opinion when I was in my early 30's, because I had accepted much of Ayn Rand's philosophy. But if you want to live in a country where everything is privatized--go to Britain. You'll have a real hard time accessing a river there. We fought the British to win our own nation. I own a book named Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, which makes a strong point of how Russian she remained. Given her Russian character, one might suppose she didn't really understand Americans. I certainly understood the sacredness of access from my boyhood, so that remained with me until I began waking up when I was about 32 and fished the Middle Brook--near where George Washington staged his army. 

North Branch Raritan at Bedminster

 

Zoo's Open

The cones at North Branch Raritan River's AT&T stretch (the Zoo) and the Bedminster Pond stretches are gone. Access is resumed and I just hope the state goes ahead and stocks next week. I plan on fly fishing on Wednesday. 

More About North Branch

Lopatcong Creek NJ Restoration

Troutscapes    It's been since January when Troutscapes posted the article, but I find it remains newsworthy. Dam removal and restoration makes a great difference in the natural quality of a stream or river. I've paid attention to such work in NJ for a decade or so, having interviewed Brian Cowden and many others in-the-know for articles I've written and got published.

Caught Largemouths and Pike

Fred Matero wanted to catch smallmouth bass today, and so did I. We did succeed in making our way downstream along the Raritan to the railroad bridges. First, though, Fred showed me the Millstone River boat launch. It's functional. Fred told me he witnessed a 17-foot boat getting put in there. We cast for 10 minutes or so. I caught the longear photographed above on a #9 Rapala floater. 

From there, we found a park Fred knew about, hoping to access a trail back to the bridges. This would be a lot easier than walking down from the Manville Bridge. We found the park, but where we would park Fred's SUV and take the trail, it was posted No Trespassing. 

We parked at the bridge. I waded upstream to try a hole I knew about from 2006. My son found it by falling in. He was wading, sauntering along, and suddenly was in over his head. Like that day, also, I caught nothing. 

And on down below, we were able to fish at the first two bridges. (We didn't go down to the third.) Both had deep water we plumbed with jigs and Senkos. I cast a Rapala, too, but all that happened for me were sunfish taps on the Senkos. Fred caught a couple of sunfish, and that was it.

So I forwarded to him the idea of fishing the Passaic for pike. I guess after the two fairly recent trips there, I had bass in mind, too. I didn't express my feeling, but I felt firmly confident that we would catch fish. We just had to get there, do it, and see if my feeling would pay off.

We got swiped by a couple of little pike not far from the bridge. On further down, where Oliver and I have done well, nothing happened besides a 10 1/2-inch largemouth for me on a five-inch Rapala Minnow. It wasn't until we got further down yet that the fishing broke lose, and my feeling that the river must be overfished lifted. On a Senko, Fred hooked a pike of at least 24 inches, I got a good look at the fish. It came off and went for the Senko a second time, Fred missing that hit as well. I caught a little 12-inch pike, and then for 10 minutes or so, I caught fish left and right, ending at a total of four bass and three pike. None of the bass were better than 10 1/2 inches, and the two other pike were 15 and 16 inches. Fred caught one of the  bass of about 10 1/2 inches. 

We had to go, after fishing maybe two hours. 

 

Big Largemouth and More Action

It might have been the last Brian and I fish together for a while, not just because he hunts during the fall. Both of us, though, felt confident things will work out, but for the time being, he's getting Thursdays off, while I get Tuesdays and Fridays. I've lost my every other Sunday. Took paid time off today, and I'm just very glad we got up before dawn, met before sunrise, and rode over to Clinton Reservoir. We fished it some this past late spring and summer, and have got a large portion of it mapped out in our heads. 

It made a difference today. We still have that far shoreline in the photograph to explore, as well as the waters near the dam, but today, my hooking a smallmouth bass where that occurrence made sense, made all the difference. The bass leapt off the hook, but I soon understood that by trolling the deep end of the slow-sloping flat (in about 10 or 12 feet of water), we could probably find more fish. It wouldn't matter if the Storm Hot 'n Tot was always on target. The idea was to troll extensively and persistently. There were acres out there to cover. 

It worked pretty quickly. The largemouth I caught was 21 inches. I tried to weigh it, but I don't think I was able to do that correctly. The crankbait's hooks had done no visible damage, so there was nowhere to hang the bass on the scale hook from the mouth. No way was I going to damage the fish to do that, so I tried hanging it on the gill flap where the scale hook would do no harm. I got only four pounds, 11 ounces on my 15-dollar Berkley, and I doubt that was accurate. As you can see, the fish is chunky. And all the length-to-weight conversion charts put a 21-inch largemouth at over five pounds. 

Brian trolled up a little pickerel on the Hot 'n Tot I lent him. I lost three other fish on the troll and missed a hit. One of the fish I lost impressed me as bigger than the bass I caught. I was sort of playing with the braid with my left hand as I held the rod. Whatever I hooked immediately took off on a run like a hybrid striper's--the line burned my hand. 

Brian and I have had 30-inch pickerel on the brain this whole time. That's what I think it was--a really big pickerel taking off on a power surge that unfortunately ended with the hooks pulled free. 

I guess we did pretty well today, especially considering the fish on and lost, when there was not a cloud in the sky. I noticed no more than a few very thin strands of cirrus. For the most part, absolutely blue from all four corners of the horizon. Later on in the day, my wife and I hung out at Round Valley, enjoying a meal from Meditarranean Seafood, she reading a book and me shooting photos, while the sky overhead had no trace at all of clouds. 

So a classic cold front day. As I drove to Brian's house with blue just beginning to gather in the east, temperatures were as low as 56. When we got to the reservoir it was 64. When we left around 10:00 a.m., it was 74. It got warm later today, but bass and pickerel react to so much sun  And yet every fish we hooked was out in sunlit water.

Fishing means making effort. Getting up when the alarm goes off at 4:45. Or some other time much earlier than that. It means passing between the unpleasant certainties of the work routine, to a freedom that always promises a better life. And there in-between, before you get to where the fish make sense for you--and even in a way you feel gratitude in direct relation to them when you release them--you run up against doubts that threaten the fishing you go ahead and do. Because it's not about the resentments that become doubts. Not about others you think are that resentment's object before that resentment seems to disguise itself and turn on you. Only, all along it was about your own life, and before the water accepts you back, you feel you're only wasting your time. But it's always the water that wins. 

Mountain Lake