Seven Points Against Me

Arrived at Neshanic, saw the river, and felt certain today would be a skunker. It's tough enough catching trout during New Jersey winters; to face higher than normal water volume is to entertain factors less in your favor:

• The trout spread out when there's more water available to them.
• And yet they will stay out of the heaviest current.
• Such spots can be very specific and especially hard to find under high water. 
• Every cast results in more approximation with regard to any subsurface target.
• Cloudier water quality means the trout see the jig less clearly or not at all if at a distance.
• You have less control over retrieve. 
• Because heavy current carries both the line and the jig. 

 

Jigged River Rainbows

I think I caught the last two trout from the same spot as a month ago, because I fished it thoroughly after catching my second one. The first was a little over 15 inches and chunky, the second 14 inches and lean. I later found the stomachs of both of them full, however. Packed with scuds, and the smaller trout had some interesting nematodes in its stomach, too. I wasn't fishing conservation water. I do know a spot downstream a few miles where rainbows survive summer, but in any event, my wife likes trout for dinner, and we all know what day it is.

Nice orange flesh these trout had, too. That might not be a hatchery product. Maybe it's from the scuds they eat in the river.

First trout slammed a VMC marabou jig with a little flashabou that really lights up in the clear water with sun overhead. I got that snagged after the knot had weakened, so having lost it, I tied on a black Haggerty marabou jig, and caught the second trout. Sometime afterwards, I waded on downstream, found my VMC on the river bottom, and soaked my right arm to the pit reaching for it. The water's cold. That's a fact. Maybe 42 degrees. Don't know for sure. But it didn't feel so cold, and like once before when I ice fished, I felt that if I were to go in, I could handle it. 

Fact: I'd be dead soon if I weren't to get out. But I think much of the shock and pain of water cold in the extreme has to do with human vulnerability. It's possible to know you have an immediate adrenaline rush on your side, if you will take that side and block out the pain. 

 

 Microlight

Access and Participation

Last night I decided I would drive up to the Dover area, where I keep my squareback, and get last year's registration for it from its safe box. It's perfectly dry & in shape. I compared all the codes with this year's form from the MVC, and they all check out.

So instead of fishing in Hunterdon, I fished the Rockaway River in Morris. The cold was more invigorating than uncomfortable, but my hands felt pained. I must have fished a total of two hours, and I did find interesting holes that would definitely hold trout. Fished on the outskirts of the town of Rockaway and in Denville. 

I drove along the river--best I could stay along the river--from Dover into Boonton Township. The exploration got involved; I was enjoying it, and it served as a deep meditation on given wilds and limited access due to private ownership. I don't believe that the Western way of land owning land is inherently corrupt, but a world is a commonality, and human beings should have abundant access to land and water for recreation. Think of how we tend to enclose ourselves, surround ourselves with objects we identify with, rather than to ensure our health and vitality by participation in the larger world. There are better and worse ways to do that, too, and to only seek out opportunities that cost relatively large sums of money begs the question: Are those activities being pursued for their own and your sake, or does money represent a value you produce only by work on others' behalf?    

As I fished in Denville, I thought of all the trout that must have been stocked where public access was available. Just a few hundred yards of it. Trout we pay for by trout stamp and license fees. Most of them now probably inhabit inaccessible water. 

Hunterdon 

Hoping to Fish

Hope I'm not wasting your time to say so, but I hope to fish a river on Tuesday. On call for Jury Duty, don't know what the chances of having the day free. Forecast is OK. 

I feel work & all else cramping my style. The one exception I will grant to the lack of time I fish, is photography. I've been criticized for doing it. As if someone privileged to write on fishing should fish all the time and do nothing else. 

There's a difference between working too hard...and working smart. 

That said, I had a great day on the job yesterday. All the stops pulled, I behaved like a 17-year-old--at age 62--doing hard labor deftly, and then on breaks noting brilliant ideas in a journal. (I don't write only on fishing, as if I should write only on fishing.)

But I'm truly on the fence. Would I prefer to keep working? I don't seem to have a choice until 2025, anyhow, so why think about it...except to hope I fish at least a little more.   

Nice Rainbow River Fishing

Finally, I'm beginning to get the hang of the fall & winter river fishing. This past fall I caught a couple in November, and a couple of years before that in October, an 18-inch rainbow broke the connection between my woolly bugger and fly rod. October a year ago I missed some hits on flies. But such incidents are virtually daily routine for the guys who know how to do it. While I've caught trout left and right during the spring, I've managed to get out some during the fall and winter of recent years, and though I missed the hit from a small brown two winters ago, there's been precious little action.

The main thing is that I've been true to my intent. I've been telling myself I'm going to get out on the rivers during the winter for a few years or more, and though I haven't since November this year, getting out today was a move I would expect of myself. When you stay true to what amounts to a deep desire--no matter what convenient living would have you do otherwise to keep you safe from such passion--the likelihood is that its objective will succeed. And that is to catch trout.

For two years now, I've had boot-foot, 600-grain thinsulate, neoprene Hisea waders, and though my feet and calves felt the chill, the waders did the job for nearly an hour-and-a-half spent in the water. I fished a stretch of river I might have fished on two other occasions, once with my son around 2006 for smallmouths (we got skunked), and once in 2017 with a friend when we caught lots of springtime rainbows. First, I waded downstream more than a hundred yards, hoping to find a hole.

I never did. The water might have been six feet deep. Four or five feet at least, but probably no more than that. I retrieved repeatedly, twitching a black marabou jig, until I felt sure of exploring upstream. There I found an interesting eddy, feeling disappointed in its shallows, too. Trout like holes this time of year. There was a nice riffle upstream that I would fish carefully during the spring, but I shunned it and cast directly downstream where the eddy gets lost and the river's main current begins to pick up the slack.

I felt this was a nice transition in the course of things. Not very deep but I was telling myself even four feet might do. A fisherman can make a fool of himself. I had already told myself I needed to get home and work on a cabinet for my wife. And to think a fish might be where you're casting now despite need to be elsewhere can be no more than an empty wish. And why act on the like? Ever? Because sometimes the feeling you get in relation to a spot you choose to test out is "spot" on. Especially after you've eliminated water, after you've parsed it down to what is, perhaps, the best possibility. 

I felt no more than a little nick and set the hook. The rainbow fought hard. Sixteen-and-a-half inches--no giant, but a nice fish. 

I never took another cast. I got home and got the work done. 

Two Men Dead Ice Fishing

Tap Into Madison   It's a "file photo" used to illustrate the news story. It was nearly 60 degrees on Friday after very heavy rain. Not wise to go ice fish Split Rock. Very sad news, and I hate hearing of stories like it, though it is best to hear them when they happen. 

Big Brown Trout and Lakers at Round Valley

A week ago I began planning on today. I soon ruled out ice fishing, because I realized today might be my son Matt's only shot at the laker he'd never caught before. Come to think of it, I realized also, he had never caught a brown, either. So I daydreamed about what shiners can do. Two years ago or so, I saw a six-pound brown posted on Facebook. Caught from shore at Round Valley. I daydreamed of Matt catching one...not as big, but close. No reason to push my luck. I daydreamed as if it actually would happen. I'm like a child that way. Playing in the fields of my mind.

It's not six pounds. DSLR cameras are truth tellers. Mobile device cameras are magic. I believe there are people who think that brown is pushing eight pounds. I never said how big it is on Facebook. The laker--Matt's first and only--in the photo below is one inch shorter in length. True, it weighed a lot less. But the brown is only four pounds, 12 ounces on my Rapala electronic scale. And only 23 inches long.

We got to the Sporting Life around 9:20, and after we parked in Lot 2, some guy was walking out with a brown of about 20 or 21 inches. Said his buddy had a nice rainbow on Power Bait. Well, that fish wasn't much over 15 inches, but they had got there around 8:00 and enjoyed a bite. 

Matt and I waited hours. We fought the cold. Had a propane hand warmer that helped. Matt did miss a hit on Power Bait. Actually, the line broke on hookset. One rod was baited with the stuff. 

Then, around 2:00, I walked to the car to get a stringer, just in case. Take home some lakers for dinner. I ran into someone in orange weather overalls on the road who said I looked familiar, so I told him my first name.

"You knew me when I was a little kid," he said.

He looked to be about 21. "You were the kid who caught that two-foot-long rainbow," I said. This back around 2014 when I was a lunch hour regular.

"Yeah!" he said.

Nick seemed to bring the fish in, because once he was there fishing with us, action began. He fished a Binsky and did catch a laker before the park closed at 4:00. I caught a little one of about 15 inches, and another 20 1/2. Besides the two trout Matt caught, he missed yet another hit on Power Bait. He could have caught a "trifecta"! 

Why push one's luck? Ask for too much, and next time you'll be ignored. Why is a "trifecta" so special, anyhow? Especially after one's had a day as great as we enjoyed today.

I seem as if I'm a little superstitious about things, but basically, I notice patterns as they unfold. I didn't actually dream up Matt's brown, but why daydream unless to prepare for an event? You even keep it cool by not dreaming the unlikely, so you get just the amount that's reasonable without pushing your luck and making your daydream feel "off" instead of somehow spot on.

It's daydreaming but rational judgment. 

I stood next to one of my rods. I had got a really good cast with it back around 9:45. I stood there and went back and forth in my mind for three or four minutes over whether to reel in the shiner, make sure it's still there, and recast perhaps somewhere else. Don't I seem like a dingbat unable to make up my mind? Doesn't outdoor pursuit require swift and decisive action? But three or four minutes is how long it took me to arrive upon being sure what to do about that rod. From within. 

I was sure of leaving it be.

Five minutes later it leapt off the rock holding it off the gravel and sand. I hooked our first trout of the day. After all those frigid hours.

Imagine had I put that rod elsewhere. (It would have been "sensible" to do that.) That rod in the spot that caught all three lakers.

Matt's brown came not too long thereafter, but on the rod set furthest from our makeshift camp. Matt had gone and checked on it, finding all the line unraveled from the spool, but the anchor knot holding. It was a long, drawn out battle. Once the great fish broke surface wildly, far out from us. Once I netted it, the day's fulfillment was complete.  

Trout from Shore