The Vehicle Can Determine the Outing

Tilcon  Lake

As you grow older, you become more selective about what you do with your time, not just because you have less of it left, but because over the course of events while using your time, you take moments out to reflect on the value. That's not to say that as a teenager, when I would fish a little creek for redfin pickerel if I had to, my choices--and I fished almost every day year round--did not comprise an authentic pursuit that had a lot on what I do now. It's just to say there's a world of difference between the two.

I was willing to get out and fish for river trout today, until I realized my parking spot would have a pile of ploughed snow on it, and the lot at the other spot, where I don't particularly want to fish, anyway, might not be ploughed out. I don't see why the town would make the effort. All of which got me thinking again of life without four-wheel drive. Lately I've been trying to keep my mind open to reasons why it's not such a good thing to own a Honda Civic, even though that's the vehicle I own, and that's not changing. Always one to save money, I save a lot of it. For one thing, if I were to buy an SUV, I'd only buy a good one with real four-wheel drive and good clearance. But to the purpose of the likes of parking today at the river? It's not like I have a boat on a trailer to pull and launch--living in a condo, there's nowhere to park that. Nor is it that I surf fish enough to justify the cost of a beach buggy.

No, and all told, I fish a lot. With quality equipment at quality places. The Civic serves it all well. I need a second man to load my squareback canoe on top, but not only is that relatively easy to do, the car sits low enough that I can load my 13-footer alone. 

But today, the obvious thing to do would have been to drive to Mount Hope Pond, where I'm certain the ice is good and safe, and enjoy an outing alone. Or with whomever else is up there. That's a bit of a bugbear, because I really do like being altogether alone. When I fished Tilcon Lake a while back, I was all alone, except for some guys way back near the other end. Even though I almost broke my arm when I fell, it hardly ruffled me, certainly no bad mark on a great time. I bought crampons the day after, though. I intend to use them and not end up in the hospital. Had my arm broken, I wouldn't have been able to get my gear back out. 

Instead of going to Mount Hope, I've a lot to do. I was going to fish trout for little more than an hour. River's not a long drive away. I look ahead long term, when I decide on what to do short term. The time I invest in getting stuff done today, means I'm that much ahead of the future. I quit my job soon, retire from the Foodworker's union. By what people tell me, they think I'll do nothing but fish. People don't understand there's a world of value in being a writer regardless of fishing, if you have goals you want to achieve as a writer. Fishing is re-creation, however. No other form of recreation I do--and I do outdoor photography, I hike, I like to swim--rejuvenates me as fishing does. No matter how electric the feeling I have for my writing goals, that connection tends to short circuit and the exercise become no better than being a coach potato. From that drawback, there are two kinds of diversions. One of them the job has served all these decades. Working a job makes me think of my writing as the alternative, and I get a lot of ideas that way. I carry a notebook in my back pocket, and another notebook in my car, for that reason. The other diversion is recreation. Mostly fishing, which inspires some ideas, but mostly cleans out my system and revitalizes me in a big way. 

After I quit my job, I'll have the second kind of diversion. For the first kind, I have Starbucks over in the shopping mall. Maybe I'll find other ways to be out in society, too. 

Edit on 3/23/2025: I've already found a nice alternative to Starbucks. The Goldfinch in Bernardsville. Really nice coffee spot.  

Tilcon

Never Underestimate the Ability to Remember an Outing

I felt surprised we found water about 25 feet deep. We had parked at the East Picnic Area and began walking towards the dike, the pond's 30 acres being a fairly large space. I guess Oliver started cutting holes halfway there. 

With deep water not all that far from the bank, I made sure we opened and otherwise cut holes just off that bank over about 10 feet of water. Any pickerel would surely hit there, possibly bass, too, but I wasn't sure the bottom was weedy. 

Years ago, I used to walk this far and further towards the back of the pond when fishing on lunch breaks while otherwise working for Affinity Federal Credit Union. I caught bass, and I observed the water. I don't recall any weeds...until I got closer to the back of the pond where it is very weedy, but very shallow.

As I headed for where we'd cut holes today, I asked someone with tip-ups set nearer the pond's back if he'd caught anything. "A pickerel," he said. 

So I set a line of five tip-ups along about a hundred yards of bank-front. We had arrived at about 1:30 and had to be out of the park by 4:00, so we'd be packing it in before 3:30. I didn't have much faith in our setup, but Oliver did. In the past, my ice fishing partner and I had always taken at least four hits while fishing this pond. Oliver had set his Jaw Jackers in water at least 25 feet deep, except for one of them set way out towards the swimming beach, where the depth had come back up to maybe 15 feet. 

I was glad some of our shiners and fatheads were set out there, because I want to know about any bass. In 2022, we set a Jaw Jacker over 25 feet of water near the dike, which got hit. I had the fish on for only a second or two, though, and couldn't rule out a catfish. 

When Oliver caught his largemouth--over 15 inches, maybe 16 inches--in 25 feet of water on a little fathead minnow, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. I've never caught, nor seen bass caught, that deep in 49 years of ice fishing. It makes sense they'd go that deep, because the water's a little warmer, but do they inhabit the pond's deepest water of 40 or 45 feet? I would like to set a device that deep sometime.

Once I got my crampons over my Irish Setter pac boots, I marveled at the stupidity of having ice fished for 49 years without a pair. The ice was slippery today, but it could have been a lot worse, and in the past I've been on ice I shouldn't have been on without crampons. Just last week, I almost broke an arm and almost destroyed my Nikon D7100 camera, which, having hung loosely from my neck, got slammed against ice. What explains that other than stupidity? 

When ice as seen in the two photos is slippery, imagine what it's like when like that after the temperature rises above 32. Truly treacherous. I've been on ice like that, and it's almost impossible to walk on without cleats or crampons. That is, when there's a very thin melt, not yet the kind of melt that makes the ice soft. It doesn't always happen. I remember, in 2019, Brian Cronk and I ventured out on five inches of ice with the temp below freezing, having no trouble walking on it. Black ice. Newly formed. No snow on top. The temperature rose quickly to about 50, and we never had any problem with slippery ice. As we walked out, the ice was soft on top. Maybe if the temp had risen only to 33 or 34, it would have been slippery. Not sure how it works out. 

Apparently, the temperature today never got above 29. Holes froze up pretty quickly.

I'm linking to my first ice outing on the pond, my son's, too. It seems impossible that was seven years ago. You probably hear all the time about how fast time goes by, but it really does pass quickly. I'll give you a little advice, if you're interested. Get out and fish. We both know life consists in more than just fishing, anyway, so I see no harm in persuading for just a little more of it, perhaps. I wouldn't worry about fish populations. Oliver and I talked about how infrequently we see guys in their 20's out there fishing. Give fishing another five generations and you might worry about fish populations even less. I, for one, love to spend hours absorbed in reading a book, instead of fishing. I'm no intellectual genius who can read a page per second, though I'm informed that what you see in Good Will Hunting is no lie. There are people who can do that. No, I will lay back with a book deeply absorbed in it for as long as three hours at a time. Everything else going on around me tuned out. That's a longer span of time than Oliver and I fished today, and it's deeply rewarding to do that. But it's rewarding to fish, too, and you can measure the fact against your ability to remember fishing outings. You probably remember many throughout your lifetime, while daily chores are forgotten as easily as the daily news.  

Crampons marked trails on the ice.

About Private Ice Fishing, Too

Nice Pickerel

 

 

What Britain Lacks is Public Fisheries

Oliver Round's pickerel.

In a text, I told Oliver the fish are out there. Yes, I was thinking of salmon, especially, but after Monday, which was a great time alone but without fish, I'm happy to see we broke the silence with a number of live flags sounding off on those springy metal strips. Not that we could hear them above the wind and the conversation. A second fish on for me took a shiner but dropped it. Probably a perch. Oliver lost a couple. Each of us caught a pickerel.

Hearing the Gallup pole results at present, after kind of meeting George Gallup when I was a boy. He was a parishioner at Trinity Church, Princeton, which I attended with my family, and he might have sung in the Adult Choir, which my father led as the churches' music director. As much as choral and organ music as an American cultural influence has declined, it's not dead. I think it will always echo Britain's lead, and I don't believe that a relative lack in American church attendance will end the institution here, partly because of that lead the British world takes. What Britain lacks is public fisheries.   

Out there on the ice I was more aware of I-80 traffic than usual. It's not visible during the summer. 

Less of the sense of being out there. But still...

I had had us walk all the way to the drop-off beyond the shallow flat. That reflected my sense of possibility. I had to pick Oliver up at his house, and on the way to the lake, I did agree with him that right beyond the kayak launch is good. I was actually thinking of closer to shore than where we caught up to him, but in any case, what grabbed hold of me is that we might catch some fish further on. 

One of Oliver's Jaw Jackers did get hit with the fathead suspended about 10 feet over bottom in 35 feet of water, so rather than having been a yellow perch, that fish might have been one of the coveted salmon. I had five tip-ups rigged for salmon set out over such depth, but I didn't do any jigging today, even though I had 1/32-ounce jigs to tip with fatheads. 

Instead, I looked at salmon over my shoulder, figuring that some other time I might focus harder on catching one. Or some. One of Oliver's Jaw Jackers rigged with a large shiner got hit, and he caught the pickerel of about 17 inches. That got me thinking, after something had hit only some 15 minutes before in the same hole, and I got my power auger and began cutting more holes, after suffering that (gas) auger's temperamentality. I knew I set the bait suspended over weeds about 12 feet down, which, I had the hunch, was going to produce. While I cut those holes I watched a flag go up near the roaring powerhead. Obviously, working on the ice hadn't spooked that fish. That flag resulted in a pickerel of about 15 inches for me. The final product of my operation was a short row of tip-ups baited with large shiners on a weedy drop-off but nearer the shallow flat than to the 35-foot deep flat bottom. After we saw the tip-up in the middle of that row displaying a high flag, Brian soon had the pickerel I measured at about 22 inches on the ice.

A friend of Brian's, Mike, had showed up before we started catching the pickerel. He hung out awhile, and his cocker spaniel never seemed averse to the granular wetness and patches of shallow ice water up on top of the ice. Temps might have hit 53 degrees. I say that because my car thermometer had registered 50, and it felt warmer out there after a couple of hours, not because of my heavy clothing. Wind probably gusted to 40 miles per hour, and we had to reset some wind flags but not too many. Ice was about 8 inches thick in most places, probably 10 inches where I set that short row of tip-ups. 

All equipment in Brian's Jet Sled for the haul home, the ice had already firmed up significantly, meaning the temperature was 32 or colder at our feet, though it was 41 driving east on I-80.

  

 

Brian Cronk's slightly less than 22-incher.

Nice Pickerel

 

As for Friedrich Nietzsche and Prime Meat

I suffered so much unconscious (and semi-conscious or I wouldn't know it) resistance to this outing, I was afraid something would go seriously wrong. I might have fractured my upper arm or elbow, but if so, it's a hairline break I'll just let heal. 

Last time I was hospitalized, it was a fiasco.

It was near the end after sunset when I had all but completely relaxed. Yes, enough to have lost just enough attention to slip. If the arm's broken, it might be why my camera isn't, as, without thinking, I went down in a way to lessen the impact. It hit hard. I had hung it loosely around my neck. Now I know better than ever why they say Nikon's D7100 is a beast. 

Victim of a high-speed motorcycle accident when I was 20, I decided to be less the victim by just letting my cracked rib heal. That time I had no doubt there was a break, but I can't remember exactly how I felt that break. 

I took two Tylenol for this one.

Now about the fishing. Skunked. Like on Cranberry with Oliver, not a hit. Oliver wasn't able to come today, and that got me bummin', because we had had such a great time on the pond recently, and naturally, I wanted another great time. I didn't realize I would go into nature alone and move from real unease into greatly confident self-renewal like I haven't felt in years. Go work at a supermarket if you want to be with people--like they'll tell you you need. That will rob you of self like nothing else will. 

I read Nietzsche on my breaks from cutting meat. 

In my car. 

Puts things in balance.

I'm given a black uniform, so the supermarket must be in on it.

Today at Dow's, Laurie got my shiners...and fatheads. It's the first time in 49 years of ice fishing that I've bought fatheads. I have bought them in the past from Dover Sports Shop (another one bites the dust), to use for stocked brown trout before dawn (and another one down, and another one down, and another one bites the dust, yeah!). 

Fatheads for salmon. The setup was right. But for only two tip-ups. I also jigged a small Kastmaster and set tip-ups with really big large shiners for pickerel. You never know, one of the many bass might hit, too, but nothing hit at all today.

I know fish have been caught, because I saw blood stains at two holes from as long ago as a week, can't tell for sure. 

Fish are out there. 

Another thing I'm pretty sure about. Fish get clued in to what's going on, in their own way. It's why I joked to Kevin Glenn that the flat at Lake Hopatcong State Park is a strip mine operation. Every year the pickerel and perch populations get rejuvenated but within days the action through the ice seems to freeze...not because all the fish get taken home. Only enough for need of good spawning get taken, but the fish that remain, they shun what gets set out for them. 

They laugh at little jiggy-wit-it, too.

As for Friedrich Nietzsche and prime meat, the man had a weak spot. 

He never understood women.  

 

State Park

 

Circle Hooks for Ice Fishing

Today I played out a fish better than many in this pond, and I thoroughly enjoyed the give-and-take on the Dacron, not having played one on it for three years. Just minutes ago, I uploaded an ice fishing video to my Litton's Fishing Lines YouTube channel, and I checked the date. February 14, 2021. I remember it crystal clear. My wife and I had just bought the Honda I drive. I made an issue of my spending Valentine's Day ice fishing, and she made an issue of making sure I went.

That fish, not surprisingly, turned out to be a pickerel of just slightly under 18 inches. I know that, because I took it home. The moment it came through the hole, it came through dripping blood. That pissed me off, and I immediately vowed to stop at Dick's on the way home for circle hooks.

Recently, I read a Chris Pierra post on Facebook, and his persuasion of the use of circle hooks ice fishing all but convinced me. Old habits die hard, and I've used plain shank size 6 Mustad  hooks since I used to buy them by the loose dozens at Brunswick Sports and Hardware of Trenton in 1975. I went online and saw expensive options as expected, but really, size 6 circles hooks for 90 cents apiece? It's obscene.

What convinced me was seeing the blood on the fish as I lifted it out of the pond. Yes, my wife wants me to bring home more fish. I don't have to remind her about the Y bones until later. Maybe I'll divulge in a later post whether or not I was able to remove them. Patience, patience. A lot on my plate and the pickerel won't be much!

Pickerel have white flesh and a mild flavor. Old Bay seasoning will be interesting cooked into it. But I release almost all the fish I catch. All I can say in favor of taking a fairly nice pickerel is two things. For one, most of the pickerel here are smaller. They might be stunted. Harvesting some might help the size increase. And secondly, there's less competition against the bass population.

Oliver out-fished me again. When we fished with Cronk and Kevin Glenn the other day, Oliver caught the most fish, though Kevin caught the larger pickerel and perhaps the larger perch. Today Oliver caught three pickerel, his biggest slightly shorter than mine perhaps, lost a hook to another, while I missed a hit and had fish take four shiners and fatheads from me.

What happened that's very interesting is that on two or three tip-ups, Oliver set fatheads only two feet under the ice on his beloved Jaw Jackers. Something got one of them. It could have been a perch, but then again, maybe it really was a trout.

Why pickerel cruise around out in the middle of the pond, far from the bottom of the sharp shoreline drop-offs down to 15 feet, beats me. But they did exactly the same in the Princeton Day School pond I fished during my youth. 

I got to Dick's, where the smallest circle hooks are size 1/0 and a little more than 50 cents each, which is really expensive. Why someone doesn't compete by producing cheaper bronzed hooks that will rust out easily if they DO gut hook, which is possible, when they would be sharp enough...they don't have to be chemically sharpened and all that expensive jazz...beats me. 

At first, I figured 1/0 is way too big. But I gave two different brands of the hooks a careful look, and decided the ones that are a dollar less expensive per pack will do fine on large shiners, and they'll work for Yum Dingers during summer, too. A 1/0 J hook would be too big and heavy for shiners, and for Yum Dinger's I've been using size 2 plain shanks that look bigger than the 1/0 circles at Dick's. Oliver's using circle hooks of about 1/0 on his Jaw Jackers, and he has no trouble catching pickerel as little as 12 inches. That said, I do want to find smaller ones of size 6 or at least size 4. And I really would like to find a reasonable price, but tonight I didn't feel bad when I squandered 10 dollars of my very hard-earned money.  

Smaller Pickerel

Another Smaller Pickerel

Preparing to Set the J-Hook

Tightening Up with Loki

Slightly Under 18 inches

Nice Bass Through Ice

Mount Hope 2025

 

Ice at the Valley

It got really cold, in case you missed the news. Colder than forecast. My wife had -7 on her thermometer, leaving for work at 7:00 a.m. yesterday. That's Bedminster, not Sandyston in Sussex County, where it was colder. It explains ice all the way across Round Valley Reservoir to the right side of the photo, shot from the camper's boat launch. 

Oliver Round was out fishing elsewhere, in Morris County, where he had five inches of ice last he was there. Friday last week? Nine inches today. 

Also frozen is the corner to the left of the Main Boat Launch. 

There's as much as two or three inches of ice--very suddenly, I was there when the snow began and not a trace--where they keep the park ranger boat. 

I also checked out options for getting on the Swimming Pond, and I found there's a DEP No Trespassing sign where the short trail leads onto the ice from the back of the Main Launch Parking Lot. I asked about it at the office, and I was told that indeed they're not allowing access there. (Another case of denied access.) They have nothing against anyone ice fishing anywhere on the pond, except for along the swimming beach, perhaps, but you have to be off the ice and out of the park by 4:00 p.m.

My suggestion is to heed the law and access the pond only from the East Picnic area. Go ahead and enjoy the long walk in, packing to leave well before 4:00 p.m. I agree, it's not fair to us. Access should be reasonable, and we should be able to fish at least until dusk, but don't upset them. That's what happened in the first place with COVID. People broke rules. People took the power from their control. That's why we have no access near the dike. 

As things are, we're allowed to ice fish on the reservoir and on the Pond. 

That's plenty generous as it is. 

A While Back

 

Wetsuit Boots

Kevin Glenn & 19-inch Pickerel

I never voiced it to anyone, but I expected the lake to be watered over under the snow, and for much of the snow to be melting in the water on the ice, gray-patched. I figured we'd deal with it when we got there, rather than to forewarn the others to no purpose. Brian and several friends were out here on Thursday, finding as much as six inches of ice, so that ice is still there and melting virtually not at all, because that's ice water on top. It basically insulates it from thickening. With temps dropping to zero or nearly that the next two nights, that water on top will freeze and make walking much easier. 

Even this evening as we made our way back to our vehicles, we were able to walk on top of ice nearly two inches thick creating a layer of water underneath it.

I figured that with holes cut Thursday, temps above freezing since then, those holes didn't freeze over thickly. Snow accumulated fast, weighed on the ice, and pushed water up through holes. What my theory might not explain, though, is how water is on the ice a good eighth or quarter mile down lake. Brian did mention someone ice fishing down there Thursday, though... 

I've fished when water is on the ice a lot in years past. What I didn't expect was my boots leaking it in to make my socks soggy. Have slogged through water six inches deep on ice and not got wet, but I've had these pac boots for 25 years. It's time to find a way to waterproof them again. They're great, warm boots.

Once we did get to our cars, temps had dipped from 22 to 17, and you might rightly wonder how I survived some three-and-a-half hours in that environment with wet feet. I felt reluctant to tell anyone, but eventually I mentioned it to Oliver, before I did to Brian and Kevin. Oliver said, "They're wetsuit boots," after I had spoken of how well insulated they are, my feet not especially cold. 

I can't remember if they're 1200 or 600 grain thinsulate, if I have the terms right, but I think 1200. 

Oliver gave me a couple of vermiculite hand warmers when we fished on Thursday, and I accepted them, eventually asking where he got them. (I've had a bunch in my study among my equipment, but I believe they're all thrown out, long ago expired.) He told me Walgreens, so on Friday, coming upon the Walgreens in Bernardsville, I bought a couple. Never had need of them today. In fact, I was so warm after cutting holes with Kevin's electric auger, I felt like taking my coat off. 

Much of the time I didn't bother wearing gloves.

But the hunting bib I've borrowed from Brian weighs on me. Makes walking difficult. Or it did especially because 10 pounds of ice had glommed onto it. Three years ago it was no such trouble. And I did a lot of bending over when setting tip-ups. Crouching and pressing on the knees to get back up is difficult. It all wore on my back and I had a moment when I feared the stress might have been too much. It wasn't. 

We did catch fish and you see photos of some. Kevin might have caught a 13-inch perch, but don't quote me on that one. Oliver did catch one 12 3/4 inches. Both Oliver and Brian caught nice-sized crappies. Other perch got caught. The two pickerel. 

I finally got to see some of the latest ice sonar projected onscreen. Pretty cool to sit comfortably--I didn't try today, I witnessed--and watch your jig onscreen...while a fish nearby takes sketchy interest in it at best.

Easy to imagine that watching the fish take interest and eventually strike onscreen must be pretty cool. 

Most device screens, by what I've gathered, are liquid crystal and fail if they freeze. However Kevin's screen is made, he told me it's a touch screen, too! 

  

Glenn & Cronk

Brian Cronk with a Nice Crappie

Oliver Round and Crappie

Oliver Round and Pickerel

Temps Ranged from 22 down to 17, and ice built up on the leg bottoms of my very warm hunting bib. On the soggy boots, too.

My Only Fish. 

Three Years Ago