Bass on an Adam Mihara Plug and Some

Practicing for a tournament this coming Sunday, Brian Cronk and I got rained on after we had spent less than two hours on the lake. It came down heavily. My rain jacket didn't keep me dry and Brian's slacks were soaked. Both of us got chilled. We also didn't think to bring ziplock bags for our phones. They actually never got wet, but we weren't sure if the rain would stop. As it turned out, the skies cleared shortly after we left, but temps had come down some. 

Brian's Chatterbait took the first hit, and then one of the Adam Mihara custom topwater plugs I own got blasted. I fired off a Yum Dinger from another rod to place the worm where the hit had come, and I came up with our first bass, 14 3/4 inches. I kept fishing the plug, the surface of the lake yet remaining calm, but a dark line of clouds approached. I caught a 15 3/4-incher that prompted Brian to switch out for a Zara Spook, which soon got hit by a bass that measured 18 1/2 inches. Big chunky fish that must have weighed three-and-a-half pounds. It leapt three times. The photograph does no justice to it. 

And then a breeze came up and it rained hard. I kept getting my plug out there, but the only two hits came as the electric motor took us back to the ramp, Brian trolling the Chatterbait. 

I don't like this particular lake, which I plan on naming in my post Sunday, but today I enjoyed myself out there on it. The lake is shallow everywhere. About four feet. Here and there submerged stumps exist, but you only know about them when you get snagged. A myth exists of weedbeds in the middle of the 168 circular acres, but I believe that's all it is--myth. I had hoped we'd motor out there today and see if we could find any. That of course would be a game changer, if weeds exist. Otherwise, the lake is mud-bottomed and full of carp. Disgusting.

I did catch two bass pretty quickly, and Brian's was a good one. Whether or not a good number of bass can be caught here on a six hour outing, maybe Sunday will show us. Then again, maybe not. The lake did feel like it fished pretty fast today, but we fished a total of about two hours and caught only three bass to show for it. 

Twenty-mile-per-hour wind is expected Sunday, and that won't make it easy, though at least that's not the lake's fault.

End of April Last Year

 

Could the Full Moon Have Meant More?

Yesterday the third year Brenden and I have fished the lake on the second Thursday of the month, the only thing that put a shadow over our hopes of doing even better than last year was the full moon's later arrival. The last couple of years, we've been off by a day. This year, three. The solunar hypothesis was an unproven theory 50 years ago when I used to read about it, I believe, in Bassmaster Magazine. It still is. I do understand the moon's pull on the tides directly affects marine and estuarine ecosystems, but besides increased light during clear nights when the moon is full, I don't understand how the moon affects a freshwater lake during the day, although I may simply not know. The truth is, when Brenden told me the full moon would be three days later, I felt we might not do as well as we had the past two years.  

We caught 46 fish in 2023, 61 in 2024, and 40 yesterday. Before I began working on the post you're reading now, I posted on the NJ Multispecies Facebook site a couple of photos and that we caught 39 fish, my having forgotten the 21-inch pickerel I caught. Most of what we catch here have always been largemouth bass, and most of the rest, pickerel. I wound up with 14 largemouths, three pickerel, and a rock bass yesterday; Brenden caught 13 largemouths, nine pickerel. His biggest bass measured slightly under 20 inches. We fished six and a half hours. Needless to say, it's a liberation from so many recent days getting skunked or catching one fish. Brenden hasn't been doing badly down the shore, catching stripers and bluefish. 

I always do well on the lake, but it doesn't always fish fast. When three fish get caught over the course of a six-hour outing in September, patience is tested, but even then the same essential connection is made. The bass are almost always good sized.

Through the summer, I'm usually throwing a Chompers Shaky Head Worm, but we've made some great catches on topwaters. We also troll deep divers, and though we usually catch pickerel, we've also caught largemouths and even a smallmouth. Once we caught bass on Chompers as deep as 32 feet, weighting the worms with slip sinkers under a bluebird sky, but usually I'm fishing 15 feet or shallower, throwing the worm unweighted on a an inset hook.

The weeds weren't as grown in yesterday as they will be, so I threw a Wacky worm. Caught all my largemouths, the rock bass, and the big pickerel on purple and brown; my other two pickerel hit a Bogosian jerk bait. Went through a whole pack of purple Yum Dingers. Fish kept pulling them off the O-ring and hook. Fish I didn't catch. Fish I did catch. Looks like I'm headed to the Blue Star Shopping Center in Watchung to do my grocery shopping at the new Shop Rite. I can pick up a few packs of Dingers on the way home. 

It's not an entirely predictable situation, although for all I know, if we fished nearer the full moon, it would have been more so. Maybe not. We saw herring dimpling the surface on nine or 10 occasions, but never encountered the great bait balls of last year where bass and pickerel hit jerk baits left and right. Brenden caught a few on the Bogosian yesterday, but I started doing so well with the Wacky worm that he switched and pretty much stuck to that presentation.

Although we caught some on a weedy flat--enough to tell us we probably could have caught more there--a definite pattern emerged yesterday. We found most of the bass staging along steep shorelines and often right up against the bank. Last year, most of the fish came from seven or eight feet of flatwater where the bait balls swayed back and forth, although all three years, we have caught some of the fish where we found most of them yesterday. 

I had forgotten my sonar unit, so we never got a water temperature, though I suspect it was in the upper 60's. For all I know, Brenden's 20-incher could have been a male, but I doubt it. Probably a spawned-out female. He also caught an 18 1/2-incher that had a concave belly as if it had just lost weight. Maybe that fish was a male? He fished the same lake two weeks ago and caught a 19 1/4-incher like that. So who knows? The water temp two weeks ago was as low as 57 and as high as 61. 

We did see a male definitely guarding a bed. And further along our course nearly all the way around the lake, saw another that I couldn't help but tempt. (I don't seek out the bothering of bucks on beds.) I had already cast, and my retrieve brought my fluttering worm right in front of the fish by a few feet. It promptly punched forward and sucked--I set the hook. I measured it at 17 inches and quickly got it back in the water to return to its defenses, although I hadn't witnessed any such action. Just a bass sitting still over a clear space on the bottom. On another occasion a couple of decades ago, my son watched a bass fend off intruders at its nest, put a worm down, and came up with a 17 1/4-inch male. But just how big males get in New Jersey, I don't know. My reading goes back almost six decades, and I've been informed for five of them that males are smaller. 

Brenden also saw two bass swimming in a circle and exposing their flanks, probably spawning behavior he's seen elsewhere this time of year. (Some would simply assert that they're spawning, but critical thinking is so much more fun than making assumptions--unless you're playing at "making an ass of u and me," as one would ass-u-me.)

When Brenden told me 1 p.m. had passed, I felt shocked. The time had passed very swiftly. We did almost get all the way around the lake, but we still had a few hundred yards to go. I almost could have stayed out and completed the course; the fish had never stopped hitting. But I had told my wife we would go to New Hope in the evening. Since our bathroom is getting remodeled, we stayed in Lambertville. 

We did go to New Hope. Visited Farley's Books. Ate dinner at River Salt. At Farley's I went directly to the philosophy section and first came upon Robert Pirsig's unpublished writings, now published under the title On Quality. Brian Cronk had recently finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Brian told me--a couple of weeks before I began studies of Nietzsche and Goethe--that Pirsig unites the Romantic and the Classical, which is exactly what I need to follow up on after those studies. I did read Pirsig's classic decades ago, and it will help to read it again soon. 

I also came upon John Dewey's Experience and Nature. The 400-page work will be worth reading, I think. 

More fishing yet to come this year. Looking forward to letting all else go.

Most of the pickerel we caught were small.

Over reached, but yeah, fat pickerel.

Rock Bass

Slightly under 20 inches.

Nice 18-plus inches.

61 Fish

 

Lockatong Creek Delaware Raritan Canal Confluence Access and Fishing

Foremost is the towpath bridge. Behind it, State Highway 29.

My wife and I are staying in Lambertville. The town situates along the Delaware River. Naturally, the possibility of fishing that river again, since Thursday last week at the wing dam, arose as a clear and present urge to act, the forecast thunderstorms not having arrived. Off I went, headed for the Tea Table Rocks upstream, also known as the Fingers, a series of rock formations jutting far out into the river, creating myriad pools where we've caught smallmouth bass. And walleye have been caught there. I once saw one about 22 inches on someone's stringer. I caught a couple of smallmouths while wading among the Fingers in December, too. 

I got a momentary view of the river from Highway 29, and it did not look good. So once I got into Stockton, I took a left and parked near the bridge to Solebury, PA. From there I walked out on that bridge and examined the river below. Running high. Deeply stained, but not thickly muddy. Too stained to fish comfortably, let alone probably too high to wade among the rocks effectively. I did catch a smallmouth from the deeply muddied Delaware on a Rat-L-Trap during summer once.

We didn't have too much rainfall down here. The river's level rose upstream. I felt certain that streams like the Lockatong Creek flowed clear. Before I left home in Bedminster on Monday, I was confronted with the choice to put my waders, salmon eggs, and microlight rod back in the car. I knew I couldn't foresee what might possibly arise, but I felt set on fishing the river, if it didn't rain much. But what I didn't think of was rain to the north, river high and stained, Hunterdon trout streams clear and fishable.

No big deal. An alternative fascinated me more than trying to pick off one or two rainbows late in the season given the stocking schedule pertaining to those streams. I hadn't fished in a long time the mouth of the Lockatong where it forms a confluence with the Delaware and Raritan Feeder Canal. Judging by the looks of a photograph I took on Opening Day 2012, my son and I visited the spot when access was better. Many decades ago, an earthen lot existed across the road, completely grown over and fenced off now. 

I felt surprised to find any pullover at all. Privilege is clamping down on access--as if we're not all privileged in America--at what I feel is an alarming rate, pushing American values back before the years of the American Revolution's defeating Great Britain. You can't fish in England as we can fish in America. No matter the British democracy. That society is essentially ruled by monarchy, which means--as it does in any case of monarchy--that privilege has an upper hand that excludes so many opportunities ordinary subjects would have to fish. 

I parked, despite the "No Stopping. No Standing" sign. I took note of the Division of Fish & Wildlife stocking sign posted on a tree there. Absolutely, I resolved to fish--come hell or high water. With that sign from the Division present, I knew I had a chance in court. 

And I felt disgusted at the effrontery to access that "No Stopping" sign represented. Can you believe it? In 1979 three friends and I camped here. We put a 12-foot Starcraft on the canal. One of my friends and I fished muskies. After doing that, I walked upstream, fishing as I went with a Mister Twister, catching 10 smallmouths over the course of about two miles and having climbed untold vertical elevation. The Lockatong flows pretty quickly down and out of the hills.

I guess the other guys wanted to get high, rather than fish hard.

But I fished today. Up here, only about three miles from where the canal begins at Bull's Island, the canal flowed high and deeply stained. Only where the tannic flow of the Lockatong flowed into the canal was some clarity present. I fished all the clarity I could find, and deep into the edges as well, except for upstream of the bridges. 

I hooked a musky about 30 inches long here in 1977. It didn't stay on the hook, but you can imagine that such a deep break in the canal structure as this confluence would attract them. I witnessed a friend of mine, Joe Kasper, fight another musky the same year at the same spot. It leapt right in front of our faces, throwing the hook, a small one about 24 inches. Tiger musky. I saw the vertical markings clear as day. 

When done below those bridges, I walked across the road and looked down over the bridge, curious about any further possibility of access. I saw that to the left, a deep hole might hold some bass. Black, tannic water. (I've caught Maine smallmouths in tannic water.) I don't remember the creek being tannic here in the past, but that's beside the point. I didn't want to fish any longer today. That disgust I had felt had taken over, and I just wanted to get back to the Air B & B and write my post. But before I would walk back across the road to my car, no ticket on its windshield, me feeling as if I were being judged by passing traffic for being in the wrong, not in the right we sportsmen understand, indeed I stayed in the right, turning the corner of the metal fence and making my way to where, yes, it's possible to access the creek. 

If I were to be ticketed, I'd already conceived a defense by the rights of the American Sportsman. (Last I checked, this nation still is the United States.) I would study the constitution, because, seriously, it must be open to the interpretation that public water must be allowed convenient access.  

The Lockatong Creek enters the Delaware and Raritan Canal to the right of the picture. Across the canal, some of the water overflows into the Delaware River, as if the creek would flow across and into the river. Because the canal is only about three miles downstream of its origin at Bull's Island, building an aqueduct for the creek to flow under was not possible. The level of the canal is only so much--maybe a few feet at most--above the river here.

Wing Dam

 

Delaware River Lambertville Wing Dam Smallmouth Bass

Brian Cronk spoke enthusiastically about the Delaware River's Lambertville Wing Dam being especially good for fishing this time of year, after I told him my wife and I were going to stay in Yardley for some of the time one of our bathrooms is getting remodeled. I got in touch with someone who fishes the river, but when I tried to confirm his being there, I got no reply. So I reached out to Brian, who arranged for his friend Paul to meet me. The two of them fished together during their teens, having known each other since middle school. I texted Paul and we made plans for Thursday at 5:15 pm. 

On Tuesday, I tried to find access on the Pennsylvania side first. Looks like the only access is for people who live in the townhouse development(s), a big change from years back when anyone could walk out there. Around 1978, I caught a 15-inch smallmouth from the Pennsylvania side. 

I drove across to Lambertville from New Hope and found parking where I saw another fisherman get out of his car. I got to the river there, but almost a quarter mile upstream of the dam. With all my heavy stuff, I decided to fish for a half hour or 45 minutes from where I stood. Nothing. Although the water had some depth. 

When I returned to my car, I checked on the sign where I had entered the lot. The threat of getting towed meant I wasn't coming back. I had already driven south to where a lot exists by the canal, and you can walk the tow path. That's where I decided I'd return after having scaled down on my equipment. I soon told Paul I'd meet him there and to go light. 

The hike was a good mile. A little longer than I had thought. I asked a couple of guys making their way out at about the time we had arrived, about the fishing. No one had caught anything, so I understood I had to fish more intensively. Rather than immediately setting about at retrieving a jig in water too slow to maneuver it through drifts, I cut my Ned rig off the fluorocarbon leader and tied on a Yum Dinger rigged Wacky. And instead of marching out to the end of the dam, I fished the shoreline by leaving the dam and walking upstream, but I got hung up so much, finally breaking off, that I decided to focus on the first 75 feet or so of the upstream side of the dam where water was slow, not very deep, and unappealing. "Smallmouth might spawn here," I told Paul. 

Besides, it was the kind of "nothing happening" spot every one else might feel contempt for.

I cast far enough that I could plumb some depth at first, Paul fishing not too distant on my left, and then I finished retrieves by fluttering those ends of the worm, making sure not to get hung up in the rocks. That's what worked. And while I was surprised at having a pretty good fish on, as if nothing gets caught here, a better part of me understood I had laid out a plan and it had worked. There's plenty of bass in the river.

I quickly measured it. It's the second fish I've caught from the wing dam. One smallmouth at 15 inches from Pennsylvania. One smallmouth at 15 inches from New Jersey. 

Paul took a couple of good hits. He worked an unweighted plastic swim bait on an inset hook, by what I could tell. I had a small fish on for a second and got pegged by another that felt better than a sunfish or rock bass. I fished the fast current on the downstream side of the dam with the Ned rig to get that interest, where depth might have been five or six feet. Shouldn't have been surprising there were some fish in that flow, but I wouldn't stay there for the rest of the evening.

Instead, I fished the upstream side on out towards the river's center, watching the speed of the current increase as I went, aware that I no longer fished where bass might spawn. Not that I was aware the females had spawned and the bucks guarded beds, but the bass I caught, though chunky, didn't seem to bulge with eggs. It likely was a female at that length, though perhaps not. It does seem likely the females have spawned by now, though, and if so, some of them probably remain fairly near areas where they released eggs. 

We fished less than two hours. Didn't stay out to dark itself, though fairly well into dusk. Paul has endless fishing stories to tell. It was great catching up on fishing in the Mercer County area where I grew up, as we walked in and walked out. My favorite of his stories is about Prospertown Lake, which actually is in Monmouth next to Mercer. I fished the lake in my teens. He fought the biggest bass he had ever hooked, and he's caught six pounders. He says the bass was eight pounds. It rose towards the surface and he thrust his rod tip down underneath that surface. No matter. The great bass leapt, shook his head, and threw the lure. He told me what that lure was. I believe a Zoom swimbait, but I forget.  

  

Paul

Jersey side of the wing dam. Current goes between the wings from both sides of the river.

Delaware River Smallmouths

 

Don't Get Stuck Judging an Issue

Brenden fishes wood in the water.

What began for me as a grind I feared would reduce me to a quivering mass of pain and nerves, turned out to be an interesting outing. I had no seat cushion and my upper and lower back tightened, paining me. Problems like that tend to find resolution if you keep at it. I wasn't going to give up, but early on I believed I was stuck, though we would motor at least two miles upriver. Some people feel that after retiring, it's time to back off from active living and wind down, but I still feel youthful within. You can tell I do from the way I talk and write. So long as I'm lively where it matters first and foremost, I'm able to express that physically, too. 

As we progressed through the first hour or two, most of my casts disappointed me, too, which felt alienating, as if I had lost an important part of myself. It was just misplaced. I place a lot of pride in casting accuracy and I wasn't hitting targets. Getting snagged a lot, too.

That proved to be the way out of my malaise. The work it took to keep getting unsnagged began to feel like play, and not only did my back loosen up and begin to feel a hundred percent more comfortable than it had felt, my casting accuracy got right on target. Both rods. The Yum Dinger and the Chatterbait.

I had even feared I wouldn't be using the squareback much longer, which impresses me now as just laughable. Back when we met at Cronk's house, we secured the front of the canoe with a rope. We had the hood of my car opened, having tied the rope at two ends to metal inside; we let that rope go loose, and I dropped the hood on it, which made it tight at both ends. 

"When you stand back from a problem, it can seem unsolvable," I said, commenting on how loosening the rope had seemed hit or miss regarding how dropping the hood on it would turn out. "But proceed with it concretely, and it can be easy."

Same with my back and casting accuracy. Just took longer. But the point is, the mind can play all sorts of tricks on you, and if you don't persist at a problem by getting closer to the substance of it, rather than standing back and playing the judge, you can fail to solve it. It's always substance that frees you. You get into it, and then it's as if the problem solves itself. 

It's the same with writing, too. If my blog posts served as no more than generic recaps of fishing outings, no one would bother reading such thin gruel. It's easy to say, "We got skunked on the Passaic," and pretty much leave it at that. But besides using that state of affairs to make a point of the issue, I wouldn't otherwise have even needed to say we got skunked in this post. 

By digging in, stuff emerges on its own that makes my time worthwhile as well as yours. It's interesting because engagement results from reading a writer who messes around with a text until it flows together as a single unit. There might be a few glitches, but then again, I usually go back and read them, making any corrections where I see need. 

There's a chemistry involved in writing. Just as there is in fishing. It's always a little different as the subject matter or situation varies, but it gets switched on by making the effort. Or just loosened up and allowed to react.

   

On the way upstream, Brenden did get a swipe from a pickerel. I saw the boil. The two of us after big pike, that feels a little presumptuous now as twice we've motored (electric) upstream for them and have seen only a rather small one follow a plug to the squareback. I caught three largemouths and Brenden caught a pickerel and a perch when we fished here in September. I've caught pike from shore elsewhere along the river on multiple occasions, but my biggest so far is only about 22 inches. Brenden's caught them 34 1/2 inches and 36 inches from shore. Lots of smaller from his kayak.

We didn't only fish tight to visible cover. (We fished wood in the water. Pads. I used a weedless mouse.) But because the current cuts against the bank in many places, some of which involve slack and eddies with some depth, I believed I fished possible holding water there. The current, by the way, flowed considerably heavier than I remember from September last year, and I didn't like that, though I adjusted to it, including my ability to position the canoe. 

We also checked muddy shallows. For example, where the river bends in various places, there's a shallow flat like a wide point where the current is slack. I really wonder where bass spawn, there's so much soft mud. Water temperature was 64, 65. The main river channel here is generally 10 or 12 feet deep.  

Watching and listening to birds got interesting. I don't say that only as humorous irony. Lots of wood ducks. A redtail hawk examining the river by flying in tight circles just over our heads. Red-bellied woodpecker. The call of either a pileated woodpecker or flicker. Blue jays. Mallards. A species I don't remember having seen before and couldn't identify. We saw five or six muskrats. A beaver. 

The trees are light green, except for a very few still displaying red florets. Loads of pollen in the air, and lots of stuff on the river surface, even though, at least when we began, the breeze was very light.   

Home sweet home.

I keep noticing loss of access. The sign wasn't there when we came here in September last year. I don't believe it's constitutional to hamper access to public water. Unless, of course, it's an issue of private land. The Passaic River is not owned by a township, lol.

September

Always Good to See a Fly Rod Catch Stocked Trout

Back at it in Millington, I have to say the Passaic River really didn't disappoint, even though the lack of water clarity turned me off. Tannic when I came last year, the tannic quality there again today had somehow got stained a little by mud, even though it hasn't rained in a awhile. 

I began fishing with my red salmon eggs, but I had only a dozen or so left in the jar. I caught three recently stocked rainbows on those, missing hits from others, and then I climbed the embankment, crossed the road, and got more from my trunk.

They hadn't been salted. Three in a row departed from the hook on the cast. I thought I had salted all my eggs, and since that was the last of red ones I brought along, I switched to those off-white pale eggs I normally prefer. 

I caught a couple more trout when Brenden Kuprel showed up unexpectedly, introducing me to his cousin who had also come along. They took station downstream within distance of talking by raising the voice. We talked just a little about Shop Rite where Brenden and I both used to work, and where Brenden still does work as a manager. 

I wanted to get underneath the bridge, but when a father and daughter abandoned the spot right about when Brenden and his cousin showed, the guy who fly fished downstream took it. (Brenden and his cousin took position where the fly fisher had.) 

I said to the fly fisher, after watching him catch his second trout, "Always good to see someone doing well with a fly rod."

"I do better with the fly rod than with a spinning rod," he told me. Just before he had hooked his first trout, I asked him if he were using nymphs. "Yes." 

Downstream I watched Brenden catch a few on his Berkley Powerbait trout worm under a float. I had caught a couple more and lost another almost at my feet when I decided to go. After I would lose the last pale egg on my hook, which proved to be a very stubborn, perfectly salted egg. Staying on that hook as if destined to serve. 

And indeed. It amounted to one more rainbow for me. 

Millington Gorge

 

Trolling the Mepp's Aglia

Brian told me Clinton Reservoir's water temp reached 48 on Tuesday. The weather can be considerably cooler up near West Milford than in the Dover area, let alone Bedminster. I wonder how cold it was last night. 

Getting the boat off the trailer, I waded above my knees barefoot. Numbed quickly, it was only painful at first. I still had some feeling on the underside of my feet. I felt the point of a piece of glass--it must have been lodged in-between stone--on the bottom of that right foot. The glass wasn't lengthy enough to penetrate the skin.

We trolled here a couple of years ago, catching smallmouths. It's a mystery to me why we haven't caught more trout. I used a Mepp's Aglia Long size 6 almost all day today, almost the full four hours, and I doubt a trout would feel it's too big, but maybe that's why. I don't know.

We had trolled up along a shoreline where we've caught a few in the past. After we turned the corner of a point, my antennae twiggled. I don't always anticipate a catch, especially when cold water makes them difficult. But often, I do. I envisaged myself getting my Aglia right down near bottom among rocks, having asked Brian about depth. We had seven or eight feet, and that felt just right. I was on setting two or three of the 55-pound thrust Minn-Kota. (Brian always has me run it, which is OK. I have a boater's certificate.)

I thought I had hooked a trout, the way the fish zigzagged quickly. I soon had a smallmouth about 15 inches long in the boat. 

"I knew what I was doing," I said. I didn't tell Brian I had felt I was about to hookup.

Near an island, we stopped trolling. We cast a rocky flat with water as shallow as a foot or two, most of it five or six feet. Clear water. I made out rocks as deep as eight feet. I figured that with the abundant sunshine, those rocks would warm a little. 

Apparently nothing was there.

We've done better during the early season along the opposite shoreline. Brian trolled crankbaits, and although the shoreline does not drop off nearly as steeply, and he got snagged more than a few times, he was able to fish them. My Aglia produced once more, another 15-incher. I didn't anticipate the fish directly as I had the other, but I saw a stickup above the surface ahead, which did pique my interest. I took note of the bass having hit just yards ahead of it.

Today was a much-needed release from so much nonsense my brain keeps me struggling with. Working at the Supermarket wasn't bad. It's much better to hold a job than to live in a dystopian world after civilization collapses. If anyone can live in such a world. When the electrical grid permanently fails, won't the numerous nuclear power plants in America melt down, killing all life on the continent? And yet the supermarket did cause me stress. Extreme stress for the first four years or so. Such stress can enlarge the amygdala, which means all sorts of overkill continues to stress the brain. 

On the reservoir today, I got relief from all that.

Near the end of our outing, I heard my phone ping repeatedly, thinking that must be my son. He often pings rapidly. About three minutes later, one last ping.

We beached and I checked my phone. No. The fast series of pings had been from Brian sending me photos he took with his phone. But the ping that came three minutes later--from my son! I stood there wrapped in a moment of awe. Did my thinking of Matt prompt him to send me the message? He almost never messages me, though it is true that when he does, he often sends a few in quick succession. 

He's working on nuclear fusion at UCLA. If we can power the grid by (clean) fusion power, we'll have solved the energy problem.

We had noticed a couple of guys in a bass boat. With Brian's boat on the trailer, they passed by the ramp, asking had we caught any. They had caught one smallmouth. I asked if they had a water temp.

"It's 51 up here and 49 in the back!" 

 

Spinners