Nice Crappie, Hybrid Stripers: Lake Hopatcong Cold Front

Walleye weather, no, not with no clouds at all above, from shortly after 9:00 until 4:15. We struggled under as much angling adversity as a cold front ever gives, except that temperatures weren't terribly cold--36 when we began and about 50 for the high. As we raced out of Woodport on Lake Hopatcong, I knew the 45 degree water temperature was due to the shallows--six, eight, about 10 feet at most--of the entire Woodport acreage. I was curious how much warmer the water in the deep points region remained, and relieved to find it at 51. Perhaps a greater relief came in the form of relative calm compared to the weather forecast. We had brisk breezes for short periods of time, but even longer periods of complete calm. So motionless the boat would remain that instead of jigging in place, I casted the Rapala ice jig, and Gotch jigger, to work it back along the bottom through intervals.

My friend Joe Landolfi caught the first fish after two hours or so, a good sized crappie from the Great Cove side of Chestnut Point, 34 feet deep on the bottom, Gotcha jigger. We raced here and there before I caught a yellow perch by one of those casting maneuvers, Rapala ice jig, three inch. No big deal with that, but a dash of interest. I can't remember for certain, but believe Joe's hybrid came off Elba Point. Think I remember noting that I finally witnessed a fish here, having never before, but having tried a number of times. Gotcha jigger, 40 feet deep. I jigged up another crappie on same at Pickerel Point, 38 feet deep, an 11 incher. Both of the crappies came to the surface with their eyes bulging out as if they had the bends, but are these depths sufficient for that? We've never noticed walleyes or hybrids with the same condition. Finally I hooked my hybrid in 40 feet of water at Sharps Rock, Gotcha. These weren't the big beauties which frequently enough make dreams real on Hopatcong. Both were about an ounce or two over two pounds, and a half to an inch over the legal size limit of 16 inches.

A great, long day. It had seemed so tough at first that I feared we'd be skunked. No walleyes seemed to stir, although we'll never know what the few hits we missed were. 40 feet down is dark and remote from open skies. But I always believe barometric pressure has to do with it somehow. Perhaps I am superstitious about this; I have no specific evidence for the belief, but I do know that nature is much more subtle than what we see and what we can reason and compare on such a gross level as the darkness of those depths and the clarity of the sky. I had said to Joe within the first two hours that my bet was we'd catch no walleyes--but that we might catch hybrids.

http://www.fishinginnewjersey.blogspot.com/

Miles Davis and the Return to Fishing

A frequent flyer on the right side of my brain, this half, owing to a right stuff of chemistry, behaves like a powerhouse. I've never believed it's abnormal, but different. Our culture is more suited to accommodate brain functions that serve ordinary means, rather than the wonder of why we ultimately do anything. A true culture of the arts and philosophy--not excluding angling, the outdoors, and business--allows for discipline without any crisis or conflict between how-to and the happiness of realization.

The right and the left sides of the brain can sort of reverse politics in a way that's confused, since the whole brain is really the actual fact. The left side is preferred today for its commonsense. But the right side represents or symbolizes the true home of productivity (including job creation). It's been thought to generates original ideas, passion, and love, although further research suggests the comparison between the two halves is not as divided as previously thought.. The right side was also thought to be responsible for authentic sexual response, intuition, and appreciation of beauty and value. It goes without saying that "the right side of the brain" tends to be marginalized as much as we remain trapped in cynical and uncaring attitudes, or caring, rather about getting things done in an unhappy way that would question why, desperately obsessed rather than experiencing happiness and joy. Surely a drive to get at the cause of our discontent--which is what the obsession really amounts to, if the notion of achieving understanding is repressed--could end with finding answers. 

On November 17th, 2004, I disembarked with my son, Matt, then five, for the Delaware River between Barryville, New York, and Narrowsburg, New York, Narrowsburg is about 110 miles from home. I remember the morning was partly sunny, fairly mild, maybe 50 degrees--the snow in the bottom photo is actually from March 2005 across the river from Barryville. After driving several miles up route 206, I put my Miles Davis, Doo Bop, c.d. on. The music never stopped until we arrived at the bait shop in Eldred, New York. I was on one of the most exquisite journeys I had entered into for years.

Matt felt perfectly happy. Although we spoke very little, he beamed with awareness every time I looked back upon him in the rear seat. (We hope this strange rite of distance from our young children--for their safety of course--hasn't affected them adversely.) It was as if he were cradled in my euphoria generated outward, connecting with him and my total environment.

I remember how the road fit in my hand. No longer bang, rattle, boom down the highway, but a seam of energy. Not coarse energy, like coal burning, but cosmic infusion, love itself. I hear nuance in music anytime, but it can strike hard and be in dissonant relation with other variations in the instrumentation. On that day the music's source gained transcendent resonance, with no loss of my awareness being anchored in the road. Matt's favorite piece on the c.d. is "The Doo-Bop Song." And if the most poignant passage of the entire collection is wondrously paradoxical when Andy Griffith's simple whistle (recalling fishing) rises over the drive and rage of the Davis band. Davis's subtle trumpeting over rages of instrumentation is reminiscent of Griffith's whistle.

And the deep bass drumming seemed to pound years of fishing left behind back into me. This trip--we caught a number of good sized smallmouth bass, a largemouth, and a pickerel--as exquisitely mystical as it was, seems most importantly to be the turning point in my life back to fishing as a serious recreational pursuit. 

During my teens I fished an average of about 285 days a year--I keep a log which records every day I fish since the start of 1975. At 18, I abandoned taking fishing seriously and fished only on occasion, maybe 30 days a year. I had undergone a conversion to interest in literature, philosophy, and psychology, studied all these subjects in college, but quit before I would have graduated to study and write while maintaining a shellfishing business. It didn't demand much time. Essentially it provided outdoor recreation. And it paid pretty well.

I never lost the outdoors. But it's good to be back at fishing. I'll never recapture just what I had in my teens, but that's not exactly the point. In a way it is the same American mainstream now as in 1978, which I departed from to do my writing and self-employment--very different from the high school to college to corporate job track. But now I too am a corporate employee, another phase I hope to grow out of into full time writing.

http://www.fishinginnewjersey.blogspot.com/

Catch Marine Fish near the Gulf Stream: Outer Banks North Carolina Memories

The Outer Banks, North Carolina, is protected by both wise policy, and perhaps in an ironic way, nature. Hurricanes threaten all built on these islands and penninsula as if to make sure we never fully abuse their natural presence. Many dozens of miles of protected National Seashore allow for solitude even in mid-day summer sun. The Gulf Stream courses near, so mild weather visits during winter.

Fishing can be fantastic. I was eight in 1969 when my father took me to Kitty Hawk Pier, now removed after fatal hurricane damage some years ago. I caught 22 white perch, anadromadous fish rarely present in the Atlantic, but on this day enduring in droves. I had begun fishing that year, first in New Jersey's Delaware and Raritan Canal. I have forever after loved fishing North Carolina piers.

My son, Matt, and I have yet to try the end of Avalon Pier for king mackerel, but we may in the near future. The plan is to buy stern tackle for amberjacks beyond the reef of the Florida Keys, possibly next summer. Add very large groupers to the mix, possibly. I learned how to tie rigs with piano wire-like leaders in the summer of 2007. But we went out with surf rods! Whatever hit my ballyhoo--surely an amberjack--melted my 11 foot surf rod into a noodle. The fish absolutely slammed the bait drifted 25 feet down or so over 80 feet of water, dove into bottom coral, and ripped the line to shreds, all in a matter of seconds. 

Once we're done in Florida, we'll have most of what we need for the end of Avalon Pier. Then it's the matter of competing for space with the locals. I'm honestly not sure how this will work out if we do try.

So far, I've most enjoyed working a jigger, a Gotcha plug-jig, same used on New Jersey's Lake Hopatcong vertical jigging walleyes. I've caught weakfish and blues, but from the age of 17 have never brought a Spanish mackerel over the rail, the principal target of this approach. Many have slashed at my jiggers, but none have stayed on! It just raises the ante on my expectations every year we visit the Banks. 

We've got them trolling Clark spoons, which is plenty fun itself. The world record came from Ocracoke Inlet, 13 pounds, but most are closer to one and two pounds, some three. I've never heard of any recent over five. Cero mackerel are sometimes present in the Inlet, and these do average closer to five pounds. All of the Banks inlets, even the Oregon Inlet, are wild and free compared to ours in New Jersey. Fishing in Jersey is good and sometimes great. But in North Carolina you can virtually have an entire inlet to yourself. Likely you will see a few boats, but not much more.

I am myself a mix of straightforward, honest, factual conventionality, and also remote, strange, symbolic, visionary idiosyncracy, but the "idiosyncratic," at least in my case, is much more objective and open to being shared, than would be popularly supposed. It's sort of like that first photograph up top--you see it too. Perhaps you wouldn't have shot it, seen it to shoot. But now that it's produced, there you go. For me the Outer Banks somehow suits this paradox where I am in some ways better than anywhere else I've been.

Douglaston Salmon Run Full of Fish: Lots of Persistent Success

Never thought I would see dragonfiles while fishing salmon near Pulaski, but today's temperature rose above 80 I'm sure. We fished the Douglaston Salmon Run from just after 6:30 a.m. to almost noon, and then from about 3:00 until 6:00. My brother Rick wanted to catch a steelhead more than a salmon--his first time here--and did just that, catching a six-pounder in no time. Dennis is here his first time, and until this morning had never hung a trout over four or five pounds--his pre-dawn eight-pound brown set the bar a lot higher. In the DSR all trout must be released, and that's fine with us. I saw a steelhead in the 12-pound class caught. My son hooked one about eight pounds--strikingly silver as it lept. We saw a number of others hooked, and heard of anglers who had caught as many as five. Matt and I return to the Steelhead Lodge in November to take a guided drift boat down, so I'm hoping the presence of so many steelheads is a good sign.

My nephew Kyle had three coho's, one of them very good-size at about 10 pounds, my son a 16-pound, one-ounce king. Dennis and Rick both caught a number of kings and cohos. Fish are everywhere. The run is late for the obvious reason of heat, but fish become abundantly present throughout the length of the river from what I hear.

I had a tough day, catching a very small steelhead, and losing upwards of 20 salmon. Everyone loses much more than they catch, but I was jinxed today.

People did very well with fly rods. According to my brother Rick, they hit anything--some used Wooly Buggers, others stonefly nymphs. Sometimes they don't hit--the line catches between open jaws and the hook catches on the outside of the mouth. But even Rick concedes that sometimes they hit. For example, he found a salmon in eight inches of water yellowed near the belly, apparently from digging a redd. This salmon went out of its way to attack Rick's egg sack. 

I spoke to people who caught 35 salmon, having fished all day and not left for lunch and a power nap as we did, and hoping to get some salmon on a smoker. Next time we'll fish all day, bring lunch and water. But that's irrelevant to the fact that we have a lot of knack to pick up on yet. It's the third year for Matt & I. We've caught some fish, but we're still amazed as yet at how well veterans do. If I get a king or two tomorrow, I think I'll be very pleased. In the future I'd like to catch a lot more. Possibly I'll purchase appropriate fly rods for myself and my son, the same that we could use in the surf or on boat at the shore.

Expect another post on the salmon run possibly Tuesday night. We'll be out tomorrow morning beforre heading back to Jersey.

http://www.fishinginnewjersey.blogspot.com/

Pulaski Salmon Surge: We'll Be There

We're headed up Saturday morning, and the late run is just what we want.

I'll be posting from the Steelhead Lodge.

I've been making Facebook friend requests of a lot of anglers, trying not only to build our readership for this blog, but expand the community I store on this little machine. Feel welcome to send a request to me. Some fishermen have huge communities and subscription, so sending a request identifying myself as a freelance writer seems to make sense. But that's what I do with all I approach, and felt the other night that some might feel, "What the hell's a freelance writer doing asking me? Shouldn't it be the other way around?" Well, not when you consider I have two blogs to pitch by posting it on my status with it going to news feeds in turn. I'm not concerned about getting my name out as a magazine writer, since newstands and subcriptions take care of that. I'm much less concerned that others know my name than that they enjoy and are edified by my blog anyway. I'm proud of it, but I hope I don't ttake the center of attention, unless, perhaps, I come across so well that you feel spoken to. But that's not a billboard ego (If sometimes my titles are ;-).

So busy I still haven't managed to fish North Branch Raritan as planned. Killies leftover from Sandy Hook have almost all died off, maybe a dozen left. That last excursion was wonderful, it really washed all the tension out of me, and left me feeling at home in the world.

But this is the big weekend coming. Last year my son and I were utterly driven to catch salmon, most of them shaking or breaking free, a ratio of about 12:1. One of the best weekends of fishing I've ever had. This year my brother Rick, nephew Kyle, and Dennis Fairburn, who grew up with Rick and I, join my son, Matt, and I. This would instantly become a tradition--Rick had already claimed this suggestion when I told him that next year Matt wants to go to southern Illnois with me to photograph snakes. Maybe I can get Rick & company to join us for steelhead next year, but I think in ensueing years we'll all back for salmon.

Check out http://www.fishinginnewjersey.blogspot.com/  I may post that North Branch outing tomorrow night. 

A New Blog to Address Fishing in the Garden State

I have done some fishing since my last Litton's Lines post on the 22nd, but wrote about these outings and posted photos in my new blog, which will strictly focus on fishing in my home state. A link is posted above.

Litton's Fishing Lines will continue with more pieces about fishing that don't specifically review an outing, as well as out of state accounts. The archives for this blog are very large, and my readers will find plenty in the past that remains fresh, as well as material that I suppose will continue to be posted for years to come yet.

I've had a very busy week, and though I have ideas to pursue for Litton's Lines, the next post will wait until tomorrow night or later.

P.S. I posted and the link didn't show. Here's the address: http://www.fishinginnewjersey.blogspot.com/

Smallmouth Bass Escape on North Branch Raritan at Stahl Natural Area

Having shiners leftover from fishing the Delaware this past Sunday, I came home after a marvelous, 84 degree day to find three of the nine remaining dead. I decided on the spot that although I'm pressured tonight, I better go have my fun. I didn't make myself do it. I fully wanted to go try the stretch behind the Stahl Natural Area, North Branch Raritan, here in Bedminster.

In little over an hour's time I hardly began to explore what's back there. In the meantime, two more shiners rolled over, leaving me with two dead, four alive, and I knew well enough to keep the dead. I quickly caught a small bass, eight inches, in the first stretch I encountered, a fairly fast, fairly shallow run. The next shiner I prepared wriggled off the hook into the water before I could cast once. I've always been a fool like that--knowing that the shiner was not on the hook as well as it could be, yet not immediately acting to make correction. Curiosity gets the best of me. I actually wondered if the shiner would shake free, and instead of making sure it didn't, allowed it to happen.

That left me with two alive, two dead. So I put on a dead, not very stiff, shiner. The retrieve seemed so wacky in the clear water, water so cool (60's) and clean I was in love with it, really, as I waded above my knees, the fist-sized, rounded stones under my feet so clean with golden variations of brown coloration they seem to have been--to my memory of it now--like eggs pregnant with aeons of time, as if the millions of years of their existence were about to open with life. Quite an adventure just fell open for me after a day of work, the way music--great music--arises transcendentally, unexpectedly, from silence. A bass swirled upon that dead shiner, then dropped it. I never got it to hit again, and saved the live shiners for a better stretch.

Not far downstream I found a faster, shallower run that still looked like a possibility, and missed another bass on the first cast. Again, nothing more. I climbed the bank and followed a trail to the stretch I could see on down. This stretch, it turned out, is too lengthy for me to have even seen the end of it. Bass water. No doubt. But that live shiner provoked no interest anywhere for what time had passed over into mild frustration.

It's happened before, the habitat undeniably good. I figured the bass here were spread out, although I might come upon one. I had been fishing from up on the bank, and found water shallow enough to climb down and wade. I casted clear up against the opposite bank near a tree with roots exposed--possibly undercut. Immediately a bass took the shiner. When I set the hook, I pulled the hook and shiner out of its maw, then reeled very quickly to cast back. But the bass rushed after for at least ten yards, engulfed that shiner, and turned. I set the hook, felt the weight a second. The fish was gone.

I baited with my last shiner, cast it to the same spot, and took another immediate hit, missed it. Once again, the bass rushed--this time I caught a nine and a half inch smallmouth, with minnow still intact on the hook. Again, a hit, a miss, a rush--a 10 inch bass, shiner still usuable, but I knew I could not keep it on the hook any longer possibly, and when I casted, it flew off. The head was all but torn off, and the flesh I put the hook through soft.

So why not? I had no #9, or smaller, Rapala with me. Would my chrome Baby Torpedo topwater work? I doubted it almost completely. I tried awhile, but it just wasn't as subtle as a shiner, and in about 63 degree water the bass--despite their lightning swift rushes after top speed retrieved bait, and swirls at the surface--would not care to careen into a surface plug.

On a summer evening things might have been different.