Bass Remain a Mystery Despite Publication Online

We haven't been to Blue Mountain Lake since 2015, when my wife, my son, and I searched for the nonexistent Upper Blue Mountain Lake, believing at the time that it did exist. We did find an area well grown over that looked like it might have been the lake before the dam was removed, but I'm not certain the lake ever existed, though it seems likely it did, given that many decades ago the area was a vacation community.. My uncertainty about Upper Blue Mountain Lake goes to show that even with the internet, facts can still elude their certain representation. All that's left to do is hit the trail and see for yourself. You find what looks like the imprint of an impoundment from many years ago, but you can't be altogether certain. You view the map featured by the best article on the situation you've found, and it looks like Upper Blue Mountain Lake was planned on but never created. 

I didn't fish during our 2015 visit, but in 2014, I did, when only my wife and I came. I caught a bass, but in the post on the outing I gave way to a rant about the Tocks Island Dam ordeal. In that post, I said the dam project was all for nothing, but given that the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area came into being instead of the reservoir, it's clearly arguable that something good came of it. It's good I've grown up since 2014, but I still feel sympathy for the people who lost their homes.

Today's bass came on my second or third cast with a Wacky rig. When we had walked the quarter mile or so into the lake from the parking lot, and I had got to the water's edge before my wife showed up, a young man got in the water and swam across to the island. I put a cast near where he had got in, imaging that his having stirred up the bottom might draw a bass over. It would have measured nearly 16 inches long. 

I continued to work my way toward the dam. A couple of trout anglers had taken position there in such a way that I could get around them and fish the corner where I caught the bass in 2014. But where I fished at present, I felt something peg the worm, and I set the hook into a little bass that got off. I did fish the corner to the right of the anglers in the photo below, but not much more than that. It's nice feeling satisfied with one fish, and there are times when that's a good catch. Besides, to really fish Blue Mountain Lake effectively, haul a kayak in. Or ice fish it.

I ended up hanging out with my wife and black Lab Loki before I made my trek to the corner, to be certain whether or not I would run into another bass. There's well to be said for relaxing beside a lake in the wild as if nothing else matters, and I lay on the grass and took it all in for about 20 minutes before I finally tried the corner. On my walk back from that corner, I tried my Merlin bird song identification app on my mobile device, only to be informed of no service. 

Not only is there no service up there, the bass remain a secret, even as I write about them and publish online. If you want to catch some, you'll need to jockey in a kayak a quarter mile. Otherwise, consider one bass a good catch. Marvel at the mystery of all the rest. And all that wild space, which nor very long ago was hundreds of affordable summer homes.  

Waterfall on Van Campens Brook, which I didn't fish.

The corner is to the right of the end of the grass.

2013

A Search Bait on the Slow Side

I wasn't expecting our success. I think Oliver asked me where we might fish, and I said Aeroflex or Furnace. I wanted him to choose, and he chose Aeroflex because he had hope for salmon. I had hoped we'd fish Furnace, water cool enough yet for muskies. Last I fished Aeroflex from a boat was June 2023. Brenden Kuprel and I fished about six hours and caught eight fish, most of them pickerel. A couple of Junes before that, in 2021, Jorge Hildago and I fished about six hours, getting skunked. Before that, in 2017, I fished Aeroflex with my son, Matt, and we caught three fish: two bass and a pickerel.

Given my lack of success in the past, it's understandable I'd feel surprised when Oliver quickly caught a trout on a trolled Hedden Sonic. We made another pass when my Phoebe got smacked hard, and Oliver caught yet another trout on a Rapala Countdown. We made another circular pass, trying to keep near the weeds in water deeper than 20 feet. I like the idea of trout and salmon attracted to the fertility. 

Nothing more happened, so we went through the shallows and into the deepest water beyond them, hundred-foot depths showing on the graph. 

Temps today never got out of the 50's. The water was 62, a good temperature for the trout and salmon, though I wasn't sure if it hadn't fallen too much and put the bass off. It definitely hadn't. We had a lot of rain. Oliver got chilled in the end, and I was glad we went in when we did, so he didn't suffer any worse. I wore a base layer under my pants, and another under a Woolrich shirt, a neoprene jacket over that, and a raincoat. I felt comfortable all day.  

As if we fished the steep shoreline drops of Tilcon Lake, I imagined the fishing as one and the same, only Aeroflex gets more pressure. At first I felt tempted to use a 1/16th-ounce jig with a little two-and-a-half-inch paddletail, That's how we fished two years ago, getting the jig down into 20-foot depths at the edge of the weeds, but only by using Wacky rigs to search out the weeds and wood in front of us did the fishing make sense today in the way it does at the other lake, and pretty soon, it paid off. The bass fought hard, and I measured it at 18 inches and imagined it must have weighed nearly three-and-a-half pounds. A fat fish. Minutes later, I caught my second, about 15 inches.

We worked our way down lake, catching bass. I watched Oliver hook one that we watched as he moved it from about four feet of water towards the depths where it got off. We believe that bass had to be at least 20 inches. No pickerel today, although one of them attacked Oliver's Wacky rig as he reeled it in to make another cast. I finished with a total of six bass; Oliver caught two. Most of mine were about 15 inches, though another one of them was 18 inches. You have to fish thoroughly. A Wacky rig isn't ideal. No rig is ideal for the weeds in May. If it were July, I'd have used an inset hook on a traditional worm. But the weeds haven't fully grown in yet, and even though a Wacky rig gets caught in the weeds, I can snap the worm free, and otherwise keep it from getting hung up by working it over the tops of the weeds. Fluttering the ends. Only one of my bass took the worm on the initial drop. The Wacky rig is a good one to use as a search bait, but a search bait on the slow side, and that worked very well today. I also caught a rainbow trout while trolling the Phoebe out over deep water on our way back to the launch ramp. We had fished a total of four hours.

 

2023

End of the Spring Season Trout

Fred arrived shortly after 11 when I worked on a poem set in the clamming life. I saved my work, shut down my laptop, and headed out the door, telling Fred he was free to ride with me. It took a minute or two to load his gear. 

I had told him we might do well because recent very high water interrupted the pressure on the fish, but it is Tuesday and the North Branch's last stocking day is tomorrow. Not to mention that Peapack Brook might not have been stocked in two weeks. But I believed in the possibility, though our first stop wasn't going to pan out. 

I began to think my worst fears might be the case. That the excessively high water last Wednesday meant the state didn't stock at all, and whatever few fish remained in the stretch got carried miles downstream! Fred had said we might get away with wet wading, but the drop in temperatures took us by surprise. I'm glad the temps got cold last night and never rose out of the 60s today, though, because the chilly water favored the trout, for sure.

So we put on our waders and walked into the AT&T stretch from River Road Park. I didn't even want to think of limiting the fishing to the spots and casting angles accessible from the bank. I catch a lot of trout there that way, but I wanted to reach the holding water from the bottom of the stretch to the head with no encumbrance. 

It was almost too deep with the camera slung around my neck and the bag getting a little wet. Fred pointed out, though, that the stretch has filled in a great deal recent years. We worked our way upstream. I got hit a couple of times. And then again near the end of our foray I did once, but suddenly, I saw a trout cut across my field of vision. And then shortly after I saw three or four of them holding on golf-ball sized stones where I would have stepped if I didn't see them first. I tried to get them interested in my salmon egg, and one of them seemed to take interest, but I never hooked up. I had already begun thinking of where to go next, and I caught myself thinking we should go directly to Peapack Brook. As if we'd catch nothing behind the police station. Instead, I told myself, "I don't know that."

Fred and I drove to Miller Lane and made our back to the river across the field. Conversation got our minds off the walk, which seemed to take a minute. 

I got hit right away. I kept getting hit. Finally, I caught one. We kept catching them. The action eventually slowed dramatically, but I still managed to lose another trout right out in front of me. By the time we felt ready to move, I had caught seven and Fred four. Fred got them on worms and maybe one on his favored jig. I was into a new jar of eggs.

The first series of stretches we tried apparently had no fish in them. I tried some very fishy-looking riffles and rocks with depths as much as two or three feet, but drew no interest at all and turned my attention to trying the waterfall before we would run out of time.

There we each caught two. 

Fred knew a bigger deep hole, and I was interested. There I caught one more, and Fred caught two, all four of his Peapack trout on the jig. 

Fred's been fishing the salt, hasn't caught a trout since he lived up here, I believe. He was very happy to do well today.

I happened to be framing Fred on the dam when he hooked up on the jig.

Last May

 

Lake Parsippany Bass Tournament in Heavy Wind

Brian Cronk Measures His 17-Incher

I've found Lake Parsippany a challenging proposition under any conditions I've fished there, and when Brian invited me to fish this month's bass tournament hosted by the Lake Parsippany Property Owners Fishing Club, I didn't hesitate, but an extra day of practice ahead of time felt onerous. We could have fished Furnace, Aeroflex, or our favorite private lake.

Turns out that for two hours of fishing or less on Thursday, a few bass wasn't bad, and if we matched that catch in six hours of fishing today, we would have been in third, not fourth place, of six teams. A few guys like fishing this lake and do pretty well here, as first and second place's total length of bass reflects, and I have to say my memory of fishing a few days ago is a good one. Today's will be, too. The first place crew, who were guests, logged their five of a total of eight or nine caught, at 85.75 inches, I believe it was. Over 85 and less than 86. Two members who fish here frequently, the second place crew. caught 84 inches. Third place was 47 inches and some. Brian and I had three bass at 43 inches. 

When Brian and I began fishing, I quickly had one on for a second. It blasted my topwater Mihara popper. Wind already blew pretty hard, the surface choppy, but I tried that topwater anyway. It would have worked a second time, too, but I got it caught in fabric and destroyed the rear treble while removing it. (I do own a split ring tool and an assortment of trebles for just this eventuality, plugs too precious, not necessarily so expensive, to waste.) A Rebel Pop-R worked on my second bass, another good one, lost right at the boat. We had encroached upon a length of water shadowed behind a big tree. 

The water is shallow. About three or four feet nearshore where we concentrated our efforts. Brian got a 17-incher on a Chatterbait; I threw a spinnerbait much of the time, avoiding the hang-ups on stumps that annoyed Brian. He never lost a Chatterbait, though, and must have got stuck 25 times. I was throwing that spinnerbait as 30 mph wind blew us across the lake on a drift that wasn't so fast we couldn't cast and retrieve. A blue and black spinnerbait that might have been shaded too darkly for the intense sunlight, but the water is rather stained. Out there that water might have been five, six feet deep, and I've been told bass are everywhere in the lake. 

Take that with a grain of salt. Some spots will hold more of them, such as the shorelines we had been fishing. Getting carried by the whitecaps on the open water wasn't adding up, and we felt very frustrated, me doubting that I would catch anything, and Brian wondering if he'd caught the only bass of the tournament, things felt so bad. It felt like being on Barnegat Bay in a heavy blow many decades ago, when I was on the water every day as a self-employed clammer. 

I loved that life any conditions I faced, and they included temperatures in the single digits. To take home good pay, I faced everything, even sleeping through Hurricane Charley on my 17-foot runabout with a tarp very well tied down over me, but here's the point. I reasoned that if we were going to pull a little more out of this debacle, number one, we had to face that for us, this was not efficient fishing, but we could make the best of it, rather than wallowing in disappointment. Brian's 12-foot Starcraft has a stern-mount electric, so obviously, we weren't exactly agile at pivoting for the presentation out there.

Nowhere near that!

But if we fished hard in spite of all else, dumping the 10- or 15-pound mushroom anchor repeatedly, even though Brian's shoulder is bad--but he was in the bow--then we stood a chance for certain, because we know bass haunt these shoreline areas. 

It didn't get us anywhere near first or second place, but it worked. My 10-inch dink on a Wacky worm was at least something, and Brian got a 16-incher on the Chatterbait. 

 Last April

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