Fishing Spots Considered: Diamond Backed Terrapin, Bird Photographs Suggest Wilderness

Since I plan to fish Meadowlands stripers some time this weekend, I thought I would share some images captured there a couple of years ago. I really wonder how common (or not) diamond backed terrapins.

Just have to get the tide schedule and meet the sweep of forage out towards Hackensack River, which draws bass in as the water goes out. My only fear is that with this weather the place will be jammed. Last year we did best in chilly, raw weather.

I was dying to be reborn on Merrill Creek Reservoir Sunday. I had phoned all the bait shops, to find herring at the most reliable--Dow's. Yeah, I would drive the 90-mile round trip just to buy bait. But coming back from walking our Labrador, Sadie, I saw my wife drive in, and went over to greet she and my son.

"We have a problem," She said.

Times like this I still need to tell myself to behave well, even though I'm 51. I just sucked it up and set our hopes on the 29th, although that date is unlikely too because of school demands. Matt's off for an overnight occasion with friends and will do school work most of the day Sunday. Our inflatable boat seems all ready to go. Registering it was easy and inexpensive. The 55-pound thrust MinnKota Endura, etc., does not seem to me to have been very expensive, since we will use the equipment, I hope, through Matt's college years during summers. 

The herring is for trout, crankbaits and tube jigs for bass--largemouths and smallmouths--although I bought a couple of nice Matzua crankbaits at Dicks this week and have trolling them in mind for trout, just ranging water with an eye on the map and the graph--spot a fish, drop a herring down. Matt uses nightcrawlers--not exclusively--for bass. A Worm Blower, a hypodermic needle on a air injecting device like a container of reel lube, adds buoyancy, and I have to say it's simple and effective. In fact, I read in J.B. Kasper's "Freshwater" report in The Fisherman a couple months ago that a six pound brown was caught at Merrill Creek on a nightcrawler floated above split shot from shore by use of a Worm Blower.