I fall in love with places easily and in-depth. "Shepherd Lake Makes a Promise," I named a blog post this past summer--the lake was mine the first outing. This is why Lake Musconetcong is a serious loss since loads of weed killer were dumped on the lake in 2010, discoloring the water and ruining fishing with habitat loss and 10 fold increase of cormorant flocks. These killer diving birds eat pounds of fish per day; without the aquatic vegetation to inhibit their underwater swimming after bass, pickerel, perch and panfish, they have open lanes to take what they can easily get. The word among some fishermen is "Oh, no problem," but we hear this said of so many issues that really are a problem, although I don't know for a fact that the lake won't come back. I have never been so well placed on a body water as I was at Lake Musconetcong for five years, not since I fished a string of five or six acre impoundments, six of them, at Princeton Day School, a large acreage estate I had permission to fish in my youth. That's my son photographed in 2008, watching silver shiners in Lake Musconetcong water so clear you could read the date on a dime on the bottom five feet down.
At the end of my last post, I said I would have a post following from the two concerning Izaak Walton and Aristotle, but I decided not to do it. It's possible I will revise what I wrote by hand and post it sometime ahead.
Should be a good year of fishing for my son and I, friends and I. Matt's got an inflatable that holds 800 pounds; I'll look into an electric with plenty of thrust soon. I dread what a pain in the ass inflating this boat may be before dawn at Split Rock, to name one destination in mind, but on the other hand, I deal well with necessities and best of all it will get us out on places I've had in mind for years. It does supposedly come with an electric air pump with a cigarette lighter connection or whatever you call it now that smoking is so taboo and cars don't have actual lighters.
Some winter--is this South Carolina now? Someone told my yesterday that it's El Nino again, not global warming. Anyhow, daffodils are up in New Jersey with buds about to open. I have missed ice fishing, although not sorely. When I have the opportunity to do it in the future, maybe next winter, it will come back like a hard, crusty, very good friend.