Round Valley Rerservoir Green as November Comes

Heading for Lot 2 put me into an unexpected appreciation of time as I returned for the first time since March or April. I pulled into a space near the kayak, canoe, etc. launch and set a steel egg sinker deep on the drop-off. I began fishing this spot in February, but I had fished further down along the shoreline, parking in the back of the lot, since December 5th when I caught a rainbow over five pounds. The place was vacant once a couple of kayakers paddled out, and as indifferent to me as a desert, but it's what I take in appreciation that enlivens, which is interest rather than feeling put out and a stranger where I don't belong. I make this place a habitation. Why I do it is a whole can of spinach I won't open.

Trees in the background look brown in the photo, but actually most of the trees are still green just days from November. It's as if New Jersey has a Virginian climate.

I've fished at the Round Valley main launch area four times this year & caught nothing so far. Nothing today at the Lot 2 launch. The marshmallow & mealworm combination has worked for some other anglers, but I'll persist at this through the winter, getting my breaths of open air and eyefuls of distant scenes changing with the weather, while I read whatever books interest me. Intend to try live shiners, since lake and brown trout may be more likely to hit them.

The reservoir's an excellent place to find solitude late and early in the year, and in a space wide open for miles around--all that to take in and be amazed, if the thought even bothers to occur, which it hasn't out here for me to my memory, that this is New Jersey. I'm too involved to impose upon Round Valley the kind of busyness happening on the other side of surrounding Cushetunk Mountain.