Brown Trout Round Valley Reservoir Shoreline

When I checked on my two lines out with the bails open, one of the reels was almost spooled. I had casted marshmallows and mealworms into about 25 feet of water and let them be. It took forever to reel this 19 1/2 inch brown to the bank, and when it was in view, it became docile as if submitting to capture, something innocent and aware about the eyes on the large head moving me to a kind of compassion, a sense of shared life between us. I began thinking that this trout hadn't been devouring many herring and shiners out in the reservoir, as skinny as it is. I had the natural hope that other trout are. The 24 inch rainbow I caught last December was very full bodied. Perhaps the distinct spots accentuated the life gleam in the dark eyes. Whatever the case, it's a beautiful fish with a tag, which means it hasn't been in Round Valley very long, and I wonder if for some reason it never acclimated to food sources. However, my big rainbow last year had a tag also.

The rainbows arrive along the shorelines first in late September. I really don't when the browns come in, but I guess they're pretty much in close now.

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.