Leffert's Lake Pickerel

Leffert's Lake is 69 acres, according to Manny Luftglass, Gone Fishin', situated just outside downtown Matawan, New Jersey. Any bass or pickerel that go over the spillway wind up in tidal water. You can fish along the bulkhead at Ravine Road, and enjoy the Green Acres, which includes two docks and casting vantage along weedlines. Water quality is fair. The depths were stained, yet plenty of shallow visibility existed today. Evidence is that aquatic vegetation thickens as the season progresses, but enough depth exists to define weedlines.

I had time enough for a very short stint, little more than half an hour. A 10-inch pickerel struck my willow leaf Mepp's inline spinner on the first cast, and it mattered little to me that I missed the fish. I moved on and caught another about the same size, which struck savagely, taking the whole treble into its mouth. Extracting this was touchy business, but the fish survived in good shape. I lost a good sized pickerel that struck from the outside edge of a mass of weeds, which apparently lunged upward from deeper water, since I began to raise the spinner to clear those weeds, retrieving perpendicularly more or less to them.

That pickerel I lost was the highlight, of course, but I'll never forget having cast in close to stick-ups, the rod tip flying free from the ferrule and slinging down the line, landing in those sticks, the Mepp's hung up. The water was a couple of feet deep, muck unknown. I could have sunk to my waist for all I really knew. I slung off my camera bag and tackle tote, just to prepare myself for thinking of what to do. Then by no thought, really, I pulled from down low near my knees. The Mepp's freed itself. The tip began coming my way, also released from being wedged. But the miracle was that the Mepp's got right through the middle of a complication of about half-a-dozen sticks without snagging, and I got my tip back. Had it snagged, I wouldn't have been able to get that tip, unless I figured something else out, if I found a long enough branch to fish it back, perhaps.