Litton's Fishing Lines: Aeroflex Lake Bass and Pickerel

Pickerel struck plastic worm as Matt reeled it back for another cast.

For how long I've planned on fishing Aeroflex Lake with my son, I don't exactly remember, but I probably had this trip in mind last August as we fished Tilcon. Today was slow progress punctuated by exclamations for two nice bass and a pickerel, and we never felt as if committing to this patient business of trying to get worms in front of bass was any mistaken waste of time. During this first time either of us have come here, I told Matt that if I could, I would fish every lake and pond in the New Jersey Highlands, because each is a unique formation which would interest me.

Aeroflex is New Jersey's deepest natural lake at 110 feet. One hundred three surface acres, the lake is long and rather narrow. Water clarity allows visibility down to about 12 feet, and every shoreline edge we explored featured a variety of aquatic vegetation. Pads are pretty abundant, and I tried slithering a weedless worm over some of them, though we caught our bass 15 to 20 feet deep. Out and away from pad edges along the western side under shade.

These shorelines drop off very quickly into very deep water. We trolled around exploring depths, seeing if any salmon would mark under us. At one point, we must have situated 50 feet from shore--96-foot depth under the canoe. Surface temperature at 80 degrees, I thought it probably impossible any salmon would come up for a Phoebe near the surface. We didn't succeed at marking any salmon or trout and got back at the bass pretty soon.

When the sun went down, we motored to extensive shallows we took note of shortly after launching. Weedless Booyah Pad Crashers got through the thick, but drew no interest until we worked onward along edges and into the mess towards the ramp. We missed more than half a dozen hits, just as many from pickerel as bass, but these fish were small. Having switched to a Rebel Pop-R and managing to keep it from grabbing weeds, I almost hooked a pickerel that probably would have measured no more than 16 inches.