Let Us Live Our Lives

One of my Facebook friends posted last night an image of Round Valley launch area barricaded off.

I commented, as it occurred to me this wholesale legislation is lazy. Instead of lawmakers working to come up with plans to limit state and county parks use, they just shut them down. At Round Valley, for one example, the least that could be done is have a Ranger on duty, making sure anymore than one man in a boat is an immediate family member. Why on Earth not? If the law givers would do their job by coming up with workable solutions, not everyone would happy as the result, perhaps. But go ahead. Punish the spoiled brats who can't keep their distance.

And keep Rangers in work. Let us live our lives.

For Any Non-Regulars

Any of you who read this blog regularly know I took this pandemic very seriously about a month ago.

Any of you who jumped in at my push-back post....might go back and read those serious posts I just mentioned.

Wildlife Management Areas Open. Important Division Video

I know it's important because customers at the supermarket are still crowding me. This behavior could literally be equivalent to man-slaughter. It must stop, and people are beginning to get the idea that this serious. I tell them to back off. I throw out my arm and show my palm. But some just barge right into my space unexpectedly.

Thousands of us are already unnecessarily dead.

I know I pushed back about parks. But I did not disregard my wife's point.

Long before I watched this video, I decided that with friends, the closest we will get is to fish from separate vehicles and separate canoes.

Brian phoned me on the lake the other day.

Fish & Wildlife COVID-19 Video

Some Agencies Keep Open, Open

Abbott Marshlands

The Encroachment on Open Space

We push back because that's our place. We don't simply agree with the rules, though we observe them. No civilization is on record in which every individual agreed. That would be the Borg. From Star Trek. And not even that, because although resistance was said to be futile, the Enterprise crew won out.

Now Natirar is closed, also. Trish had said earlier the county parks will probably follow the Governor. She also pointed out the park was crowded. Any of us knows that getting too close may mean death these days.

But we must get outdoors. Immune systems depend on sunlight. Vitamin D pills will help, but they are substitutes, and a substitute cannot serve full measure. Being in sunlight-- or even under clouds-- is healthy in more ways than Vitamin D alone.

Do not depend on a "normal" immune system. Boost it even further. Get worked up outdoors, and the abundance of your surroundings is literally infectious, but the only disease you may suffer--maybe not--is mania. And you can find literature documenting superhuman feats of manics. One of those superhuman qualities is heightened immunity.

I once positioned my 17 1/2-foot fiberglass boat--very heavy--so the bow was raised very high. I got underneath to paint the bottom when the supports broke. I actually caught that boat and slowly put it down. Two friends witnessed. I saw their eyes actually bugging out. It was if they could not believe what they saw. Not a word was spoken about it.

The brain has physical power, too. And a manic's brain is north of normal 10% usage.

Trout on Anything

We slaughtered them at the Zoo this afternoon. It got ugly. A small number of fish caught and released dead on bottom. More than the dead are hitting eggs and lures again. Everyone there caught trout. Almost all of the dozen or so others besides the three of us caught many. Little plastic worms worked. Fake eggs worked. Trout magnets. Salmon eggs. I watched Mark Licht fish a trout magnet under a center-pin float and catch one.

One of my eggs got in front of a trout as big as the steelhead I caught when last at the Salmon River, but it didn't take. The largest I caught fell a little short of 14 inches. I saw no other larger caught.

Mark and I had planned on fishing the Musconetcong at Stephen's State Park. I got a phone call from him early this afternoon, when he told me effective at 2 pm, Governor Murphy will have closed all state parks. We planned on another river spot instead. Before Mark phoned again, a nice, high mood felt appropriate in the sunlight as I began loading the Honda. Soon I learned he was right over here at the Zoo about a quarter mile from where I sat, catching trout steadily. I told him we would meet him there in 15 minutes.

The spot on the Musconetcong we would have fished is about an hour away. Instead, we had a grand time right near my home, saving my son and I about two hours' travel time when I have a lot to get done. That faraway spot--and we all know about faraway places--is worth another time.  Today my son and I fished about two-and-a-half hours. I actually stood in the river halfway up to my knees a good part of the time, wet-wading in early April, and the water didn't feel numbing at all. Between the three of us, we probably caught more than 90 rainbow trout.

 Mark impressed me as a Master of the center-pin. In any case, you can see how the method is perfect for floating a fake egg right along that visible seam, where he caught rainbow after rainbow.  Mark's last words today, after I complimented him on some aspect of his method, "I think of this as practice for the steelheads!" The center-pin is extremely effective on the Salmon River.

Musconetcong

Pickerel, Mostly

We did throw plugs and spinners to begin with, but I thought the water temperature was in the upper 40's, and I never bothered to set up the graph with its temp display until after nearly two hours, the water at 55. Matt had just caught his second pickerel, on a Mepp's, size 3, I think. We drifted over 10 feet of water, working shiners deep, when he paused his retrieve to tend his other line. That's when the pickerel hit, a small one of maybe 17 inches.

I had caught one over 20 inches, maybe 21 or little longer, just as we began drifting, Brian having caught a little one by paddling backwards and keeping a bobber out. At the time, we fished the mouth of a tiny cove that looked promising. Matt had caught one over 20, and I had caught another of about 18 inches drifting, before Matt's spinner and the thermometer enlightened us.

Brian ended up catching three pickerel and a yellow perch of about 13 inches. He persisted with shiners, and after I caught a little 16-inch pickerel on a size 6 Mepp's Aglia in shallows near shore, Matt and I paddled towards the island to get out of the wind and cast spinners. Brian called out that he had one on, and we turned to watch saw him hook up and the red canoe begin to get towed upwind. There are bass in the lake of at least six pounds, I'm sure, maybe larger. He lost that one.

Later, he described to me how really big bass of five pounds or better often don't move when hooked. They run only when added pressure provokes them. That's what this fish did, and I told Brian I know what he means.

Matt and I found bass on a flat downwind of the island where the temperature was a full degree warmer. I lost one, then caught the one photographed. Matt suggested we fish a shoreline of the island where a lot of overhanging brush is obvious habitat, and I promptly began paddling with him. Within a few minutes, he had his big one on.

Getting that fish netted was just a little testy.  The moment I first saw it, I felt sure it was a bigger pickerel than any I have caught, and once it was aboard, I estimated it at 25 inches before I reached for the tape measure. Matt measured it at 25. My wide-angle Tokina would have made it look bigger, but the photo is fine as I see it.

My biggest pickerel was a 24 1/4-incher I caught in the dark at Lake Musconetcong. I've caught three or four others about that size, including one through the ice of Hopatcong I didn't actually measure, but as I remember that fish, it wasn't quite as long as Matt's.

I fought another pickerel when Brian phoned. After I released that fish, I called back and he told us he was headed in.

Get Them Through the Ice