Knee Deep Hybrid Striper Derby this Weekend

 Laurie Murphy:

The Hybrid Stripers are back to hitting on chicken livers, being caught off Chestnut Point,  in the Sharps Rock area, and off Cow Tongue Point. Fish are in the 5 to 6 pound range. Pete Rathjens has made his way to the scale with 2 Largemouth , the first weighing 3 lb 14 oz, followed up by a solid 5 pounder. Richard Hilton’s largemouth weighed in at 4 lb 3 oz.  Max Hughen is having fun catching crappie on small jigs. Two of his fish hit the scale at 1 lb 8 oz, with the third weighing 1 lb 10 oz. Jimmy Welsh also has been catching nice crappie, along with several walleye and some channel cats using herring for bait. Don’t forget !!! Knee Deep’s Hybrid Striped Bass contest is this weekend, starting at 5 AM Saturday,  Sept 19th to 12 noon on Sunday,  Sept 20th.  In person entries can be taken up until 8 AM on Sat.  $20 for members, $25 for non-members. Cash prizes for the top 3 heaviest fish, with gift certificates going to 4th, 5th & 6th place. Hope to see you there !!!  We will remain open with boat rentals & bait and tackle until the end of Oct. Then keep your fingers crossed for some ice this year… Have a great week !

Salmon River Fish Populations Protected

DEC 

Water Clarity Borderline for Plugs

It's been almost a year since I last fished with Oliver Shapiro, though it doesn't seem as long. During that outing, he spoke of an essay about how fishing slows time, an idea serving as an antidote to how the years seem to wing by as we get older. That much said, both Oliver and myself look forward to retirement. I can't wait for the next five years to pass, as I hope to retire in 2025, but part of me seems wiser than my eagerness. It keeps telling me to appreciate the time I have right now. No matter that I would rather not participate in the hurly burly of a supermarket. That part of me knows I would rather do that than be dead. The wonder of the Great Beyond aside, the point of living can be to do it well, even when it seems as if rewards are slim.

Like pike. I paid keen attention when one of them came after Oliver's jerkbait. By the commotion at the surface, I felt sure it was a pike, though Oliver hadn't actually seen the fish to make a positive identification. Largemouths exist in the river, too.

It was off-color, but not as bad as it gets. We tried a spot new to me, though Oliver had scouted it once about 10 years ago. Trails took us well upstream, and though we found fish as the photo shows, nothing came at our plugs as the pike attacked during the previous two outings I took this year. (The first was far and away the best.)

One comes here with an expectation of "river monsters" like those represented in photos posted on Facebook, but reality offers the best reward. No doubt plenty of big fish exist, but it seems clear that only a very few anglers, if even that many, catch them well over 30 inches regularly. I have no plans to keep treading the mud until I start catching them myself. Pike fascinate me, but I'm committed to my canoes and other species as well. On the previous outing, a big pike probably over 30 inches did come after my plug, and the way the water moved around and over its body reminds me of the poet Charles Baudelaire when he wrote of "the wing of madness" clipping him.

Early Season Pike