Narrowing It Down to the Big One

 

Our Lake Hopatcong ritual remains potent as the 20th fall of my getting on the water there approaches. I've invested good money in renting boats from Dow's. On the way to the Ledge or possibly Sunken Island, Jimmy Welsh swept by us in his center console. I was certain he headed for Sunken Island, and when I saw him there, I stopped short at the right-angle turn of the Ledge, immediately marking loads of fish. 

As expected.

There was no wind. That made putting out unweighted herring easy. With four herring lines over the side, I also put a nightcrawler out, by which I quickly caught a white perch. And then herring lines ran though rod guides. I caught and released a 16-inch hybrid, then caught the 4.8-pounder photographed later in the afternoon (below). It had died in the livewell. My wife and I will have it for dinner tonight.

I missed the hit from another hybrid. Setting the hook too soon may be better than setting it too late. After that, I maneuvered the boat with my electric behind an island with no sun on the water. Overhead, not a cloud in the sky.

Kevin quickly caught a smallmouth bass of about 14 inches on a nightcrawler. Got that worm close to rocks. I ended up catching two largemouths on a Senko, losing a nice one on that blue-purple worm and missing another hit. I got a smallmouth on a live herring and a nice black crappie on another of the same. 

I very much enjoyed throwing the Senko. (Actually a Yum Dinger.) Fly casting isn't the only way for fishing line to satisfy. Putting a worm--repeatedly--right where you want it to go is fun. And once and awhile a bass takes that worm. 

We had two dozen live herring and I felt determined to use them. I told Kevin about the time I caught a six-pound walleye on the Ledge at about 2:00 p.m. shortly before my son and I would leave, under a cloudless sky. Today, I had caught what were as yet my only two hybrids before the sun rose. The sun came up shortly after I weighed my big one. No necessity existed that would limit us to that catch owing to the conditions, but I wasn't entirely confident that the Ledge would work out for us. But we would mark fish. 

So, well, we should work for them!

A slight breeze had come up. Unweighted herring rode pretty high over fish marking as deep as 33 feet, as the boat slowly eased along the drop-off towards Halsey Island. Water temperature was 64 when we got on the lake; now it approached the mark of 70 where it would be when we left. Obviously, the lake had turned over quite a bit, though today's heat ran contrary to that. I did miss a hit, and immediately thereafter noticed big fish marking only eight feet down, but I'd say 95 percent or more of the fish were deep. 

I put medium split shots on our four lines. Some of our herring died, needing oxygen. They were getting down on bottom about 38 feet deep. So I looked for smaller shot, found some, and situated them about six feet up the line from the herring. The idea was to give the bait some mobility with the lighter weight, as well as the ability to swim above that weight, should it get down on bottom too deep.

The breeze ceased. A little fine-tuning of our position by use of the electric motor resulted in a couple of little 14- and 15-inch hybrids for me. We floated over the drop-off at 38 feet where fish marked at 31 to 33 feet deep. Where we had fished over 30 feet of water, no fish marked on the graph. Then the breeze picked back up. I repositioned with the electric and lowered anchor. We continued using the little shot, and Kevin caught a hybrid over 16 inches. I caught a smallmouth bass. Kevin caught a big bullhead by turn. 

And then I said, "Kevin." I had seen his rod tip lower. He wasn't paying attention, but it became immediately evident he had hooked a big one. The fish took off on such a sustained run, I wondered if he'd hooked a musky. Or, more likely, a big channel catfish. I would have to coach him. He's not very experienced and I knew the fish was no easy. "Pump the rod. Then reel as you lower the tip back down. Then pump again. Keep a bend in the rod." He kept reeling as the fish took drag, but his getting the pumping motion right enough was critical to getting the fish to the net. It took a long while. 

"Look at the size of that fish! It's eight or nine pounds!" I said, having just netted the biggest hybrid I'd ever seen besides a mounted eight-pounder and a huge hybrid I witnessed getting caught from shore at Spruce Run Reservoir. I weighed Kevin's at 7.73 pounds. Quarter pound shy of eight. It measured 27 inches long. 

Trolled Hybrids