More of a Complicated Practice

Pickerel are a fine gamefish that don't deserve slander. That's all we caught today, three for me, besides the six-inch smallmouth that struck my Mepp's Aglia. The pickerel fought hard. I thought the two larger ones somewhere around 19 or 20 inches were bigger than that. All struck a trolled Storm Hot 'n Tot. Another that hit the same lure I trolled was lost at the net, and I missed a hard strike, all of this action right about 11 feet deep on or near the drop-off from an extensive shallow flat. 

We were the second to get on Clinton Reservoir at about 6:00 a.m., and we left before 10:00 a.m. having heard several times either thunder or blasting, though it seemed to be thunder. The sun never really came out. I had spilled Parmesan cheese when I opened the refrigerator at home, which I couldn't get out of my mind. Couldn't find the dust pan, and I felt bad leaving the mess for my wife. I figured I'd get over it.

I did forget it once at Brian's house, but my mood felt troubled. Getting the boat ready to go after we arrived at the reservoir didn't shake that mood, either, though I kept mum about it. I embrace the fishing whatever the mood. It makes me think of what Joe Santiago once said on one of the NJ Multispecies podcasts, that you have to suffer for the fishing. (I think he said so, not Chris Pierra.) Whoever said it hit the issue on the nose, as I see it. Maybe dedication isn't entirely about the number of days and hours you fish; maybe it has more to do with your willingness in spite of such resistance as a mood that tells you you're wasting your time.

Really? 

A good friend of mine served as my writing mentor. He's the author of the novel Kite, published by Penguin Classics. I first got published at 16 without a mentor, but I felt very fortunate to have one during the three years I wrote poetry more and less every night after work. (For all that effort, only William and Mary Review accepted one submitted for publication, but that was Thomas Jefferson's alma mater, so not bad.) Ed finally told me, at the end of our acquaintance, "Write poems." Maybe he meant I should give up on the fishing. Whether or not that's true, he believed in me as a poet, but I had submitted to so many literary journals, I knew something was amiss with the mechanics of my writing. He wasn't telling me how to improve on that, so I figured that by persistent revision at writing fishing articles and essays, I'd get better control of the language. 

I have. Recently, I spent 10 minutes writing a poem. Another 10 minutes of revision later seemed to cinch it. Two weeks after that, I got an email from Swing the Fly magazine telling me that if it's OK with me, the poem will be published in the online version. Will $75.00 be sufficient?

I keep telling myself some day I should go back and work on the poems from those three years, but I believe only writing about fishing could give me the better grip on the workings of language. Nothing else returns me to the earth as fishing does, either. I could be exclusive about birding or hiking. I do both, but I could do nothing but--and be less involved in nature. Fishing is more of a complicated practice by which we engage the outdoors, and it is as ancient as any species of hominid that ate fish.

We both enjoyed the outing, and in addition to investing our attention on pursuing catches, took in the distance for wonder's sake. We heard fish break surface all the way across the reservoir, and we cast to some breaking surface near us. There's the sense that life will inhabit any space nature allows, but we caught all of our fish--besides that little smallmouth--along that flat we re-approached beyond the little island in the photo. 

The conflict between life as a fisherman and life as an artist is understandable, when I feel I've come short on the latter. I think it's worth mention that I'm not the only writer who has deeply enjoyed the life of fishing, although Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway were monumental anglers, setting records and getting out to fish a staggering amount of days and hours, given their creative output. Grey was the first millionaire writer, and though his work is dubbed pulp fiction, I've read his writing on fishing and it's riveting. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature. The fishing these two figures did will make almost anyone feel they've come short as an angler, if they dwell on it long. 

All I can say is I've loved fishing. I look at the photo above and know I still do. Always include the larger setting, including the inner landscape of your life, and let fishing absorb you so the aquatic earth reveals the creation in a religious sense, the sense of something that beckons to you despite everything else that trivializes life.

Cranberry Lake Pickerel

 

Shipetaukin Creek

Traveled to Mercer County this afternoon, needing to visit Lawrence Township Public Library for information on a former business in town. The book on fishing stockers I'm writing and hope to find a publisher for mentions the "Allied Van Lines" warehouse at Carnegie Road and U.S. Highway 1. At least I believe that's what the warehouse housed during the 70's was, but I need to know. 

Have also had in mind (for years) checking the temperature of Shipetaukin Creek at Carter Road, where it is a freestone stream, but not the home of native brook trout, as someone I knew in high school has suggested it is. I know brook trout stocked in Assunpink Creek--into which the Shipetaukin flows--made their way up the Shipetaukin a half mile or so to the old chicken farm, because guys would fish them on lunch break. Brookies also made their way up Little Shabakunk Creek a mile where I caught them. They made their way up Shipetauken some three miles to Carter Road, too, where the high school friend caught them. Stockers, not natives, that found stream conditions better suited to their survival, before summer heat killed them.

Water temperature was 77 degrees, as I expected. No anomalous spring creek there. I've read that temperatures above 70 degrees are lethal for brook trout. It hasn't even been particularly hot during the past week or so. That creek's water temp will go higher than it was today.

Shabakunk

Headed West

Last August at the Finger Lakes, the "Superhost," as online hype has it about Air B&B, gave me a couple of fly rods passed down from his deceased father. One of them is an entry level Orvis. Found that out by calling Orvis, after I found the rod was fractured and imagined a way to graft the break. They told me my idea wouldn't work. I've kept the rod in case some idea might, but in any event, I like the Cortland five-weight matched with an old Medalist that Superhost gave me, also.

In the Sierras next week, I think I'll just use that Medalist. All a fly reel is, basically, is a way to contain the fly line. I would say the drag is essential...if you're fishing steelhead. But by what I've gathered, a 12-inch rainbow where we'll fish is a lunker. 

It's the line I like. I don't know if Superhost's Dad put Cortland five-weight on the reel, but whatever it is casts really nicely on that rod. Don't think I'll bother stripping it off the Medalist and cranking it onto my Fly Rise.  

Fish Dropped from Sky Knocks Out Power

NJ.com News Brianna Kudisch 

Fluke at Holgate

Fished the surf at Holgate, catching one little 15-inch fluke. Visited LBI with my wife. Felt relief, because now I'm up to 14 consecutive outings without getting skunked. Keep track of them in a handwritten fishing log. 

Picking Away at the Bass

I had to make a hundred burgers and fill the supermarket specialty case with various other items yesterday, on top of the normal busyness of a Saturday. I felt quite satisfied when my shift finished, and I came home, put the marine battery in the trunk with the help of my wife, loaded the rods, the sonar, and the GoPro, all other equipment loaded the night before, and went to bed. (I'm no longer keeping the 70-pound battery upstairs, and I'm not lifting it altogether, not without 50% help, but I'm still lifting the canoe along with my fishing partner. I'm not giving up.) 

Up at 4:18, I dressed, poured orange juice, ate a banana and peanuts, drove to Dover where I met Oliver Shapiro at 5:13. We packed his gear in my Honda Civic, loaded the canoe on top, and drove to Oxford Furnace Lake. Not a scratch on the car, but I do need to buy rope rather than continue to use the cord that broke on the return ride. (I pulled over and retied.) I use a heavy-duty ratchet to secure that canoe in the middle, but the front end sort of bounces, caught by the wind, unless tied down. 

We got on the water while plenty of shadow remained, throwing topwaters. I caught a little largemouth about six inches long. Oliver switched-out and caught the first sizeable bass on a plastic worm weighted by a slip sinker. The canoe was situated over about 12 or 14 feet of water. None of the weedlines at Furnace seem well-defined. The water isn't off-color, but not very clear. We were more or less at the edge of weeds, though, and as we began making our way down along the east side of the lake, I caught a smallish bass of about 11 inches by working the weeds with a unweighted worm rigged on an inset hook. 

Oliver made a point of the slip sinker getting the worm down through the weeds, and I agreed a slip sinker will do that. I thought especially of tungsten. I like to fish very slow, though. Weightless, a worm will get caught on weeds one with a sinker won't, but you can usually shake an unweighted worm free and let it drop a foot or two further along. Not always. But in any case, using weight or not is just a matter of preference. I threw a little paddletail jig outside the thick of the weeds, too, but nothing happened. Back at Lake Aeroflex in June, the well-defined weedline and clear water meant putting the little jig on bottom 20 feet down at that bottom edge of the weeds worked wonders. Today I was committed to my favorite way of bass fishing.

"You pick away at the bass," I said. I felt five of them a likely way to end the morning. No lie, but I kind of wish I said so, although that might have jinxed the eventuality. 

I lost a nice one by putting a worm in front of a floating clump of weeds. Even though I set the hook quickly, it was down in the thick already, and as I tried to force it free, it got off the hook. Maybe five minutes later, I caught another one from a clump, which I photographed in my hand. Later, I caught another about the same size from another clump. The two-pounder photographed came from an anomalous spot. There the shoreline is barren and kind of deep--no weeds filling out the water--for maybe 20 yards. Everywhere else, the weeds make a mess of things, but by being patient with them, having long practice at worming, and especially by putting a worm right next to clumps, you can fill out a catch.     

 

Clinton Reservoir