A Few Striped Bass in Sandy Hook Wash

Got the phone call just before five this morning. Oliver Round was in a Quick Check lot, where his car wouldn't start. We arranged the situation so he would arrive at my house by Uber after he got the car towed through AAA. While we fished later, a new battery got delivered to his house. 

In the meantime, Brenden Kuprel texted me minutes after the call. He was on his way to Sandy Hook. When Oliver and I got there, he had been fishing the Lot A area for going on two hours, having lost one bass and seen some caught. Oliver and I proceeded to Lot B, because Oliver knew it has a bathroom. 

We got to surf's edge to find one of the guys among two or three others had just caught a small bass that must have barely broken the 28-inch size limit. An hour or two later, we saw another caught of about the same size, maybe a little better, and had got word of one getting caught before we had arrived. 

We fished for some four hours. Obviously there were some bass in the surf, all of them having hit in the wash. A strong northeast breeze blew cold, 40-degree air onshore. Low tide I believe was 5:53, which means we did get an hour of fishing rising tide, but for the most part, water was shallow and the waves persistent. Even casting a heavy Krocodile spoon, I couldn't get it over the outer breakers until about halfway through the session, when I cast and cast to fish five or six yards behind those big breakers. I hoped I'd intercept a pod going by and one of the bass would take my offering. 

I also fished a Deadly Dick. I tried a Binsky bladebait on my lighter rod. And I cast an Ava 17 rigged with a teaser.

Oliver gave up throwing lures and tried clam. 

I used to surf fish all the time during the fall with my son. We brought foldout chairs and sort of broke camp by water's edge, holding our rods in surf-spike tubes, watching them intently, usually grabbing hold before one of them got pulled over and dragged towards the wash. 

We did catch a lot of bass. So no interest in the clam Oliver put out dismayed me a little. 

Brenden Kuprel showed up, having walked all the way from Area A. He told me he witnessed six caught, all on the Ava. He was here a week ago. With kids off for the teacher's convention, the lot was full, he told me, fishermen lined up on the beach, catching nothing at all. So at least there were some fish in the surf today. Or had been. By the time I really got involved in casts and retrieves, having had to deal with my black Lab Loki before that, it felt like nothing was there at all.

After I spoke about those years with my son, Oliver said, "Yeah. And if you didn't catch stripers, at least you caught skates." The surf felt all the more dead for none of them being around. The water is still plenty warm. 

On the way over the bridge, Oliver said, "Have you ever been up to Twin Lights?" I saw the lighthouses up on the ridge in front of us. 

"Never have."

"I'm surprised. You're into this kind of thing."

"I just never thought of it, so preoccupied with all else. Do you want to go up there?"

Today I climbed to the top of one of the Twin Lights, snapping the two photos from above. 

Redfish on a Killie

 

The Kind of Guy Who Imagines Things

First photo done on my new laptop.

Had intended to work all day at setting this thing up, but after I ran into trouble with Microsoft Office, I didn't want to try Lightroom until my wife is here. Not that I'll depend on her help with Lightroom, but just her being here will make the exercise more comfortable for me. She thinks I'm kind of techy, but I am terrified of these machines. 

She'll help--I hope!--with Office.

She's actually good at it. I'm the kind of guy who imagines things. That's great for art, but it makes technical stuff a nightmare. 

So I texted her, saying I'd go fishing, 

which is what I did, but I could have been tripping on some mushrooms on the way there. Alien experience. The bodily life of things hollowed out. It was Monday night I picked the laptop up from the Geek Squad at Best Buy, after they transferred all the files and did a minimal--stress on minimal--setup. Regardless, I didn't want to transfer files through Carbonite, as I'm sure there'd be a lot coming across the threshold I had already deleted. They keep files for 30 days. That would have been a mess and would have taken a lot of time, too. Tuesday night Trish and I saw Macbeth on stage after eating seafood at Rod's in Morristown, and last night I worked on this machine. 

I recall--early in 2020--that I paid Staples $79.99 for file transfer, and that after it took a week or two, I checked the Geek Squad price. It's the same price today, $99.99. Set up is an additional $39.99. Programs you're left doing. They set up the order of the files & check that the hard drive works.

Fished a spot new to me

on the South Branch Raritan. I gave it at least an hour, probably a little more. A large pool down below the shallows near and under the bridge photographed, that pool not very deep but deep enough. I worked the jig shallow and deep, never getting hit, trying to come down to reality from all the stress. 

Loki was with me and loved it. The black Lab. 

As I drove off, I felt that I used to have higher standards. I never left a fishing trip without feeling truly rejuvenated. Actually, I judged too quick, because when I got home, I felt that familiar glow of having let the garbage go. 

So it was a good outing after all. I do remember, though, having pulled onto 22 with the intention of buying inexpensive gas and feeling a strange identity with the boxy architecture of a business warehouse. I also marveled at vehicles on the road, as if it's amazing they work. But I'll get this machine up & going.

With today's weather, it would have been nice to have got out in the squareback. Lots of time for that next year.   

Last Year Going the Extra Distance Resulted in a Trout

 

River Smallmouth on the Black Maribou Jig

Mark thinks with the low water fish got caught and taken home. Seems a possibility to me, too, but maybe we just didn't see fish through the water's tannic tone, nor hook many. 

Mark caught a couple rainbows. I had a fish on for a moment that probably was another one, lost a small fish that could have been a sunny, and caught the smallmouth bass photographed below. 

Mark uses a centerpin outfit and usually does pretty well with it. On a springtime occasion, he told me his rive stints are practice for Pulaski. Recently, he was up there for steelhead. The news he has today is that fish have pushed upstream in numbers since the four days that yielded him one. (He also caught three resident rainbows, each about a foot long.) One of the guys he fishes with is fantastic at using plastic beads for the steelhead and caught only four. Mark said of his fish, "It made the whole time up there worthwhile."

My sympathies exactly. The last I fished steelhead, my son, Matt, and I went up there with fly rods in November 2015. I remember fishing only three days. On the first we kind of messed around after getting up there in the afternoon. The second we fly-fished with a guide, and Matt caught the only steelhead reported on the Douglaston Salmon Run the entire morning, a fish of about six pounds on some buggy-looking blue fly. The third day, I caught one about four pounds on an Estaz Egg imitation, Matt fought one that took off downstream, and I almost hooked another. Enough to make me want to go back.

Beautiful warm day today. It's hard to believe it's over already as I write, but as I drove away from the river, the day felt full. I had given the fishing the sensible effort it required. I know these maribou jigs work. I've caught a lot of fall & winter trout on them. Mark with his egg sac under a float that positions so precisely in a pool is a little intimidating, because he seems to always catch more that way. But instead of succumbing to suckedness, I fished that damn jig as if it has the dignity it's proven to have. I was looking at pocket water that did have depth to it, for example. Instead of passing it up or fishing it half-assed, I fished every pocket thoroughly, as if a rainbow might be there that would hit. Or even a wild brown.

Instead, one of the pockets resulted in a smallmouth bass that had taken station, probably feeding. Had I not fished as confidently and thoroughly as I did, I never would have come across that fish. The mystery, though, is why am I not catching the rainbows? Last year, I caught them every outing this time of year. Water was pretty low then, too. At least I had that hit today, surely a rainbow, though I don't really know. 

Before today with Mark, I fished the Flatbrook, where I really did not see many fish, and the North Branch yesterday, where I also saw relatively few fish compared to last year. Both places trout took interest in the jig. They followed. But none lurched ahead and struck as they did last year.

North Branch Raritan flowing low

Last Year

 

Miles of Stream to Wade for Wild Fish

The Big Flatbrook is such a special place you forgive it when you get skunked. I think in all these years, I've caught one trout. Maybe two. Never have caught one in the fall. 

Today I found some. Not many, but at least half a dozen held in a pool about four feet deep. I also tried a couple of other spots where I didn't see any. The stream was almost tap water clear. Even so, if anyone remembers the situation last year, rivers were low and clear then, also. Trout stocked in the North Branch hit my maribou jig despite that condition of very clear, low water. 

That same type of jig tempted some interest, at least. A number of my retrieves had a trout follow behind, a few times two or three, but no hits.

Annually, my wife and I go up there to eat at Walpack Inn. It's not chiefly a fishing trip, and last year I didn't even give it a try. 

I don't know the status of wild browns in the brook, or brook trout for that matter. How plentiful or uncommon. The Little Flatbrook is said to have brookies, and I've read about brookies caught in the Big Flatbrook in the Blewett Tract. What I observe when I'm up there, though, is that many miles of flow exist between access points, so anyone young and full of lust to explore can have a field day.

When, I believe, I was 17, I fished the Dunnfield Creek from the parking lot at I-80 all the way up to the plateau on top of Kittatiny Ridge. Had to do some serious bushwhacking. I caught only five or six native brook trout, but most of them were nine inches, and five or six felt like plenty to me. It was a deeply absorbing, even mystical effort.

 

Low-head dam down near the defunct bridge to Mine Road. Water is shallow above and below.

Roy Bridge

Dunnfield

 

Late October Chatterbaits for Largemouths and Pickerel

One last go at it before cold comes. Late October and the weather is turning. We got on the lake before sun got on the water, temperature 56 degrees, water temperature 58 degrees. The water temp quickly rose to 59 and then 60 at about the time we got off the water at 11:54.

I wanted to feel a big bass absolutely slam my Chatterbait. I've felt it before, and of course Brian has. I never forget him saying, "They hit like they want to kill it." 

Kill it right there and then.

A Chatterbait is a vibrating jig. 

That's the key concept, vibration, which provokes those savage attacks. I have no trouble feeling the bait chatter while using an IM6 rod, because the braid I also use transmits the vibration tightly. I distinctly feel each motion back and forth. Chat-ter, chat-ter, chat-ter and so on. The rod tip bounces just enough, the tip light enough to sway with each chat and ter, but strong enough to resist any sagging.   

I caught a pickerel of 22 inches or so that gave two big thuds when it took the lure, and I thought that was a bass. But never mind, catching a pickerel is fine with me, and when I did end up with a bass, it gave a hard pull, though it hadn't slammed the lure. No matter really. The morning is what it was, and both of us appreciated it. Leave that killer impulse for another day to come. 

I measured the bass. Or tried to. Definitely over 18 inches, it might be 18 1/2 or even 18 3/4. Whatever it is exactly, it's back in the lake. Chunky fish over three pounds. 

I did try a Yum Dinger around algae matts and shoreline brush, but I got hit only once, 

from either a small pickerel or a perch, I believe. Two decisive jabs. Not the tittle sunfish transmit, but no grab when I yanked back. It was a morning for Chatterbaits. In depths of four feet and as much as seven or eight. Maximum depth in the lake is nine feet, but there's a lot of eight-foot water, though more of it is four. Using the portable sonar graph was a really good idea, and I won't forget it next time, either.

Brian's good at Chatterbaits. His favorite. He's good with jerk baits, too, but he models himself as a Chatterbait bassman. He caught a nice largemouth of at least 17 inches, I believe, three pickerel, and three or four yellow perch. He also lost a bass on the leap that was a lot bigger. Bassman regardless, he enjoys pickerel and perch. One of the perch is 13 1/2 inches, the biggest pickerel 24 3/4. I measured those fish, too, and Brian wanted a photograph of the tape measure against the pickerel, also, which hadn't been difficult for the perch, except that it's rusty. For a NJ Skillful Angler Award. If you commit to that program, buy a bump board and always carry it with you. To compromise the slime on a pickerel just for an award is no bargain. I gave up trying to arrange a photo before I would have been certain that pickerel wouldn't survive.

I had hoped to get the post you're reading finished by mid-afternoon, but I got tired, even though I had slept nine hours last night. 

Never got tired on the lake. Tomorrow I have another day of work, and then I have a week off. I groan at facing the job tomorrow but soon I'll retire. I make the best of the work anyhow. It is physical, though, and I'm happy to report that fishing Chatterbaits all morning didn't pain my upper back as the job does. Besides, Brian has invested in Trika rods made of a carbon fiber that results in rods so light I need to look into how they balance with reels. I use a Lew's Speed Stick, and the rod is heavy by comparison, so if I make some money selling photographs online, a Trika will be a treat I can't refuse, even though I managed just fine with the Speed Stick today. So long as Trika makes a medium-heavy power rod. 

I'll try to get out and fish next week. At least once. The Fisherman magazine's editor, Jim Hutchinson, told me he'll let me know if the stripers are in the surf, and if so and all else lines up, we'll fish together. An invitation from someone I've deeply respected for years working with him. If it doesn't work out this year, it might next. I'll be available for more than a week next year. 

Otherwise, I have to transfer data from my current laptop to a new one, so I won't be fishing as much as might have. Regardless, Trish and I plan on dinner at the Walpack Inn inside Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area. I'll bring a rod. 

Red Evo Chatterbait with a big paddletail trailer.

20 Inches

 

Couple Last Shots at Big Ones Before Cold Comes

With the warm weather, I didn't want to pass up on giving the river near work a shot. I fished only half an hour, and got hit only by some panfish or other. Decided that with the water temperature up, I'd use a floating Rapala rather than a Husky Jerk. Amazes me how fast that #9 Floater rises to the surface with a wire leader attached. 

Water level is very low, of course. I did manage to get the plug next to a lot of wood in the water, but apparently no pike or pickerel were on the stuff. 

Water color was a little off as usual. Not clear as Brenden and I found it far downstream closer to Little Falls. Plenty of carp seem to swim in the area. I remember Kevin Murphy, who worked as seafood manager at Stirling Shop Rite for years, telling me that during a great flood when water covered the parking lot, he stood at one of the doors, watching a big carp hugging the asphalt. 

Getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow to fish bass with Brian Cronk. One last shot at a big one before cold weather descends. 

River Trout Soon

 

Vegetation on the Bottom Decomposes Quickly

At least that's as it seems. I was at the reservoir Thursday for a photography session, and I saw a lot of it that sticks above the surface is dead, dried out, and about to disintegrate. I also noticed clean bottom where I'd expect to see vegetation lingering from when the low-water exposure was a field of the stuff. 

In any event, catching trout from shore is quite possible. I spoke to someone three weeks ago who had caught two rainbows. They usually reach the shoreline shallows in mid-September, when the surface temp falls to 70. 

I haven't actually heard of trout caught since, but it's a reasonable assumption to think that if a couple got caught, more have followed and probably preceded. 

I have no plans to fish for them until late December, when I hope Fred Matero joins my son and me again. I just don't have time otherwise. I'm still busy with the photography, because I'm just doing my best to capture changes in the reservoir landscape. My hope is that I can glean a hundred or more photos from my collection of thousands for a book of Round Valley photography. And if that's too much to ask, the collection certainly exists. 

We've just seen the lowest reservoir levels in its history. We may never again see such low water. I was there, week after week, photographing results. In all those years, I never once met anyone else with a tripod, let alone rarely anyone with a DSLR. 

For your own reference, if you're interested in giving shoreline trout a shot, the reservoir level has dropped a couple feet, which means a few yards or more of space for easy casting. We just haven't got rain, and New Jersey Water Supply Authority probably pumped some water out so Somerville gets some water from the Raritan. 

Big Brown

Tried a Six-Foot Ultralight and Four-Pound-Test for Smallies

Tough couple hours with the cold front. There's a frost advisory tonight. Fished the Raritan in Somerville, trying out a Cabelas six foot ultralight, the reel loaded with four-pound-test Berkley monofilament. (I'd use less expensive Zebco Omniflex, but I can't find any less than six-pound-test, unless I were to pay shipping online, so my plan is to buy more Berkley.) First time I've ever used such a rod, and I have to say it felt unwieldy. Too loose. Whippy. I don't think it casts any further than a shorter rod. The little bass of about 10 1/2 inches put up a great fight on it, though.

Had nightcrawlers leftover from Dow's and from the Delaware River outing with Brian Peterson and his daughter. That's what I used, though I still have some. Just drifted them on a size 8 hook. Worked holes and a kind of flat four or five feet deep.

I had walked in only with Loki and my big camera bag along with my tripod. (It's the first time I've loaded both of my cameras in my car for an outing.) I have a certain subject of interest I'm working on. It so happened that when I walked out after fishing, the angle of the sun's rays had got really low and illuminated that subject interestingly. So I'll be back. I didn't have time to hike it back this evening. Going in there, working with the tripod, and walking back to the car and then suiting up in my waders to carry my fishing gear back in to the river was enough for today.

Besides, again, the main reason I came was to try out that new rod. It is a new rod. Still had the tag on it and the plastic over the cork handles. My brother-in-law Jim never got a chance to use it before he had a serious stroke and then died of an aneurism before his treatment had finished. We used to fish together some, but it's been decades ago for the most part. He's in some of the blog posts from Barryville, NY, though. The Delaware. And of course I came today to use the nightcrawlers.

Now I'm wondering if I'll use the rest over the winter for the river trout. Yesterday, I read a The Fisherman article by Captain Jim Freda about them and he says a nightcrawler will sometimes do it. I've caught so many on the jigs, but maybe after working a spot thoroughly with them and getting no action or no more action, a nightcrawler might be worth a try.

Loki

October River Smallmouths

 

Sometimes You Find Few Fish Feeding

Big day of fishing with Kevin Murphy. We met at Dow's Boat Rentals shortly after 11 a.m., when I walked Loki the black Labrador, then backed my car down to unload. A couple of guys hung out by the shop, while Joe Welsh entertained them with more of his antics--throwing live herring into the water where dozens of hybrid bass snatch them up instantaneously, splashing the surface. 

I figured with temperatures over 70, today's catches would match October 3rd last year, when Kevin's biggest hybrid weighed nearly eight pounds. As things turned out, Kevin felt really good about the fishing. He caught his first walleye and a lot of panfish and perch. It was a long and great day on the water, but I did feel disappointed. I wasn't the only one. 

"What have you caught?" I asked.

"Fishing sucks," the guy at the controls of a bassboat said. "We've caught two bass. We've been fishing for five hours." 

It happens sometimes that you find only few fish feeding. Whatever you do, results are sparse, so it's up to you to keep trying and make it good day. Perhaps you expected much better as I did yesterday, or perhaps you expected nothing, as I did last week at Sunrise Lake, and instead a little action is a very pleasant surprise. 

We marked fish like crazy along the deep end of the Ledge drop-off, most of them about 30 feet down over 45 feet of water, but even though I had live herring weighted and set under the boat, only one of those fish hit. The drag set loose, I heard the sound of drag giving and looked sharp at the rod tip. Seeing no bend or motion, I figured Kevin must have pulled on his line. Sometimes it really makes sense to voice concern! It was like 20 minutes later when I reeled up the bare hook. Then I asked if his drag had sounded off! No. 

I also saw the rod tip on one of the other herring rods start dancing, but by the time I tightened up on the line, nothing was on. Again, I reeled in a bare hook. On several other occasions I lost herring, too, though we had no evidence as to what happened on those occasions. I caught a couple of tiny hybrids out there. Little fish somewhere from seven to nine inches long. Many of the fish showing up on the graph were small but many were medium size along with some large ones. 

I had fished a Yum Dinger long and fished it hard. Around rocks. Among sparse weeds. Nothing ever hit. I fished the same spots that produced largemouths and a smallmouth last year. And I fished more spots than that. I remember how much I enjoyed catching bass on a couple of Yum Dingers. Enjoyed them a great deal. 

I also cast and cast a Binsky from another rod, and I did get knocked just once. I fished anywhere from about 10 to 35 feet down. 

I did catch a smallmouth on live herring from about 15 feet of water. A little one of about 11 inches.

Kevin caught his walleye within the first 20 minutes of fishing. He cast half a nightcrawler to the depths where I was casting live herring. I said, "You'll do better by casting to the rocks, but you might catch a walleye there." About 20 seconds later, he was hooked up to one.    

Kevin's Big Hybrid

 

Bestow Value on the Adverse Brave the Weather

I should have photographed Oliver Round fighting his 18-inch smallmouth bass. He's had a breakneck busy schedule at work without much opportunity to get out and fish, so it's especially unfortunate he lost that bass, though his having hooked and fought it, complete with aerial display, was a lot better than not. 

Caught the smaller walleye and a hybrid on an ultralight-light power, 5 1/2-foot spinning rod I built from a St. Croix blank that put me back $70.00--just for the blank--years ago. Six-pound mono. What a fight! The big one fought very hard on my son's Speed Stick, but the walleye that I'm pretty sure didn't weigh four pounds--I put it back--put up a great fight on that light rod. "Maybe a catfish," I said at one point, as if 10 pounds was dragging. 

The hybrid was 17 1/2 inches.

That big one in the photograph above? It's the third five-pound, 15-ounce walleye I've had weighed in at Dow's. Unless any of the three weighed six pounds before I had them weighed in, I've never hit the six-pound mark! I was so sure I did today!

Raw weather felt good because fishy. I know people think wretched weather is that. No matter how you romanticize it--and I do romanticize it--there's an objective element in its being adverse. I don't argue against that. I just know--otherwise--that you can bestow value on things adverse. And probably live to ripe old age, too...if not live longer than you would had you not been brave. 

Even cigarettes. Jeez, I confess I used to smoke. They are medicinal. I never hear anyone say that or write that, but they not only put off anxiety--if just enough to get an edge over it that lasts a bit--they put you in a meditative space. They will kill you, if nothing else will, though it remains likely something else will. Of course, they complicate one's health, too, so whatever kills you might not have if you didn't smoke. But a lot of medicines are adverse for health otherwise, which is not to say, either, that smoking is wise to take up. I really do not recommend it. I wish cigarettes would go away, because I hate to see people hooked on them. It's better to find out what causes you anxiety and deal with it. It's even possible that the attempt to escape anxiety by smoking only elevates that anxiety. 

All I know is that since I quit three years ago, I've desired smoking very little. It makes me feel I should have quit at age 25, but of course, I really should never have smoked. Nevertheless, to attest to smoking's medicinal quality, I began smoking in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, aged 19, while suffering "the most severe manic-depression I have ever seen in all my 20 years of practice," according to the Director of Psychiatry of that university hospital of the Ivy League, Richard Brecht, who served as my doctor. My father knew whatever hit me was immense. He was not wasting a cent on anything less than great care. When Dr. Brecht told me that, after I had come back around, he held my gaze unflinchingly, a big smile growing on his face. He was truly amazed, and I loved the guy for loving his subject matter and admiring such survival of total annihilation. He started to talk about Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway--manic-depressives he admired, but this guy! Right in front of him in his office! But I took a cigarette from another patient on the hall and smoked it...Dr. Brecht never complained at all. Ah, smoking did help. Talk about things adverse! Many people think manic-depression is horrible, but if you yourself are manic-depressive, I doubt you really believe that. The artistic temperament overlapping with the qualities of illness facilitates the ability to romanticize manic-depression, and no matter what others tell you, they can't take that from you. Sturm und drang! Heavy weather, man!  

I had four days of fighting urges after I quit smoking. Just said no to them. Never bothered with any of the techniques. No drug. No nicotine patch. Just NO.

A little more on the great adversity, the best book on manic-depression I've read is Kay Redfield Jamison's Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament , but according to another book, Manic-Depression and Creativity , even Isaac Newton, the physicist, was manic-depressive, not to mention that the illness is that of the saints. (Often nicknamed the Divine Madness.) And rock 'n roll. Certainly. 

China Grove!

The artists Jamison's book refers to are mostly writers and musicians, like poets Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, composers Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Long digression today, but who wants to leave the world without letting his readers know just a little about him? I've got 30 years left, perhaps, but I don't want to pass on opportunity when it arises. 

The fish got caught on small herring. I always used to believe the big herring are better, but they told us at Dow's the small herring have been doing it. So we got a dozen-and-a-half small, a dozen large. I cast & cast a Binsky. Oliver cast a Sonic. No hits. Oliver did miss a hit along rocks on what I think was a Senko-type worm. My Yum Dinger only got pegged once by what I believe was a yellow perch. 

I did mark fish as deep as 39 feet, which really surprised me, but most were 20 to 30 feet deep. Water temperature 70 degrees at the surface, go figure with fish swimming as deep as 39 feet! All of the fish I caught came on no more than size 10 trebles as weight. The biggest came from the shallowest water, besides Oliver's smallmouth, which came from the same 15 feet or so. Don't know how deep the herring swam down otherwise.     

  

Released the smaller walleye

Teeth! They don't cut line.

Lake Hopatcong in the Fall

 

Bucket Brigades, Pressured Fish, Spot Burns

Yesterday I read old blog posts & came upon the two about Sunrise Lake and also the Burnham Park Ponds. Three years ago, someone left a comment on the Sunrise Lake post that continues to alarm me, about the bass being "gone." The obvious implication is that my post, dating back to 2012, is probably complicit in directing the bucket brigades there. It's not easy to draw the same conclusion about Burnham Park's lack of fish, because the second of two posts about the two ponds indexed by Google in 2012 talks about the absence of fish compared to previous times. (Namely around 2006.) The population had already been assaulted when I first wrote about the ponds in my "Reel Time" column for Recorder Newspapers and then after six months posted the article on Litton's Fishing Lines.

Sunrise was already a pressured pond when I posted about it, but the people I met fishing there put their bass back. Besides, I assume both Sunrise and the Burnham Park Ponds have taken spot burns by Fishbrain for many years. The whole point of that website is to mark spots and present them to account holders. I met someone at Burnham Park today who caught a pickerel there on a spinner and released the fish, and he mentioned Fishbrain, which made me feel relief to have been reminded, because it's strong evidence of more involved than just me being a fool. 

I've always had a conventional streak of personality,     

very free in offering information to others rather than being tight lipped. It makes me a perfect match for the journalism career I never pursued--besides outdoor writing--even though I was offered a newspaper staff position when I was 19. I worked for Beach Haven Times/Manahawkin Beacon as a stringer when the editor-in-chief decided to test me, giving me a big feature assignment on Long Beach Island housing development. I did such a slam dunk of a great job that he wanted me working for him officially and full time. 

I digress, but only for a sec. At Lynchburg College, where I had dropped out after a semester, I had the deep inward desire to find my voice as a writer in the wilderness. I believed mine was a literary quest, and though certainly Jack London's was that, mine might really have greater philosophical import. Mind you, I did not drop out because of poor academic performance. I earned a 3.8 grade average for a heavy load of 21 credits, including a senior level English course I enabled myself to take only because I had earned a perfect 5 on the advanced placement test during high school. (I didn't even bother taking the AP course.) I found the bays behind Long Beach Island wilderness enough, and I stayed true to that desire I've mentioned, rather than to become a professional. That's also why I wasn't in school. School was too easy. A teenage professional I would have been, no less, as a college dropout. You can just imagine my material success taking off with the manic power native to me. I wanted much more than a professional job could offer, which isn't to say that I never tried to land a professional job thereafter. 

I've often spilled beans as news writers do. 

Look at what I did to Mount Hope Pond. Invited every bucket dragger and his whole family to "lunker" bass shouted out loud in the post's title. I photographed a big one I caught there and put that photo on the page. Who can read that post without feeling the urgent need to get up there! More on that in a moment. You probably notice I get away from such blatant spot burning since the early years of the blog, but rather than seeking any excuse, I'm trying to face a little of what I've done. I was moved deeply enough yesterday to commit to driving to Mendham and Morristown and fish a few ponds rather than the Raritan River with its promise of smallmouths. I figured I'd get skunked instead, but I'd take the punishment and maybe figure something out. No way did I burn the place down and never look back. It rained and I loved it.

Well, I didn't get skunked, either. I fished a Yum Dinger along a shoreline that always used to produce, and I didn't even get tapped by sunfish. Didn't see any, either, which is strange. I switched to a MiniKing spinnerbait, and got hit by something small. I walked all the way around to the back, and that's where I had some action that surprised me. I missed hits from a few bass that wouldn't commit. Kind of behaved like pressured fish. I also had one on not bad sized. And I caught the one photographed.

But there's no doubt the population is decimated. 

The pond was plenty pressured before but always yielded at least a few bass. Same with Burnham Park. The ponds there are within the city limits of Morristown and get stocked with trout by the state, so you can just imagine. The spinnerbait got hit there by what was unmistakably a bass. I felt the click and then felt nothing--the bass had hit the spinnerbait by coming directly from behind it and at me. The other guy caught the pickerel. I also saw a bass that behaved like a pressured fish, ignoring my Yum Dinger. Not to mention that a cormorant stood at the back of the upper pond, possibly lingering from springtime when the species feasts upon stocked trout. They eat fish every day, so it's a sign of serious business at decimating whatever bass population remains. I don't know why the fishing ever was as good as it was around 2006, but the cormorant, just for that example, I believe used to be much more of a coastal species. 

About the biggest spot burn of all of them, Mount Hope Pond is tough fishing. When I began fishing there, I would leave the pond an hour later with as many as a dozen ticks to pull off my clothes. Having caught maybe one bass, most likely two at most, though they would be 16 or 17 inches long. Sometimes 18. The two biggest 19 1/2. My arms got scratched. I risked getting my clothes ripped by briars. It wasn't easy getting around, and most bucket fishermen would sit at one spot, get skunked, and not return. (I never saw a bucket fisherman, and I saw only one who braved the sticks and rocks.) 

It's the toughest pond to fish I know. It's also 18 acres, whereas Sunrise is only three.

The interesting thing is the buck stops with me, 

and yet I let be. I could delete the post on Lewis Morris Park that talks about the fishing. The other talks about New Jersey's first governor in a certain capacity, but whatever--governors, bass, and bass killers are all about power. Instead, I'm forever grateful for the guy who commented, reminding anyone who will read it that the bass are gone, a "travesty" that I can't help but see reflected back on my work. I answered the guy, and he answered in turn. No hard feelings there you can detect with any absolute certainty. 

I'm in with all the guys & gals who pressure fish. That's fishing in New Jersey, but we still have the problem of fish getting taken home, even though, and I make the point again, I never see anyone out there doing it. Besides put & take trout that don't count in the same way. Even walleye and hybrids don't count in quite the same way, because, besides the walleyes in the Delaware and Raritan rivers, possibly other moving waters they enter, the walleyes and hybrids are stocked and don't reproduce, though I put many of them back. Why largemouth and smallmouth bass aren't limited to one or two fish to be taken beats me. Look how strict saltwater management is. We can really use it, freshwater. Sometimes a bass bleeds out. I'll take the fish home and it tastes good. But I've never had two bass on a given outing hooked badly like that.    

Sunrise Lake

Burnham Park Lower Pond

Burnham Park Lack of Fish

 

Something More than Us Creates Our Connection

I'm temperamentally suited to using a Senko-type worm. That paid off yesterday, as I caught three bass, two of them pretty nice ones. No northern pike caught, though one about 22 to 24 inches followed my plug to the squareback on my first cast. Brenden caught two yellow perch and a small pickerel. 

It's odd to favor Senkos here. I've never had any discomfort pitching a jerkbait the entire outing on other occasions while on foot, but from the low vantage of being seated in the canoe, it got tedious and awkward for me. Brenden threw a large spinner for the most part.

The invisibility of pike impressed us as strange. Wood in the water, some pads--cover wasn't everywhere, though common. You'd think we'd see some nervous water and fish. Brenden theorized that for whatever reason, the pike were down in the eight- to 12-foot depths. He thought that would more likely be the case in the summer, though. Water was 69 degrees. Besides, on the way in after sundown, I trolled a sinking jerkbait through that deep water and never got hit.

I described the smallest as an "average stream bass," the first one I caught, which hit next to some sticks in the water, shallow. The second one, maybe 14 inches but very heavy-bodied, hit hard & fast next to a fallen tree's shallow end. Once hooked, it ran so fast out into the depths that I thought it was a pike. The third came when 60 feet or so of muddy bank between cover interested me, as if a bass would move along it. My third or fourth cast, I felt my Yum Dinger get picked up in the usual way on a slow, deep retrieve. It leapt twice, maybe 15 inches or so. 

The Passaic stretches some eight-and-a-half miles between access points, but Brenden later pointed out that had we gone far enough, we might have come to trees in the water forbidding passage. Not only that. From the other side, there could be trees blocking passage further upriver yet, effectively creating an inaccessible flow. Unless you were to bushwhack, perhaps necessarily with a machete, or when the river is low enough, hike the mud at the edge you might sink into. 

There's bass back there for sure. And pike. We got well beyond the sound of traffic on I-80. I felt the weight of my concerns back home lifted off me. The surroundings fascinated me as a whole other system of shared interaction. The yellow of turning leaves signaling the inevitable passage coming of the rest of them. A flock of grackles fed themselves along the bank to our left, while an American egret alighted high up on the dead branch of a tree in the water, overlooking us and the flock I had just equated with Hitchcock. 

"The devil to the left of us and an angel giving us guard," Brenden said the like.

"Yeah," I said.

His words gave the scene transcendence. Even if we alone bestow such power on an environment, it no less moves us as something other. How can it be "we" without implying that something more than us creates our connection?

September Pike

 

Live-Lining Killies and Fishing Nightcrawler Unweighted Smallmouths

The advantage of catching fish nearby is the blessing they bestow on home. You would never think of it from an attitude of ingratitude, but if you fish hard, you owe it to yourself to allow the feeling. The compensation is the least you deserve after all the effort you put in.

Having to drive only 18 miles round trip is easy. With Matt and Brenden the other day, I drove 110. No complaint. I like a long trip. And I enjoy the rough and tumble of car-topping a big, heavy canoe on a little Honda Civic. But to have it easy, too, is like breathing freely. 

I prefer catching my smallmouths on lures. If I really preferred live bait, I'd use it more often than I do, but after trying to catch fluke on killies, I like to bring the remainder in the bucket home for the bass. Yesterday, I also had a couple of containers of nightcrawlers leftover from fishing the Delaware with Brian Peterson and his daughter Kelsey. I ended up catching the first and smaller bass on an unweighted nightcrawler. I also caught a 15 1/2-incher, on a killie I live-lined without weight.

I loosened the drag as I fought the big one because I feared the knot would pop. I had no particular reason to fear that, but the fish fought very hard. I use six-pound mono on the rivers when I'm fishing the bass. (Last December I caught a 4.23-pound rainbow trout on four-pound test.) The odd thing is that I did not honor my fear, because I did nothing about it, once I had landed and released the bass. I behaved as if my fear had been unrealistic.

Don't we often doubt ourselves insidiously like that? So insidiously we let it go entirely...while the object of our fear works its way out entirely without our knowing. Or until, in the final moments of the eventuality, it occurs to us once more, emerging from the forgotten background. We really have more control over things than we credit ourselves for, if we would just take that control.

Having waded upstream and sat on the concrete ledge of an old bridge abutment, I found a Senko that had to have been left behind recently, because not taken by flood water. I had seen lots of boot prints downstream, and I thought of how hammered these bass must be. These bass. I had another one on but when I set the hook, I got no grab. Soon though, I had a fairly nice one hooked up. I had fought the fish until I got it close to me, a bass of about 12 inches, when I thought of the knot popping again. Seconds later--it popped. Right in front of me. Almost at my feet. 

Upstream

 

Weedless Frog and Mouse September Algae Scum

We eased the squareback into shadows of the western shore. The sun had set after a breeze had bothered us all day. Calm surface meant topwaters would probably yield, but we would have to persist against the nothing of most casts. Brenden pedaled his kayak through 12- or 14-foot depths, along an outside weedline where he's caught muskies. A boat to our right a hundred yards or so had two guys aboard throwing big, heavy spinners slapping and plunging through the surface, sounding off like bass hitting plugs. Brenden said, "Maybe the fish in the depths will hit plugs now," and pedaled away. It was the last we spoke until we loaded to go.

Lots of fish suspending over depths of 20 feet or more had confused me. They didn't hit anything, and I was ready now to focus in a singular way. Before Brenden had spoken his last words, he said something I don't remember, but when I replied, I had shifted my attention to his words, away from my Baby Torpedo, though I kept working it slowly. Something sizeable struck. I missed it, but the odd thing was the fish remaining there at the surface and tailing for a moment...which looked like the fins of a little musky of 18 or 20 inches, not a bass. Whatever the fish was, my distraction didn't deter the growing absorption of my attention in the process of enticing hits. I soon caught a little bass of about eight inches, and I fished as if every cast thereafter could do better. 

Fish surprise you like that apparent musky surprised me. It never ends. You never get used to situations that work out when you feel nothing will. Although reason tells you that no matter how pounded the water, no matter how many lures the fish see, conditions will allow the native predation of a few of them to overcome that resistance they develop--although reason is really on your side, that default pessimism everyone seems to feel in this or that way does make you think nothing's going to happen. Like fishing open water during January. But it's not January, just a tough day during a month that can be tough when it comes to catching fish, but not that tough. Unless you're comparing it to ice fishing, perhaps, since ice fishing can result in a lot of fish caught. 

Last September Brenden and I fished Tilcon Lake, and I caught only three fish. I don't remember off hand how many Brenden caught, but it wasn't many. I think I entitled the blog post "Tough September Outing." September has been tough on other occasions, too, but the water remains mild, and the fish are beginning to chase fish forage; the fish we marked in the depths were on clouds of fish forage of some description we haven't been able to make out. To the best of our knowledge, the lake has no alewives, but we might be mistaken.

In any event, I put those deep water fish out of mind and concentrated on my Torpedo. Matt continued to toss the Hula Popper he had caught a bass on earlier. We worked depths anywhere from about five feet down to eight- and 10-foot depths, weeds straggling up to the surface but not particularly thick. I had been thinking about the classic situation Mike Maxwell and I encountered on Mountain Lake a day or two before my son graduated high school. Minutes later, I saw nervous water similar to what began the romp Mike and I enjoyed. Then something carried the situation up to whole other level when a fish positively broke water with a sizeable splash. We edged over.

Not too much later, I had the fish on. Matt and I are sure it was the one that had splashed. Only for a second or two I had it, when I judged it probably weighed about a pound-and-a-half. Matt switched to a weedless frog, and I praised his move. Within a minute or so, something really nice-sized erupted from under algae scum, really exploded on that frog, but Matt missed the hit. I grabbed my box of topwaters and found a soft plastic, weedless mouse. 

Matt gave up on trying to tempt that fish to come back, and hooked the next fish that blew up well to the right of it. It proved to be a bass of at least 17 1/2 inches, a chunky fish of nearly three pounds. After photographing his fish, I worked the scum until a bass broke through the algae two feet into the air, my mouse in it's mouth, and I set the hooks hard. My bass would have measured about 16 inches. Photographed, I released it and freed myself up for more action, which came in the form of a great strike near where Matt had lost the big one. Once I felt the fish's weight, I set the hooks. Hard! Mine proved to be a bass of at least 18 inches. It could have been one of those I underestimate and should have measured. Last time I fished here, in June, I measured one at 19 3/4 inches that looks no larger in the photo.  

Our commitment to slowing down and fishing only one way--topwater--had paid off and saved a day that otherwise was a tough one. Above all else, it was Matt's idea that broke through. Besides the bass themselves.    

Better than 18 inches?

Brenden caught a nice one of about two pounds or better on a Senko-type worm from right against the bank. Later, he caught one on Whopper Plopper of better than a pound.

First fish of the day. My little bass on a Yum Dinger from 10-foot weeds.

Matt's bass on a Hula Popper from right near the bank.

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Matt's Hula Popper bass.

Little bass I caught on a Baby Torpedo shortly before Matt began throwing the weedless frog.

My 16-inch bass caught on a weedless mouse.

Mountain Lake