Bushwhacked Thick Underbrush to Get Beyond Where Others Go

We hiked back in October last year, and I don't remember observing the old trails grown over as they are now. Then we did diverge away from the river where a tributary ditch meets it, though. Getting across easy today, beyond the undergrowth is thick. We bushwhacked. When today's outing was done around 10:30 in the morning, my arms and legs were bloodied. I just want no poison ivy. 

Oliver felt like trying a number of spots along the way, before we got far enough back--which in total amounts to more than a couple of miles between bridges--to where I felt others haven't been coming. Much of the undergrowth we broke before us had grown to head level, soaked in morning dew. Forging ahead alongside the river, I hoped any snapping turtle out of the water would somehow let itself be known before I stepped on it. Oliver found bear scat.

No evidence of others fishing back there made itself visible. No trail broken. No marks in the mud. It made obvious sense that most people would not want to break the effort.

We did want a few pike. Back in 2020, I hooked one that immediately took tight drag from a reel mounted on a medium-heavy Lew's Speed stick, that reel loaded with 20-pound braid, the pike running underneath a log jam before the snap of the wire leader gave, having opened somehow. Three of us caught a lot of fish that day, mostly pike. In more recent times, two years ago in September, I caught a lot of small pike while fishing with Fred Matero. That day, we got as far as the tributary ditch and just beyond it, as only I crossed. 

Oliver got hit at the surface. We used floating jerkbaits. Further on, he caught the largemouth photographed below, and I missed the hit I'm sure came from a small pike. The bass photographed above is the largest any of us have caught in the Passaic yet, Oliver's second this morning. I lost another fish, but I finally caught a little bass after Oliver had caught two more the size photographed below. He caught yet another, and a redbreast sunfish. 

Most of them he caught from a hole particularly deep though not large in surface area. Since most of the river is very shallow, you can imagine why, although one of the fish I had on came from a few sticks in visibly shallow water.   

 

Seems to be the foundation of a former bridge

Jerkbaits for Pike