Holding Fast to Deep Natural Connection

I checked on favorite South Branch Raritan spots going back 15 years. It was hard breaking past a barrier of feeling put off, even though I'm enjoying a series of PTO days off from work, and I felt great about the Raritan River two days ago.

I decided that instead of giving in to a "bad day" and quitting on it early, I would persist, and I made sure I fished a number of stretches thoroughly. At one point, I looked at myself standing in the water, not having had a hit yet on my live killies, and the thought of giving up without a single bass while using live bait felt like a death sentence placed on the river I have loved very deeply. I just let that pass and kept fishing!

I think it's hard to holdfast to deep natural connection while otherwise living in a culture that doesn't value it. I spent many years shamelessly inspired by such connections of many kinds, outings consistently coming to their finales, which I called Grand Affirmations, amounting to engagements with the world inclusive of the naturally given and the humanmade. Some of them were greatly powerful, a sense of radiant energy moving the world from relative staleness to renewed life. An act of redemption involving more life than I can individually contain. John Lennon used to call the like a turn on.

Some would wonder how a man can care about fishing when spirituality runs high, but on the contrary, not only every fish mattered--as the blog attests to--so did almost every cast. Grand Affirmations complete successful participation. More than being a spectator's detachment, fishing involves me with the natural world in a way that elevates my life as a whole. You don't have to be a dumb jock to cast effectively and catch fish. I'll be the first to admit there are guys out there better at catching fish than I am. I have a need to catch fish like any other fisherman, and I like to do well at the game. But I'm interested in putting words to it in a way uniquely my own, not in catching more and bigger fish than others I will never surpass.

It's the quality of natural connection that contributes to the quality of Affirmation at the end of an outing. The blog turned to relating the process of fish getting caught, but as I remember, I was pretty good at describing such natural relations during the early years of the blog. 

I did catch a few today. Water level was a little high, and carrying a lot of green algae that got on the hook, annoying. I cast unweighted killies, working a stretch downstream, when I decided to try weighting one with an eighth ounce drop-shot weight shaped like a banana to ride over bottom. After a few casts, I had a bass on I lost. I baited up again, cast to the same spot, and came up with the average stream bass photographed below.

I fished the eight-foot depths thoroughly, no more hits. Then I removed the weight and decided to work my way further downstream. On the way, I caught a smallmouth a little larger, and had to return to the bucket for another killie. I did get all the way to the bottom of the stretch, but no more hits. I had spent a full two hours working the long stretch.

I also fished a couple of stretches in-between the bridges and above them. I caught the nice one photographed above. On the way home, I stopped and fished a large pool of the Lamington River. No hits there.  

Algae on the hook with the killie.

Lehigh River