South Branch Raritan River Wading Attempt

I spoke to a friend recently who suggested an area of the South Branch upstream of one of the bridges. I asked if it's accessible by any pullover nearby. No, Brenden and I would have to wade up.

I stepped out the front door, still dark out, with lure bag, camera, and rod in hand, noticing that raindrop patterns had just begun to collect on the pavement. I took the stuff to my car, getting mildly pelted. A little light rain didn't alarm me, but I checked the weather. Soon, I got a text from Brenden saying it was pouring where he was in Stirling, though not raining in Hillsborough. 

We started wading in relative darkness, relative light. I had put my wallet and keys in my lure bag, expecting to reach waste level. Once, I stepped awkwardly on a rock. When you're really young, not just relatively young as I am now, you don't make missteps like that. You might be able to dance on rocks. I used to. 

They don't make me nervous now. They sometimes put me off a little, though. But we forged on as if we would reach that spot in the distance. We got fairly far. Above a section where the river divides into two, three or four flows. Facing the full width of the lower South Branch, I felt my antennae go on alert. The water was well up on my thighs, the bottom of my lure bag almost touching it. Lots of weeds on gravelly bottom. Some of that stuff at the surface. Where I bombed my Baby Torpedo on six-pound mono, and those casts were long, I couldn't tell just how deep, but deeper. Brenden had crossed some land downstream and taken interest in the flow furthest to my left looking downstream. Maybe he was catching bass.

Immediately, my plug started taking interest from sunfish. A couple hits I thought might have been bass, and then, finally, I caught a smallmouth of about 10 inches, feeling that satisfaction of having made a real effort for a real result. That little bass had leapt three times, as high as three feet. Had to be some depth out there for it to gather the power from below to go that high. 

Brenden caught up to me. He put a Whopper Plopper on. I told him about the big bass I had watched chase something against the trunk of a tree in the water along the shoreline to our left. I had repositioned so I might land a cast there, but Brenden's plug is a lot heavier and he made the mark perfectly. But nothing happened. 

I had caught my bass three or four minutes before it began raining. The water felt good, and while Brenden said something about maybe if the sun came out, the bass would hit better, I said, "I like the conditions just as they are. I just want to be on the bass." 

The one I caught was going to do it for the day for me. We couldn't move upstream any further. Too deep. The overgrowth along the shorelines too thick to break a trail. And I don't think we could have crossed over on the right, anyway, too deep. 

When we got back to the bridge, we fished on downstream maybe a couple hundred yards, but the water was shallower. My plug only interested a sunfish, and Brenden's Whopper Plopper--nothing.

We decided to try the confluence downstream, but the North Branch was off color there. Rather than staying out another hour or two, I was ready to go home and get a lot done. Brenden later texted me from a different spot, having caught seven smallmouths on a Rapala. 

Natirar