Delmarva Fishing Report Nostalgia

Matt Shark Fishes Ocracoke

fishtalkmag.com  Delmarva reports. Nostalgic for me, because I've been riding down that peninsula to Virginia Beach and on south to the Outer Banks since I was eight-years-old, at least until 2018. You never know if you're ever going back, when your son has moved to the West Coast. BUT...once I retire, I can just drive down there. lol. 

It is 13 hours to Ocracoke. Including the wait for a ferry, which can be an hour, and the ferry ride is at least 45 minutes. It is a long way down the beach from Kitty Hawk. And at Ocracoke, that's where the buck stops. The Outer Banks are only about halfway done at that point, but no more highway or roadways exist to take you further south, although there are boats to various island sections. 

But about Delmarva, I have fished the Susquehanna Flats, which these reports call "Way North." The other day, I wrote about being a member of Mercer County Bassmasters. I remember that for our Spruce Run tournament, we stayed at the Sunset Motel, but I have no more memory of that. It is interesting, though, that many decades later, I met a man some 10 years younger than me, a popular New Jersey poet, BJ Ward, lauded with many honors, who had worked as a waiter at the Sunset Motel's restaurant. I told him about that, but if he was awed--as I was--it stayed hidden. He autographed a copy of one of his books for me, joking about how, if you change the "a" in waiter, the word is "writer." One of Ward's books, Gravedigger's Birthday, is endorsed by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Stephen Dunn. Another greatly awarded poet, Stephen Dobyns, also endorsed the book. 

Another decade and some years passed, and BJ and I communicated on Facebook Messenger about pike fishing...at Spruce Run Reservoir. He was going with his son? Or was it a friend?

In any event, it's one of those cosmic connections that keep repeating themselves. Trying to get a message through. We think we think in the head. But something else thinks us. 

But here's what I was getting at. Mercer County Bassmasters not only held a tournament on the Susquehanna Flats; it was the most memorable tournament for me. I might have caught a smallmouth bass. I know one was caught. The water is big. Wide. Bay-like indeed. Biggest bass caught was an even four pounds, but there were some others. We stayed at a motel, and I distinctly remember playing cards. 

Amazes me how long ago that was. Going on 50 years. And to have living memory from events that long ago. I had passed that region while traveling south to Washington DC a number of times. Havre de Grace. 

I kind of like having a Delmarva fishing report I can find online. 

Big One

Santee-Cooper Bass Tournament

bassfan.com Major League Bass Pro Tour is holding a tournament on South Carolina's Santee-Cooper Lakes from this past Tuesday through Sunday. "It'll still be cold..." I read, and a lot of rain has fallen, possibly rendering some of the lake unfishable, though pre-spawn tactics are anticipated, some of the bass to be caught in the trees. Santee-Cooper Lakes are "full of cypress trees." Click on the link if you care to read an informative article about the event.

Cypress trees must be cool to see. I never forget the first time I drove past the lakes on the way to Florida in 1984. When you're only 23, age 18 seems a lifetime ago. At 18, I gave up on fishing bass tournaments. I began fishing B.A.S.S chapter tournaments with the Mercer County Bassmasters when I was 16 and could still dream of becoming a tournament pro. No pie in the sky. I took trophies from guys twice my age and older. Next to me, the youngest club member was 23. He proved to be the best at the game, too.  

I had a chance and Tim had my back better than anyone else did. The guy who was 23. But I was also writing about fishing for magazines...and reading novels. You know what happens next. A conversion happens and the ambition changes. I wanted to become a novelist. 

But when I saw the sign identifying Santee-Cooper when I was 23, even though I was infinitely wiser than I had been at 18 when I fished my last tournament on the Salem Canal, Cumberland County, New Jersey, I felt a rush of recognition like none other the whole way down to Grant, Florida. I read Bassmaster Magazine religiously during my teens. Santee-Cooper was like a household name to me. So to actually pass by the lake, that was quite the rush.

I know. What is a 16-year-old doing with a bunch of older bass fishermen? Drinking beer in strip clubs, at that? Those were the 1970's. A free world. I looked 23 anyhow. Talked like it, too. And placed in bass tournaments. Won one of them.    

Wading to Where I Expected Trout

I caught the trout where I expected to catch one. For months, I've thought of going to Neshanic and making my way downstream. There's a spot I know about from way back. All this time, I've imagined finding trout there.

I didn't expect to go to Neshanic today. There's another stocking point from where I would have walked well upstream. With the snow on the ground, though, I didn't find any parking. 

Beginning elsewhere, however, was an interesting exercise I decided upon as I drove from Bedminster. A spot where I've never got skunked. Today, I waded out, got into position, and then I noticed the brown of flood detritus and bare trees looked distinctly rust-colored in the sun. That was really quite unexpected and it surprised me, my emotional response lowering my anticipations even deeper into realism, everything about the trout seemingly brought low as if none held in the currents now. The sap of life gone like a rusted car body, and I got not a tap. 

Then I drove from there to Neshanic, where the water above the white bridge is very interesting, but nothing hit. Another guy came down. We talked for a few minutes, and then he took position a hundred feet above me. 

I started wading downstream. 

My lower back has been giving me trouble today, and it wasn't entirely comfortable out there for that reason. Temperature got up to at least 39, and I never felt cold. Not my bare hands, either, except for my left hand after I released a sucker I had snagged. Never troubled with gloves. It did take effort wading my way downstream, but it was a pleasurable way to release mere convenience. I cast as I went, aware that maybe there'd be a trout my black maribou jig would cross paths with. It wasn't until I got a cast right on the spot where I expected trout, that I got hit, and I played the fish patiently. It put up a good fight on my four-foot, six-inch St. Croix ultralight, but was only about 15 inches. A couple of casts later, I hooked another, but it got off. 

I might have got a foot or two of better reach with a five-and-a-half-foot ultralight, and I have one by Shimano, and another I built from a St. Croix blank, but my casts pretty much got where I wanted them to go. I was aware they were a little short sometimes. I like that little rod, though. The fight of the sucker I snagged in the back was a lot of fun. I thought I had a smallmouth. 

It wasn't, I believe, true that I "had" to do some trekking to catch trout. I know people today suspect everyone is lying, but the guy I spoke to seemed an aboveboard character. I decided to come back his way to tell him of my catch. He also told me of his!

"It was only five minutes after you headed down that way," he said. "It was 18 inches. I put it back."

"Good to know there's some fish."

Told me he caught it on a worm. Another reason I don't believe he lied.

There's a line you cross between the online world and the real world. But what is the online "world"? Everything that has become routine within its parameters. This post is part of it, but it does point to what lies beyond, and that's a world very similar to the world I lived out during the 1970's. A world in which I felt free, except when I was in school. I got beyond school every day, fishing, and otherwise. A world exists that the online cannot capture. It's always moving. It can't be caught. It can only be lived.   

January a Year Ago