Mark Licht catching a Paulinskill smallie.
OK. So I heard about the project coming, but I neither knew Brian Cowden would not be involved, nor the approximate time it would be underway. While I thought the Paulinskill's water a weird muddy quality, I did think a lot of rain came down up here. (We found the Pequest clear.) No, a dam is being removed not all that far upstream of here where we fished.
I began with a Ned rig anyhow, wondering if any bass would knock that from sensing it by its lateral line, but I quickly switched to a MiniKing spinnerbait by Storm, and I did get a knock by retrieving it right down the middle of the white water in the photo below. Mark threw an inline spinner, but he must've appealed to the bass's sense of smell by a nightcrawler.
"They're my go-to. Just in case," Mark told me later at the Pequest. Lures will often out-produce bait because they're efficient, but not always. Still at the Paulinskill, he offered me live worms, but I stuck to the MiniKing.
He caught one smallmouth on a nightcrawler there below the spillway on the far side.
I began thinking of a possible alternative before we got to a spot that's produced greatly for my son and I in the past. (All we caught there was a chub for Mark.) We could drive west and try to fish the confluence where the Paulinskill empties into the Delaware River at Columbia. I figured if the big river was clear, where a muddy river enters it might offer interesting fishing.
Besides, there would be other possibilities if this one didn't pan out. Neither of us knew if we could find access to the confluence.
We didn't. Houses beside it, private land, and a lot of roadway construction. The Delaware Watergap was a possible option. I know about access there. I knew about possible access along Highway 46 further south, where my son and I caught smallmouths years ago, and besides that, I suggested the confluence of the Pequest with the Delaware.
We rode south. "No Stopping or Standing," all along where, some 17 years ago, my family parked and had a good time. Fully in keeping with the general move in America to deny citizens access to natural space. (I've written a little about that but haven't had time to do serious research.)
Belvidere. "New Jersey's Best Kept Secret." Kind of like my blog.
After all, what is more spiritually symbolic than a couple of fishes? "Don't believe the church and state," says Mike and the Mechanics, but Christ might say the same.
Before we even got to the Delaware, which we never did, we found the hole beneath the dam appealing. Surely, townies had hit the spot hard, but I felt sure it held bass. Catch and release is universal, after all. It's like reincarnation. God catches you at the moment of death and then puts you back.
Mark had got in the water and just caught a big chub, hollering over to me about a huge smallmouth that tried to eat it before he got it in, when I hooked up on the Ned rig, using blue plastic. My bass, about a foot long, jumped off right in front of me.
I got in the water and waded among round stones the size of soccer balls,
getting into various positions but raising no interest in my Ned Rig. Mark wasn't doing much, either. A bluegill or two. I figured it was the classic case of freshened fish hitting a lure at the outset, then very quickly getting spooked. After all, the bass below the dam there see hundreds of lures. They forget. Then they remember once they see one a few times.
So I tried drifting an unweighted nightcrawler, felt a jiggle on that first drift, let the fish take line a bit, tightened up, set, and felt surprised it was a bass. Mark and I caught various bluegills, chubs. I saw Mark got a fallfish, and he caught a rainbow trout. I caught a second bass after I noticed the bluegills had begun taking the nightcrawlers only by the tail, so when I set, I lost bait to them. They're not smart like us but watch a fish check out and reject a lure in clear water. You'll have no doubt their perceptual abilities are tack sharp. It didn't take long for sunnies to stay clear of our hooks.
We didn't have all night so we never got to the Delaware, but Mark had come through by bringing the nightcrawlers. That transformed a frustrated outing into a fun time and successful day, lots of good conversation during the drive back to Blairstown and my car parked at Dale's grocery.
Just don't make a big habit of parking there. That might piss them off.
Besides, just click on a label, scroll, and you'll find hundreds of possibilities on my blog.
Found this memorandum thumbnailed to a tree along the Paulinskill.
River bass.
Mark Licht carefully unhooks rainbow trout.
