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

Maneuvering the Ned Rig for River Bronzebacks

Fourteen-Inch Bronzeback

It's nice having a big river close to home, where I can go out an hour after noontime, get involved enough in the fishing to feel as if a full day was invested, and be home at 4:00 p.m. Catching some smallmouths. Soaking in the sun and the heat while wading nearly up to my waste, my mobile device on the bank with my other stuff. Never engaging with that thing. Only having it along in case of any emergency. Using my DSLR camera.  

I told Brenden Kuprel I'd really like him to show me how he fishes the Ned rig, and I followed his lead to various spots, watching how he does it, and figuring it out as I went. As I thought after trying the lure in the Delaware River a week or so ago, there is some maneuvering of it involved. It's not all letting the current take the rig as it ticks rocks and bottom. But I was much less certain on how to work the lure after fishing the Delaware, than I am now after fishing with Brenden. The jigging of it involves some wherewithal in trying to keep it from getting hung up, as well as keeping line straight enough to ensure a secure hookset, though not overdoing that, allowing for some bend because that's going to be inevitable. You will feel the Ned rig tick rocks and bottom, and sometimes you'll feel a knock as it wedges in-between stone from which you can't get it free. But it seems to be the case that when fishing a Senko-type worm rigged Wacky, more drifting with the current happens than when casting a Ned rig.

The jury's out as yet on whether the Ned rig is more effective than a Senko-type plastic rigged Wacky and unweighted. Or when one is better than the other.

Certainly, the Ned rig drops almost straight down to bottom, even with the 1/16-ounce jighead I used today. It takes a Senko-type worm a little while to touch down. Most fishermen seem to throw a 1/10- or 1/8-ounce Ned rig. As you can see in the photo, the plastic worm you use on such a standup jighead is short and stubby. About two or two-and-a-half inches long. Together with a mere 1/16-ounce jighead, it casts very far on six-pound-test mono and a medium power, five-and-a-half-foot rod. 

The only problem with long casts is the bow in the line, which the powerful river current develops. I lost a few bass because of it. By not getting a direct hookset. One of those bass was a really good one, though I believe it was more like 14 inches, rather than 16 or 18, though I'm not certain.

I did catch one 14 inches. From a lengthy cut of narrowed flow where I caught a nine-incher on a live goldfish 29 years ago. I have no idea why I didn't just fish plastics, as was my habit fishing smallmouths during my teens, but I wanted to use live shiners, though I couldn't find any for sale near North Plainfield. I'm sure Efinger in Bound Brook had some, but maybe not, although it seems more likely I just didn't think of them as having any, not being in the loop yet. So I bought some live goldfish from the pet shop on Highway 22 in North Plainfield. 

I caught three other smallmouths: 10 inches, eight inches, and about seven inches. Another one I had on besides the nice one I mentioned might have been a foot. 

"Slow day," Brenden said. He often catches a lot of smallmouths, and one occasion, caught 50 of them. His sole bass today wasn't a big one, though he's caught three-pounders on past occasions.  

I lost two Ned rigs today. I had lost a few of them when fishing the Delaware. Most of the time, I worked the rig free by wading in the opposite direction to which it got snagged. Obviously, that doesn't always work, and I believe fishing the Ned rig is more expensive than fishing Senko-type worms (unweighted), which I believe don't get lost to the river bottom as often.

I think the Ned rig is a valuable approach, but let's see how it pans out over the years.  

 

Brenden fishing from an old bridge stanchion.



Senko Bronzebacks

 

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