The bottommost photo is of the flooded Raritan River. I believed the canal might be clear enough to fish. If not, my idea was to fish Round Valley Pond, which Oliver corrected me on. The park closes at 4 p.m. We'd have no time.
We met at my house, then rode over to the Sporting Life in my car. Me, Oliver, Brian. Bought a dozen large shiners. Dead ones work, too.
Brian said he wanted to throw paddletails. (At the end of the outing, he was throwing a Chatterbait.)
Driving over really wasn't bad. We took 22 East, cut over to 28, went through Somerville Circle, connected to 206. Over to Manville. Onto Wilhousky. Soon we saw the canal. Normal color.
It takes a while before muddy water from the Delaware gets over here. I love fishing that canal so much, I want to do it again tomorrow, but it's possible muddy water is on the way. If I get there and that's the case, I'll go over to Round Valley Pond, unless the thought of something else crops up. A really interesting option is Baker's Basin Pond, but Lawrence Township is fully an hour away.
Besides, when I last visited there, trails had some pretty heavy overgrowth, so it's possible those trails no longer exist and the pond is just a safe haven for gamefish that is no longer fished.
We can't "go back to the 70's." If no one's fishing Baker's Basin, it's not the 70's. The place was hit every day back then.
It produced, too.
Do you believe for a moment a pond that's been abandoned, possibly even the extensive parking lot grown-in, is going to become the place again, fished every day by local residents? If we're going to fish in the future, we need to embrace the technology of the future, not attempt to escape it into the past.
On that note, production: for over a month it's looked like America lost what was shaping up to be the best bull market ever seen. The economy wasn't perfect, but the world doesn't envy what we have now. Watch money--the stock market--if you want to measure what's good or bad for business. Don't believe a carnival barker over what real money tells you. Ayn Rand said that. I know the idea now is no pain, no gain. I hope it gets better, but I fear it will get worse for a long time.
It was so nice to forget about all that for a while today.
I've caught a lot of winter pickerel on crappie jigs around brush, wood, stuff in the water. That's fun, because you see the pickerel bolt out of the sticks and hit. Oliver saw the like today, when he fished a paddletail and got the paddletail bit off.
I prefer live-lining shiners. This time of year. During the summers in recent decades, I've fished Yum Dingers. But I love the cold and cooler weather of the canal, because I like the feel of pickerel taking a shiner sidewise and bolting a few yards. Today, the pickerel that hit one of my shiners bolted from a couple feet away from the bank, directly to the bank, underneath some stuff. I got to feel the fish turning the shiner around in its mouth, but I was sure it was a really small fish, like a 10-inch pickerel. (Little ones like that are common in the canal.) I didn't let it take the shiner too long, afraid of gut-hooking it, and when I set the hook, I simply pulled the hook from that shiner in its mouth.
Brian and Oliver didn't quite dress for the weather. Especially with a heavy wind barreling down the big river, it was especially cold out there. Forty-four degrees felt much worse; it was miserable, but especially after I encountered the pickerel, I felt motivated and happy.
It was time to go. Brian has Raynaud's disease, and even though he never dipped (Oliver and I did barehanded) into the minnow bucket, his numb hands turned purple without gloves.
I understood the fishing wasn't going to go further. I would cast some more but not much more, and before I could tell myself to stop, I saw green gills flush and my shiner disappear.
I was standing beside Brian and Oliver. "I've got a nice one on," I said. I felt the fish pulling line out into the canal, tightened up on that line, and set the hook, expecting some fun from a pickerel about 18 inches long, a nice one for the canal.
Turned out to be a little bass of about 10 1/2 inches. It's always a blessing to catch a bass in the cold canal.
Brian Cronk fishing for walleye
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