Cold April Weather for a Catch

Temperatures in the 50's would have felt better; 44 degrees was cold. Our hands couldn't take it for too long. I recall many outings on the rivers fishing for winter trout when my hands didn't get cold, but in that breeze out there beside Oak Ridge Reservoir, they suffered today.

The water's way down. We tried a spot below what would have been a steep, gravelly drop off, and Brian got hit hard. He used what looked like a quarter-ounce jighead, giving it body by use of a three- or four-inch Keitech. 

I was casting a Binsky when Brian hiked up as the water flows. Something like 600 yards. He took position on the end of a smallish point and cast. I switched to a 16th ounce jig and Z-Man Slimswimz paddletail. I fished it as assiduously as I could, shooting a glance over at Brian on occasion. I knew a real possibility of hooking a smallmouth here where Brian had missed one existed. My being sure the water was plenty cold, because a couple of recent nights have dipped into the 20's, didn't exclude that possibility.

I started to think that if Brian were to catch one, I should be there with the camera. Besides, perhaps he and I would catch up a little by way of conversation. I didn't like the feel of the weather. It put a dank feel on my every move, but if we would head in early...not just yet.

The walk felt pleasant with my black Lab, Loki, accompanying me. I kept my eyes on the ground, looking for whatever might turn up. Old beer cans. Coke. Beer bottles. Loki found a fish vertebra about a foot long. Shortly after I arrived, Brian told me he was about ready to leave. I felt relieved. 

"I missed a few hits," he said, adding, "I had to switch out my Keitech because the fish tore it up."

I fished my jig slowly on bottom.

"This might be really nice when it's calm on a summer evening," I said.

"Yeah, topwater." 

I understood it wasn't going to be an afternoon of much said between us. The weather felt too uncomfortable. 

I don't use Keitech, but I've heard it from Brenden Kuprel, also, that they don't last, but I began feeling perhaps I should have used a larger jig and plastic combination. Brian began making his way back in the direction of our vehicles.

"Fish on," he said. A sudden change in the feeling of things. 

I saw his rod bending. A good-sized smallmouth leapt. The struggle seemed a little testy as a good fish often does. Soon, he dragged one that probably would have measured at least 17 inches up onto the mud, making it less than a good subject for photography. I gripped it by the lower jaw and washed it off at the water's edge.

Back home, I found I had driven 94 miles. You never know; it's possible I'll ride all that way, fish topwater through a perfect summer evening and never get hit. 

Clinton Reservoir 

Trout Stocking First Week After Opening Day May be Lightweight

                                                                                     

Relatively opaque water, given how clear it can be, but not stained, ran higher than I had expected after three days since rain. I got into a nice spot right at 5:00 p.m., figuring fish should be there and would hit. I cast tentatively, and as the egg drifted downriver with the help of several snap swivels attached to a snap for weight, I suddenly doubted anything would happen. And nothing did until I got a solid tap about 10 casts later. 

After four more takes of the like, besides once getting slammed and having the trout on for a second, drag screeching, I made my way upstream some 10 yards, working my body through tight spaces between tree trunks and a wooden fence. The trunks have dormant poison ivy vines strung on them. Walking on rocks on a bank sloping at a 45-degree angle, making sure my left knee didn't give out, avoiding the consequence of getting pitched into the river, that, I thought, wouldn't be so bad. It would be the loss my mobile device. That left knee had been operated on some 14 years ago, and it's not getting better. I felt surprised to see the same woman who had hooked the breeder last time. I said hi and made a cast. Then a few more. I missed another hit. She said, "Do you think they restocked?"

"I think they did, just didn't put many fish in."

"I don't think so." 

I'm sure the river was stocked, although the trout, for the most part, weren't committing to the eggs but managing to steal them from my hook. There were others fishing downstream and I hadn't seen a single trout caught. I continued fishing near the exit bridge, the bridge upstream of the former AT&T entry bridge where the trout get stocked, but I got only one more tap.  

I went downstream. There I found the water was a lot slower than I would have expected, given the power of the flow above. I downsized to a single size 14 Eagle Claw snap swivel for weight. Soon I hooked up and fought an average rainbow to the bank. I was standing about six feet high over the edge of the water, and I wasn't interested in climbing down to get the trout, so before I would have pulled it up on rocks, I hoped it would lose the hook and be on it's way, which happened a second later when the trout was about a foot from the dry edge. 

Now. I figured I might have some action. I didn't think ahead of how much I would have to work for it. At my age, it's not as easy; it's rather difficult, but if you're going to suffer for the fish, you'll get some satisfaction in return, even if you go home with some kinks to work out over long hours ahead. 

I paid keen attention to just where my egg was touching down, and I missed more of the same kind of hits right at the end of my rather short and definitely slow drifts. I set the hook on one of them and got repaid with a distinct visual of rainbow colors before the trout quickly disappeared under the cover of that less-than-clear water. Soon, I hooked another, and I played it, drag screeching repeatedly, before I got the trout--average sized--against the bank. And then I lifted it out of the water, which made me wonder if I could lift it all the way up to where I stood. Would my knots to two-pound-test Berkley XL hold? Snap swivel to mainline, hook to leader, overhand loop of leader to slip onto the snap. The knots held as I continued to lift, but the hook pulled free, the trout dropping back into the water and shooting away. 

I missed perhaps a few more hits. I had to repeatedly cast, working for these fish. I was deeply into the flow of the action and enjoying it with focused intent. When hits stopped coming to the right of me, I cast a little further upstream. I found there were trout there too, just not many. Downstream further yet, on the other side of the entry bridge, some eight or nine men fished fast water with just enough depth to hold a fairly large number of trout, although there were not too many there today. I saw one trout get caught. The only one I saw caught by anyone else the entire time out. I had only minutes left, though, having signed on for a Zoom photographer's meetup at 7 p.m. I hooked another, playing it with the same give of the drag, and once again, hoisted a trout towards me, the hook pulling out. Convenient catch and release. I tried just a few more casts, once feeling a cadence of taps...so compelling...before I set the hook on nothing. 

Someone who had been fishing downstream and caught nothing told me it was the same lack of action at the South Branch yesterday. (The South Branch is stocked on Tuesdays.) Possibly that has to do with Opening Day having been only days ago, still a fair number of trout in the streams. 

I headed home to meet up with my friends. 

Fishing Salmon Eggs  

Salmon Egg Jar Fused to Metal Egg Lug

I can't remember how long ago it's been since I fished Opening Day, and although I could riffle through my handwritten log to find out, I'll let that be. I believe it was 2016, when I fished for half an hour with my son in the afternoon, the water high and off-color, though I did catch one. Not really muddy but not clear, either. 

When I got out of my car, gathered my things and began walking, I felt pleasantly refreshed. None of that doubt scraping at my innards, generated from feeling behind at work. I am done jobbing now, but as unambiguously as everyone else seems to think I'm retired, I can't think of it that way without being reminded I have more work to do than I can possibly get done...so I have to choose as wisely as I can. But work, yes, though I don't recall feeling reminded of it as I approached the river. Someone recently called that work my hobbies, but whatever, I do need to catch up, though it might be more important to slow down outdoors. For me, the prospect of building a website feels daunting, and while others say I should simply hire someone, no, I'm not interested in paying anyone to do what I can, at least, try to do.

I walked a rather long, paved walkway. It took me to the river between two bridges. I found the spot I usually do best at unoccupied. Surprised, I quickly made my way down to the river edge, feeling fortunate. The water flowed just a little high, not stained, but not gin clear. I needed to add a couple of snap swivels to my snap for weight. Then I stood there for about 10 minutes until 8 a.m. The first drift amounted to my salmon egg staying right near bottom where I wanted it, without the rig getting stuck on that bottom. Five or six drifts yielded no hits, and I thought maybe no trout made their way upstream from the stocking point a hundred yards below. But that couldn't be. Even on stocking days they're already up there. 

Got hit and played my first trout. Everything felt like cool air to breathe. Not too cool at 53 degrees. 

Near the end of my 50 or 55 minutes fishing, I noticed two breeders in close and upstream a bit. Neither interested in my salmon eggs, I told a woman who had come onto the scene in the interim that one of them followed her spinner for a bit. Five or 10 minutes later, she hooked one of them, but it managed to free itself from the treble hook. 

Fishing was slow compared to other times I've stood there. I caught four rainbows, lost a couple of others during the fight. Missed a few hits. Plenty of other trout got caught downstream from me, though it wasn't mayhem. I had decided not to bother with waders. 

The eggs had fished well; I had salted them just enough so they stayed on the hook. Got to my car and attempted to remove the jar--still almost full--from the metal Egg Lug. It's fused on there, but since I said the same in a couple of FB posts, I'm getting advice on how to remove it. Maybe I can.

The Egg Lug I purchased during the 1970's, when the metal ones were commonly used. I own another one, although it's possible it really belongs to my brother Rick, each of us having long ago forgotten. As the Reading Eagle article I linked to features it, Pautzke's plastic egg lug available online will work. I own one of those, too...and I don't remember buying it, either, although that was much more recent.

Jar of my favorite pale salmon eggs stuck on that ancient Egg Lug.

Comparison Between Eggs and Pink Worm

Baker's Basin and Moving On

First of all, let me say today was a strange day in many ways. It coincides with the fallout of so-called Liberation Day, though I wasn't thinking about that. Since I've got home, I've made sure to watch Fox News, but I remain skeptical about the President's idea about bringing back manufacturing, as if that cultural implication will actually revive the country. And I say that because I believe the future is new forms of advanced digital industry and energy--thus new jobs--not the past forms that are simply obsolete given the mind's advance since then. I fear that we've simply been set way back on the flourishing aspect of a future that is inevitable, while threatening to increase the heat of climate change. 

Not to mention that it would have been nice if the bull market didn't end once the President was inaugurated. Gas prices going up. What next? And the big question--what for? Nothing, right? Isn't that how vengeance always works. The vengeance takes down both the assailant and his victims. 

I rode over to The Sporting Life to buy a dozen shiners. Not because the weather is too cold for lures, but because I had in mind my favorite spot on the canal, where I've usually fished colder water with shiners. Ideally, it's a mild day when I fish it, because a pipe drains a small, very shallow pond into the canal, and that water flowing out can be warmer. 

I quickly caught a bass of about 13 inches by casting from up above so as not to spook anything in close. Got it up on the bank, the circle hook came free, and it plopped back in, so no photo of it. Then I missed a few hits from something that seemed to play with the (large) shiners, more than get serious about eating. I got hit again and reeled in the small crappie. Had a few more hits like that afterwards and caught the bass photographed.

I had bought size 4 and 6 circle hooks from Melton Tackle. It's a good price, but not only will a bass swallow a circle hook as quickly as it will swallow any other, a circle hook will not rust out easily, unless it's bronze like my Eagle Claw J hooks. Have seen only corrosion-resistant finish, which of course means resistant to rusting. So you can end up killing more fish with circle hooks. Not only that. It's quite difficult to hook a shiner through the lips with a circle hook. Had little trouble hooking them through the dorsal area when ice fishing, though. So today I switched back to a J hook and consigned my circle hooks to ice fishing. Maybe for Yum Dingers, too, 1/0. 

I fished my canal spot as if alienated from something I love to do. I said I did not think about what happened yesterday and the fallout today. I did see the Dow was down four percent before I went out, so I knew for certain but put it out of mind. Or so I would have thought. It felt as if I were being drawn into facing some unpleasant truth about myself and the fishing, which for decades has vitalized my energies. It was interesting enough to keep at it there for 45 minutes, but it seemed oddly incongruous to something having to do with the present year compared to long ago.

I mentioned Baker's Basin in a recent post, and today I fully intended on visiting the place. It's in Lawrence Township near the border with Hamilton Township. Why, I wasn't sure. As I rode U.S. Highway 1 from Quaker Bridge Road south, it didn't seem good. I turned right onto Carnegie Road, after turning around at Darrah Lane, and noticed the old Allied Van Lines warehouse is now a storage company. I rode a little further to see that indeed, Baker's Basin no longer has a parking lot. Instead, I parked in a lot adjacent the canal and walked the trail along the canal to the pond. 

The first thing I noticed is that the pipe connecting the basin to the canal--when I first saw the basin in 1971, there was the large opening to the canal where mule barges of the 19th century crossed--is broken. (I think they moved coal.) The front section apparently rusted away and sank into the pond, but there's still a flow between canal and pond. Bass go in and out.

Pads were up. Usually, I'd feel that's kind of nice, but it seemed like something from Jurassic times, the way the leaves protruded above the surface. I cast along an edge and a small bass tried to take the large shiner, too small a bass to hook. I did work my way down to the deep corner, hanging out there awhile. Some people do fish the Basin; litter gave that away. Not the other side, though. It's grown over and possibly holds more bass and pickerel, though I don't think the fishing pressure here is anything like it used to be, when it consistently produced. A fence with No Trespassing signs hugs close to where we always used to park and fish on that other side. Warehouse a little to the left. 

I fished where, 50 years ago, I caught bass in late February on shiners by fishing them very slow in the 12 foot depths, live lined. That inspired my first published article in The New Jersey Fisherman in March, 1977, "Early Largemouth." That magazine became The Fisherman. You might think that would be cause for celebration today, at least a leap of joy, but neither happened. Instead, the world seemed a pretty dead place. 

I have to get a new website up before I return to my book and finish it. 

All writers suffer self-doubt. Chris Pierra of the NJ Multispecies Podcast famously said, "Suffer for the fish," and there's no doubt that artists, writers among them, suffer as well. Sometimes I do in horrifying ways, but by always applying a pinch of salt as if I'm skeptical of the frightening scenarios the mind drags up from hell. I neutralize the moods. I always have plenty of control, and my friends might be relieved to learn it always seems to happen when I'm alone.

Not that I don't like being alone. I'll always fish alone on occasion. Come hell or high water. 

Besides, Loki the black Lab came along today. It's just that voice ought to be given to this weird thing coming down the pike as stocks plummeted. According to some psychologists with advanced degrees, there's such a thing as the collective unconscious. something I've taken for granted since I was 19, and it's as if today I blew around in the winds of the spirit. Not a good thing with such loss all the way across the country and around the globe.

I did catch a pickerel as I headed back towards my Honda Civic. There was an opening between trees and brush, where obviously some fishermen approach the pond. It was a saving grace to have one of my hunches. That's something I love about fishing. The psychic aspect. The ability to have a feeling about a spot, even when all the others have failed me. And for that spot to produce. Small pickerel. But even though I had had that feeling and had followed through, it seemed kind of absurd to have caught it. I even felt today that I should be working a job. What? Now we can't retire, because we have to all lose money for no purpose but some delusion about return to outmoded forms of production?

But I mean, really, I'll get the website up. It's not the end of the world. Takes some work, but I'll do it! I'll get the book done. I'll write the novel next. It's just that 51 years since I began fishing the Basin is a very long time, and I guess the message it relayed is that I damn well better move on.    

More Big Sliders Than in the Past

Pads Up

Beavers weren't here in the past. This is a big tree, and it's as if the beaver knew that, backed off, and is awaiting heavy winds to bring it down.

Delaware and Raritan Canal

 

The Guessing Game: Let the Unconscious Pinpoint Fish

My apprehensions about water temperature quickly dispelled, because I wisely decided to bring along my portable sonar unit again. Last I did that, I learned a lot about the lake's depths, but today that temperature concerned me, and Brian and I found in short order that it was 53. Not bad. 

Of course, with the air temp never getting out of the low 50's--when we drove off at 6:03 p.m. it was 49, and an hour or more before that, I plainly saw my breath--that water was cooling. I've known early season bass to turn on when it's warming. Conditions such as Wednesday's with the high temp just about 70. Brian was out there on the same lake with Mark Licht that day, and they did great, Brian's biggest largemouth about 6 pounds, five of his six bass over four pounds, but in total, they caught 11 fish, compared to our 13 fish in the cold yesterday. 

That might be a photo of the biggest, above. I'm not sure, because I caught two bass well over four pounds--4.87 pounds, and 4.32 pounds. Another one of mine might have been only a quarter pound under four, another about three-and-a-half, a two and something 17-incher, a smallish bass of about two pounds, and another bass of about two-and-a-half. The crappie in the photo below hit a MiniKing spinnerbait and put up a real good fight on a light rod. My pickerel came off the hook when I was lifting it into the boat, falling against the gunwale, then into the water, not into the boat, so you decide if that was really a catch. 

Brian called it a cigar. Suffice it to say not every fish is photographed. Brian did catch three nice bass; possibly every one of them was over three pounds. His pickerel was a nice one, too. 

Brian is committed to the Chatterbait. I like to use different lures. I started with a Chatterbait. Who would argue against its success the day before? I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to bring my light rod, but that MiniKing spinnerbait was looking good, and I did not deny it. Nor once we had cast Chatterbaits for three or four minutes to no takers among residual weedbeds. The MiniKing got hit after five or 10 minutes. I repeated the same cast and hooked up. At first I thought pickerel, then it felt like a nice bass, but it turned out to be a crappie only about 13 inches long! Partly, it was that light rod. One I built from a St. Croix blank that cost me $70.00 in 2005. 

The wind was a about right but a little catty-cornered. It generally blew us up towards the back of the lake but at about a 45-degree angle. Again & again, we had to paddle away from shore. For a fairly long while--altogether we fished maybe four-and-a-half hours--I cast that spinnerbait, catching the pickerel and the smallest bass. A pickerel that small never would have hit a Chatterbait. Those are big lures for big fish. The bass might have hit it. And might not have. It was only about 16 inches long. Didn't even fight as hard as the crappie had. It got me thinking about small lures for small fish. I have nothing against catching smaller ones, and I caught plenty of big ones yesterday. It was nice catching small ones, too. I also caught a 19-inch largemouth on that little spinnerbait. 

I tried the Chatterbait repeatedly but nothing would hit. But I like to think I'm good at guessing where to place a Senko-type worm rigged Wacky. If you're casting to the water, you're not doing it right. Out in front of you is a lot of water. In this lake we fish, for example, it's mostly about six or seven feet deep. There's weeds, but interspersed, and much of the time you can't tell where. All that water will only blind you if you don't create a spatial abstract of it and zero in on where your mind tells you to cast. Otherwise, it's just random and will only wear you down. It's not magic, but by using the mind, you create energy rather than lose it. The argument is simple. If you're interesting yourself at a guessing game, by which you convert the raw mass of water into a grid that tells you where to pinpoint the cast, you might rise to the occasion. You will, if results begin to suggest--as they have for me--that the unconscious mind is capable of putting you on fish. 

I had a rod at the ready. Pre-rigged with a brown Shim-E-Stick, good color for the overcast conditions. I picked it up and began my guessing game, which soon paid off with the 17-incher. Brian had caught one or two on his Chatterbait. Soon we positioned behind an island, and a bass picked up that Shim-E-Stick as I let it rest on bottom. It weighed 4.87 pounds, 20 1/2 inches. I caught another one of about 18 1/2 inches after I put my rod in a rod holder, letting the worm kind of deadstick. (The canoe drifted very slowly in the calm behind that island.) The bass took drag as the rod bent in the holder. As we began heading back to Brian's truck, I caught one about 16 1/2 inches on the brown worm nearly against the bank. Brian had caught his pickerel and his last bass. Before we really began the long paddle back, I gave that Chatterbait one last try. 

I had caught fish on both of my lighter rods. I wanted to even the score. Along that island shoreline, we've caught a lot of fish. I began by casting pretty close and parallel, and intended to progressively work my way out, not getting very far when I got whomped. The bass weighed 4.32 pounds, 20 inches.   

 

I thought this one was about 16 1/2 inches. Maybe it was a little better than that.

Artificial Intelligence and Fishing 

Last Days of Winter Trout Besides TCA Waters

One last try at the river trout as only two days remain before most waters close until Opening Day. Oliver Round and Loki the black Lab came today. Fifteen minutes less than two hours. Besides a couple of fish on for a moment I think were also suckers, I might have got hit twice from trout. Oliver had a sucker or carp on for a second. A big scale on his hook. 

Notice my sucker got hooked on the nose. 

I'm glad I caught trout this time around. October and November felt very discouraging, but December yielded just before extremely cold weather resulted in some ice fishing for some anglers. Pretty much for the months of January and February we ice fished. I saw some Facebook posts that prove not everyone gave up on the rivers, though there was a lot of ice on them. Naturally, fishing pressure got reduced. 

I caught trout in March for a change, though that might partly be owing to the fact of that ice covering spots like the one I've been hitting. Trout Conservation Areas will remain open. Last year I fished two of them, catching trout on the Pequest April 1st.

Doubt I'll do the same this year, as I'm eager to go bass fishing. Brian Cronk is out fishing Indian Lake as I write, trying a new glide bait for the big ones. 

After March 31st, I'm done jobbing. By all accounts I can drum up, I'll be done for life. That doesn't mean I won't return the form to the union that will allow me to return to work and preserve my pension for later, but as awful as the economy has become in recent weeks, I doubt it will become so devastating that I have to hold a job. 

I have important to work to do as a writer and photographer. More than I can possibly get done, so I have no natural interest in holding a job after I quit my present one. Only extreme devastation coming from aberrant leadership might mean I can't do that work as fully as I will be enabled by having time I currently have to commit to a low wage. Instead of that eventuality actually happening--amounting to a dystopian society no one would want: mass death, legal chaos, and so much unemployment I probably wouldn't find a job anyway--I tend to believe that things look worse when reflected by the media. 

Reservoir Level Low Exploring Spruce Run Creek Channel

I was curious about the channel of Spruce Run Creek. What that looks like for future reference, if I ever get a boat up there near Van Syckel's Road. I wasn't just starry eyed about finding pike and bass, though I thought that possible. If the reservoir ever refills, it might be a lot easier. 

It will, but when is anyone's guess. 

Surprised at how much rock, gravel, sand, and edgy drop-offs exist as the creek flows, I felt privileged to explore it and got photos to help me remember where interesting spots lie. Surrounding all that is muddy flat. 

Carp water pretty much.

I think I walked almost a mile to access the mouth of the creek as it becomes reservoir. Loki the black Lab had a field day running around that flat and exploring the creek bed. Where the creek widens and slows, as you can see in the photos below, it gains depths of at least three feet, maybe four, so I cast a jerkbait and worked it slow on the surface as much as I retrieved it. 

Something could have moved into that space, it seems, but if anything at all was there, it wasn't hitting. I'm sure the water temp remained in the 40's, though I don't know that for a fact. I didn't bring along a thermometer. One thing to remember about Spruce Run Creek is that it purportedly hosts wild brown trout. Even if it doesn't hold as many as Mulhockaway Creek on the other side of Spruce Run Reservoir, Spruce Run Creek is spring fed and stays cool, compared to streams that don't have the same kind of groundwater influence. 

The reservoir beyond that deeper creek mouth was super shallow. It's just a slow-sinking mud flat. To have attempted--which I didn't do--gaining the edge of water, would have meant sinking in wet mud.