Live-Lining Killies and Fishing Nightcrawler Unweighted Smallmouths

The advantage of catching fish nearby is the blessing they bestow on home. You would never think of it from an attitude of ingratitude, but if you fish hard, you owe it to yourself to allow the feeling. The compensation is the least you deserve after all the effort you put in.

Having to drive only 18 miles round trip is easy. With Matt and Brenden the other day, I drove 110. No complaint. I like a long trip. And I enjoy the rough and tumble of car-topping a big, heavy canoe on a little Honda Civic. But to have it easy, too, is like breathing freely. 

I prefer catching my smallmouths on lures. If I really preferred live bait, I'd use it more often than I do, but after trying to catch fluke on killies, I like to bring the remainder in the bucket home for the bass. Yesterday, I also had a couple of containers of nightcrawlers leftover from fishing the Delaware with Brian Peterson and his daughter Kelsey. I ended up catching the first and smaller bass on an unweighted nightcrawler. I also caught a 15 1/2-incher, on a killie I live-lined without weight.

I loosened the drag as I fought the big one because I feared the knot would pop. I had no particular reason to fear that, but the fish fought very hard. I use six-pound mono on the rivers when I'm fishing the bass. (Last December I caught a 4.23-pound rainbow trout on four-pound test.) The odd thing is that I did not honor my fear, because I did nothing about it, once I had landed and released the bass. I behaved as if my fear had been unrealistic.

Don't we often doubt ourselves insidiously like that? So insidiously we let it go entirely...while the object of our fear works its way out entirely without our knowing. Or until, in the final moments of the eventuality, it occurs to us once more, emerging from the forgotten background. We really have more control over things than we credit ourselves for, if we would just take that control.

Having waded upstream and sat on the concrete ledge of an old bridge abutment, I found a Senko that had to have been left behind recently, because not taken by flood water. I had seen lots of boot prints downstream, and I thought of how hammered these bass must be. These bass. I had another one on but when I set the hook, I got no grab. Soon though, I had a fairly nice one hooked up. I had fought the fish until I got it close to me, a bass of about 12 inches, when I thought of the knot popping again. Seconds later--it popped. Right in front of me. Almost at my feet. 

Upstream

 

Weedless Frog and Mouse September Algae Scum

We eased the squareback into shadows of the western shore. The sun had set after a breeze had bothered us all day. Calm surface meant topwaters would probably yield, but we would have to persist against the nothing of most casts. Brenden pedaled his kayak through 12- or 14-foot depths, along an outside weedline where he's caught muskies. A boat to our right a hundred yards or so had two guys aboard throwing big, heavy spinners slapping and plunging through the surface, sounding off like bass hitting plugs. Brenden said, "Maybe the fish in the depths will hit plugs now," and pedaled away. It was the last we spoke until we loaded to go.

Lots of fish suspending over depths of 20 feet or more had confused me. They didn't hit anything, and I was ready now to focus in a singular way. Before Brenden had spoken his last words, he said something I don't remember, but when I replied, I had shifted my attention to his words, away from my Baby Torpedo, though I kept working it slowly. Something sizeable struck. I missed it, but the odd thing was the fish remaining there at the surface and tailing for a moment...which looked like the fins of a little musky of 18 or 20 inches, not a bass. Whatever the fish was, my distraction didn't deter the growing absorption of my attention in the process of enticing hits. I soon caught a little bass of about eight inches, and I fished as if every cast thereafter could do better. 

Fish surprise you like that apparent musky surprised me. It never ends. You never get used to situations that work out when you feel nothing will. Although reason tells you that no matter how pounded the water, no matter how many lures the fish see, conditions will allow the native predation of a few of them to overcome that resistance they develop--although reason is really on your side, that default pessimism everyone seems to feel in this or that way does make you think nothing's going to happen. Like fishing open water during January. But it's not January, just a tough day during a month that can be tough when it comes to catching fish, but not that tough. Unless you're comparing it to ice fishing, perhaps, since ice fishing can result in a lot of fish caught. 

Last September Brenden and I fished Tilcon Lake, and I caught only three fish. I don't remember off hand how many Brenden caught, but it wasn't many. I think I entitled the blog post "Tough September Outing." September has been tough on other occasions, too, but the water remains mild, and the fish are beginning to chase fish forage; the fish we marked in the depths were on clouds of fish forage of some description we haven't been able to make out. To the best of our knowledge, the lake has no alewives, but we might be mistaken.

In any event, I put those deep water fish out of mind and concentrated on my Torpedo. Matt continued to toss the Hula Popper he had caught a bass on earlier. We worked depths anywhere from about five feet down to eight- and 10-foot depths, weeds straggling up to the surface but not particularly thick. I had been thinking about the classic situation Mike Maxwell and I encountered on Mountain Lake a day or two before my son graduated high school. Minutes later, I saw nervous water similar to what began the romp Mike and I enjoyed. Then something carried the situation up to whole other level when a fish positively broke water with a sizeable splash. We edged over.

Not too much later, I had the fish on. Matt and I are sure it was the one that had splashed. Only for a second or two I had it, when I judged it probably weighed about a pound-and-a-half. Matt switched to a weedless frog, and I praised his move. Within a minute or so, something really nice-sized erupted from under algae scum, really exploded on that frog, but Matt missed the hit. I grabbed my box of topwaters and found a soft plastic, weedless mouse. 

Matt gave up on trying to tempt that fish to come back, and hooked the next fish that blew up well to the right of it. It proved to be a bass of about 17 1/2 inches, a chunky fish of nearly three pounds. After photographing his fish, I worked the scum until a bass broke through the algae two feet into the air, my mouse in it's mouth, and I set the hooks hard. My bass would have measured about 16 inches. Photographed, I released it and freed myself up for more action, which came in the form of a great strike near where Matt had lost the big one. Once I felt the fish's weight, I set the hooks. Hard! Mine proved to be a bass of at least 18 inches. 

Our commitment to slowing down and fishing only one way--topwater--had paid off and saved a day that otherwise was a tough one. Above all else, it was Matt's idea that broke through. Besides the bass themselves.    

Better than 18 inches?

Brenden caught a nice one of about two pounds on a Senko-type worm from right against the bank. Later, he caught one on Whopper Plopper of better than a pound.

First fish of the day. My little bass on a Yum Dinger from 10-foot weeds.

Matt's bass on a Hula Popper from right near the bank.

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Matt's Hula Popper bass.

Little bass I caught on a Baby Torpedo shortly before Matt began throwing the weedless frog.

My 16-inch bass caught on a weedless mouse.

Mountain Lake

 

Heavy Northeast Wind Solidity Underfoot

The jetty has a way of returning you to solidity underfoot. It's just that if you take one wrong step, the crevice you fall into will break bones. I've been out there with Fred a number of times now, and every time, I've thought of my job. Yesterday, it bothered me little. Almost not at all. I didn't feel as if my time away from it was too short. 

The interesting thing is, I remember Fred telling me how many days he has to retirement. Each time we fished together, which used to be more frequent when he lived in Bernardsville. I remember that number over a thousand. And then, almost four years ago, it was done, and Fred moved with his wife to the vicinity of Long Beach Island. It seemed to happen so fast, while day to day reality plods along towards my goal as yet.

It's my turn now. And with April coming fast (in some sense, but was is that, really?), soon four years will have passed since I retired. I guess I've reached the point where it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I have to go in in the morning, because so few of them stretch between now and then. Even though it's a matter of some 210 days, which can feel like a lot at any given moment, there's a level in an older person's mind that travels between life events in an instant. It seems impossible to understand how actual time moves fast, when a second remains a second, an hour an hour, but 40 years since when I was 23 doesn't seem very long ago. It could be argued that I'm referring to a superficial level of memory, though, and that if I took the time to really get deep into recollection, vastness would emerge, and with it, a greater sense of time's length. 

Will I fish more, I think so. But between you & me, what matters most is that I keep delivering quality blog posts. I fully intend to keep publishing as much as I do now in magazines, too. 

I thought I'd have the trout book all finished before I would leave work, but that's OK. Haven't touched it in about two years, but I've worked on it since then in my head, so I know the time away is productive. I committed to a big writing project at the beginning of summer I knew would take me away from getting the new website up, but it led me to an even better idea to work on in a year or two or more. A memoir on the absolute need of civilization to have its first principle in nature, and the role of certain individuals who revitalize possibilities by going deep into nature, namely my own role in doing that, having spent 13 years digging clams...unearthing the mind's depths. It is the mind that makes life worth living by linking to possibilities. The liberal persuasion may be the postmodern denial of nature as existing on its own, as if it's a "construction of human society," but nature needs no defense, standing absolutely on its own. It's we who need to recognize its majesty, rather than to imagine we can elevate one of us to that status politically. (What a joke.)

About yesterday, the best part involved my getting an inevitable wind knot in my new PowerPro black slick braid, and having mentioned it to Fred before I would cut that expensive line, his volunteering to untangle it.

"You can't untangle that."

"I can so." 

And a few minutes later, I was fishing the whole length of what's left of it again. I had cut it I think three times during recent outings. 

Again, I got a wind knot. This time, I untangled it. And then once more again, and I untangled it, so I'm confident I can maintain my expensive PowerPro without wasting it.

Wind hauled water out of the Northeast and dumped it on the rocks. After it fell towards low tide, I could finally take my camera out without exposing it to spray, but even then I had to be very careful, as most spots among the rocks were still subject to salty mistiness. 

I fished only Gulp! Jerk Shads on jigs for fluke. Fred tried Fish Bites twister tails and something that looked just like a Jerk Shad. After I caught two fluke, one about 14 inches, another 16, I was told by a couple of guys that the bite was early in the morning when one guy had a four- or five-pounder on the rocks. Fred ended up with one right about 18 inches. We saw one of about 22 inches caught. That spot does get pounded, but so far, we've always caught fluke. 

Fishing the inlet side was difficult with the big swells, heavy tidal current, and spray, but we caught a few tog up to about 12 inches, lots of little seabass. Mole crabs, also called sand fleas. Fred had raked the bait out of the surf. 

Guy's got a short.

Inlet Three Years Ago

 

South Branch Raritan River Wading Attempt

I spoke to a friend recently who suggested an area of the South Branch upstream of one of the bridges. I asked if it's accessible by any pullover nearby. No, Brenden and I would have to wade up.

I stepped out the front door, still dark out, with lure bag, camera, and rod in hand, noticing that raindrop patterns had just begun to collect on the pavement. I took the stuff to my car, getting mildly pelted. A little light rain didn't alarm me, but I checked the weather. Soon, I got a text from Brenden saying it was pouring where he was in Stirling, though not raining in Hillsborough. 

We started wading in relative darkness, relative light. I had put my wallet and keys in my lure bag, expecting to reach waste level. Once, I stepped awkwardly on a rock. When you're really young, not just relatively young as I am now, you don't make missteps like that. You might be able to dance on rocks. I used to. 

They don't make me nervous now. They sometimes put me off a little, though. But we forged on as if we would reach that spot in the distance. We got fairly far. Above a section where the river divides into two, three or four flows. Facing the full width of the lower South Branch, I felt my antennae go on alert. The water was well up on my thighs, the bottom of my lure bag almost touching it. Lots of weeds on gravelly bottom. Some of that stuff at the surface. Where I bombed my Baby Torpedo on six-pound mono, and those casts were long, I couldn't tell just how deep, but deeper. Brenden had crossed some land downstream and taken interest in the flow furthest to my left looking downstream. Maybe he was catching bass.

Immediately, my plug started taking interest from sunfish. A couple hits I thought might have been bass, and then, finally, I caught a smallmouth of about 10 inches, feeling that satisfaction of having made a real effort for a real result. That little bass had leapt three times, as high as three feet. Had to be some depth out there for it to gather the power from below to go that high. 

Brenden caught up to me. He put a Whopper Plopper on. I told him about the big bass I had watched chase something against the trunk of a tree in the water along the shoreline to our left. I had repositioned so I might land a cast there, but Brenden's plug is a lot heavier and he made the mark perfectly. But nothing happened. 

I had caught my bass three or four minutes before it began raining. The water felt good, and while Brenden said something about maybe if the sun came out, the bass would hit better, I said, "I like the conditions just as they are. I just want to be on the bass." 

The one I caught was going to do it for the day for me. We couldn't move upstream any further. Too deep. The overgrowth along the shorelines too thick to break a trail. And I don't think we could have crossed over on the right, anyway, too deep. 

When we got back to the bridge, we fished on downstream maybe a couple hundred yards, but the water was shallower. My plug only interested a sunfish, and Brenden's Whopper Plopper--nothing.

We decided to try the confluence downstream, but the North Branch was off color there. Rather than staying out another hour or two, I was ready to go home and get a lot done. Brenden later texted me from a different spot, having caught seven smallmouths on a Rapala. 

Natirar

 

 

Outsmarting Pressured Fish Because We Enjoy It

 

Flashback to Belvidere July 12th. Mark Licht unhooks a rainbow trout caught while fishing smallmouths.

Writing to let you know I might have done it once before, but I'm not going to go for more than a week without posting, if I can help it. Did plan on fishing the Raritan today, but I'm busy with a writing project I've got to get done as soon as I can. 

Off on Monday, I'm thinking I'll get over to the lower South Branch. Noel Sell gave me a call today. We talked at least 15 minutes, good talk, and he gave me a clue as to where to try. Now living in Pennsylvania, he's very happy with the people over there, who will "bend over backwards to help you. In New Jersey, they screw you and take your money." 

Speaking from my own experience, I love New Jersey, which is not to say I'm blind to its flaws. Anyone who reads my blog knows that, but not because of resentment. Resentment is always directed upward against a superior, be it an individual or a group. Restrain resentment and you don't need to bother with self-aggrandizement to stand straight. Rather than gripe and get sour, I just lay out problems like fishing pressure, frequently lay them out, for what they are. We who fish in New Jersey play the game of outsmarting pressured fish because we enjoy it, not because it "should" be otherwise, even if, on occasion, like the previous post expresses, we feel put off by how difficult it really can be to go without an easy catch rate.

Someone I worked with at Fiddler's Elbow Country Club told me, "In New Jersey, you have to work for the fish." It's nice when sometimes the action is fast. But on the other hand, my catch of four smallmouths on the Raritan late this past July was very satisfying.

Just want to let you know the book on microlight method for trout is still in the works. Hope all of you read it and get the word out, not because I need to get rich, but because the quality of the book is something anglers who enjoy reading will appreciate. I've taken about two years' hiatus from working on it, but once I get the new website up, I can turn back to completing the finish, and then seeking the book's publication. 

I keep getting sidetracked by other writing projects. Even the monthly article I do for New Jersey Federated Sportsmen's News takes some repeated effort over the course of four or five days, maybe a week. I will reread a 1200-word piece entire, just to tweak a word or mark of punctuation. The editor's final copy is perfect, after he asks me for a proof-read. 

That's it for now. Hope I fish on Monday.  

Danny Barker's Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide

Got a phone call yesterday from a fisherman from Arkansas, who had lived in Newport News, Virginia, and fished Currituck Sound. He had found my post on Currituck and wanted to talk. 

I phoned him and we hit it off directly. Danny Barker had grown up in West Virginia, where the New River was home water for smallmouth bass; other mountain streams for eastern brook trout. His family relocated to Newport News, where he began fishing the salt of Chesapeake Bay. Naturally, they learned about the northern largemouth bass fishery of Back Bay-Currituck Sound and Albemarle Sound of Virginia and North Carolina. 

We talked about 45 minutes, thoroughly enjoyed. Barker's been guiding in Arkansas, 77 years old, and he's written a book, Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide. Though it's not published yet, he intends to get it published and advance the proceeds to a children's charity. 

Barker sent me the book in PDF form, and I sat and read through the first 10 chapters, uninterrupted. Twenty-seven chapters in total, the book utterly fascinates me. I can't get over the difference between what seems to me a short time ago--the 1960's and '70's--and the present when it comes to fish populations and fishing pressure on them. Fishing Currituck with his father, the average day amounted to 100 to 200 bass between the two of them, with the best day amounting to about 350. Barker says they weighed between 1/2-pound to 10 pounds, not that a 10-pounder got caught every outing, but on the phone, I queried him on his biggest Currituck bass. Ten pounds is a great fish. He caught an 11-pounder from Albemarle. 

Striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake was phenomenal, too, the Barkers catching as many 200 of them during a single morning. They fished flounder, catching 150 to 300 a day. Big red drum, too.

After jaunting through my reading, I arrived at the Raritan this morning feeling thoroughly dismayed. It's not just what we've done to fish populations. After all, in some ways the Raritan must be comparable to the James and Roanoke Rivers, where the Barkers caught 50 to 100 smallmouths a day as large as seven pounds, but Raritan River bass aren't there in numbers like they must have been only some 60 years ago. At least above Somerville. (There are about a dozen Superfund sites along the lower Raritan.) I think of Stony Brook in Princeton, where I used to catch as many as 40 a day during the 70's. Try Stony now, and the chances are against you catching a single bass. It's not just fishing pressure. Stony never got a whole lot that we ever knew of. Rather than fishing pressure being an all-encompassing evil, consider that ecosystems are delicate. The more New Jersey builds, the more pressure is put on watersheds in forms other than fishing.

I fished this morning...for a single bass. A Raritan smallmouth a little better than 10 inches long caught on a Ned rig. I did hook two other littler ones lost, and missed a hit, but I felt the lack deeply, and I'll add, deeper than I will likely feel it again, thankfully. I'm no different from you. We're used to the fisheries as we have them. Today was a slow one as Raritan outings go, and, in fact, the water was a little off-color. I never do well when it's stained any worse than it was this morning. 

I got out and fished Round Valley in the rain last Thursday, getting skunked. And since I fished only 45 minutes, I felt I had no story to relate on the blog. Flooded undergrowth gave my buzzbait abundant opportunity--45 minutes worth from where I could reach from shore near the main launch--but oddly, there seemed to be no bass among that cover during those favorable weather conditions. 

I leave a link to my popular Currituck post. In addition to Currituck, I refer to canals and "Collington Bay," while said bay is not only a thing of mistaken memory, it's misspelled. The word is "Colington," referring to a certain island and small community. The bay there is strictly named Kitty Hawk Bay. I leave the title as is, so as not to screw up the post in relation to search engines.

Currituck Sound      
 

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