The Year's End

    The river's swollen and covered with broken chunks of ice, a root-beer float of cold spring water flowing from every run-off from the Catskills down, slowly crawling towards Delaware Bay. A few days ago, I tried fishing my walleye wintering holes during what I thought would be a break in the weather. Instead of my jerkbait, I was the one getting hit, by all four types of precipitation in less than an hour. 

    By then, the temps had dropped considerably below freezing. Everything was cold. I was cold. My fingers and toes were numb, but it was a good kind of numb. The type of numb that lets you know you're still there. I made one last cast with the jerkbait. Twitch. Pause. Twitch, twitch. Pause. Every stop, every pause, every single twitch that brought life back into the piece of plastic, metal, and wood was a source of hope. The shivers in my spine were fueled by a mixture of the cold winds and an anticipation of that heavy thump on the end of the line. A thump that never came. I clipped the back treble hook to the hook-keeper at the base of my rod and set it down. I was done. 

    I sat beneath a maple tree, watching the pouring rain turn slowly into sleet, watching the sleet turn into snow, watching the aforementioned three daughters of the ocean experience frequent interruptions by their attention-seeking sister, Hail. It had gone down almost 20 degrees since I'd arrived. I could feel the front moving in, slowly pushing the clouds away. 

    The walleyes I had been dialed in on until mid-December seemed like years ago. The sight of a snakehead waking behind a frog, the feeling of a flathead thumping a jig or a striper sucking down a swimming plug, the sound of a chorus of treefrogs, an eternity. I missed them. As much as I dislike them, their beady, soul-less black eyes and snake-like hisses, the geese had the right idea. Florida sounds nice. 

    I'm writing this while hunkered down in my room. The cold snap came in, grabbed any warmth left in it's icy fingers, and is currently holding it without bail for the next few days while the wind howls across these valleys and woods I call home, completely free and unmolested. Maybe once it clears up I can get back out before the year's end for walleyes. Maybe even muskie. Maybe wild brown trout. I don't hate winter fishing. It gives you space and time to think. 2022 beat the shit out of me. I'll need it. 

    Cheers, fishy people. 

Hunting Gravel Lizards

 

    Cold weather walleye fishing is tough, especially on the Delaware. I've never cared too much about walleyes, mostly because I don't live in an area with walleye culture. They're here, and they have a group of dedicated people that target them, but it's a small group. Our tackle shops don't carry leeches. Our lakes are filled with guys throwing spinnerbaits and senkos, not jig and minnow combos. The idea of a walleye tournament is completely foreign to me, along with the rest of the country outside the Great Lakes and Great Plains until some guys in Ohio decided to stick some lead weights in some. 

    That was always fine with me. I'd still rather stick a big ol' leaping bronzeback than a gravel lizard that simply snaps a jig and slowly rolls up to the surface. I'll still make fun of 'eyes for their lackluster fighting abilities. But they're a cool fish and I've been recently fascinated with trying to pattern them on my home river. 

    Typically for lizards, night time is the right time. The reflective retinas of a walleye are extremely sensitive, making them very efficient predators in the dark. 

    As the sun dipped below the trees, I found myself standing on one of my frequent haunts on the river. Bouncing a swimbait around a rock pile, I quickly got hung up and broke off. I then switched to a slow-rising jerkbait, hoping to be able to crawl a lure slowly right over the structure. Two casts in, I get slammed, getting on the board with a 17 inch eye. 

    After releasing that fish, I continued hopping spots. At night time, the river seems like a whole new fishery. Hitting spots where I can normally see protruding logs, rock piles, points, and cuts, I suddenly have to rely entirely on experience and feel. You have to trust your lure is swimming the right way, have to trust you're casting where you want to be casting. The sound of braid running through the guides and the slow vibration from your bait translating up the line are a reassurance that you're doing something right. For the rest of the night, however, I wasn't. Not another hit. 

    While walleyes are generally night-time feeders, they're not exclusively nocturnal. Especially during low light conditions, they'll hunt during the day. A few days later, we had a pre-frontal window move through, with cloudy, overcast conditions and no wind. Ernie and I made a plan to meet up and try to stick some. 

    The first spot we hit was a no go. Jerkbaits, swimbaits, jigs, nothing got a single touch. We hit the asphalt and drove about a mile up the river before hiking into another spot. I put on a swimbait with a heavy lead jig and starting bouncing bottom. Soon, that signature walleye thump wallops it. A brief fight, a grab by Ernie, and soon, my new personal best gravel lizard is flopping on the bank. At 20 inches, it was a mere piglet by Lake Erie standards, but a fish I'm very happy with. I harvested that fish and fried it up for lunch, my first experience eating walleye. Walleye meat has a reputation for being one of the finest you can acquire in freshwater, so my expectations were high. It was good, but snakehead is better; I'll die on that hill. It was still delicious, and I'll definitely harvest more of these scrappy, reptilian-looking fish. 

    By the time the pre-spawn smallies start chowing big baits in the spring and the striper run starts, I'll probably forget about walleye. But for these next few cold months on the river, when everything is still, the guides on your rod are freezing up, and there's plenty of time to collect your thoughts along the frozen, snow covered banks of Eastern PA, I'll be out looking for more thumps. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

    

Downsizing for Big Fall Smallies

 

        Fall is one of the best times for people who like hucking big baits for big fish. Looking at you, big swimbait dudes. The dropping water temps mean big fish begin getting on the feed for the winter and they're looking for big meals. However, weather can vary wildly in the fall, and recently, Max, Victor, and I got stuck in a situation where small, low, and slow was needed. 

    Salmon Camp this year was futile. The lack of rain had sucked all the life out of the tribs and the hot weather made what little fish left sluggish and unwilling to bite. In an entire morning, I got one fish to move on a fly, Max got one half-hearted swipe, and we barely saw any other ones, even in gin clear water. A few hours into the day, we made a call. We were gonna ditch the salmonoids and do some walleye/smallmouth fishing at a nearby spillway. 

    I immediately began chucking the big stuff. I start throwing a Smithwick Rogue, hoping for a big smalljaw or 'eye to slam it. Worked my entire way up the bank, nothing. I do the same thing with a big swimbait. No cigar. Suddenly, Max comes tight on a 3 inch Gulp! Minnow, pulling out an incredibly lethargic 13 inch smalljaw. Soon, he missed another bite. 

    That suddenly got the wheels turning. I tied on a 3 inch keitech and started slowly crawling it off the bottom. After Max lost his jig, he started doing the same. We started getting bites almost every cast, with myself getting a mix of walleyes and smallmouth and Max putting some nice bronzebacks on the board. Within time, Max and Victor had both broken their person best smalljaws. 

    Make some lemonade out of lemons, people. Never be afraid to change spots, try new things, and switch it up. It's that constant sense of change and need to adapt that makes this sport so goddamn addicting. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Finicky Shad and a Special Tog

 

        It's too fucking warm. Usually when I think November fishing, I'm expecting to be bundled up, freezing my ass off on a salmon stream or an inlet jetty or my beloved Delaware hoping to tickle up a few walleyes. But this year, we had temperatures up into the mid-70's when my more festive friends are starting to play Christmas music, much to my dismay. However, October had semi-normal October weather, so the water temps haven't been affected too much. 

    On Salmon Camp Eve, Victor and I decided to hit a local inlet jetty for the feisty little Jersey tarpon known as the hickory shad. Hickories are an underrated light tackle delight; if they're in the mood, they hit any small lure or fly and will jump like their cousin the Silver King. We also picked up some green crabs, hoping to poke around for some big fall tautogs. 

    We pulled up in the afternoon, right before high tide. There was no sign of bait around, so I began cutting crabs and dropping them down tog holes with rigs, starting all too familiar cycle of crunch, swing, and miss. All of a sudden, my crab gets walloped on the way down. I swing, my rod doubles over, and I feel the sickening scrape of mono leader dragging over rocks. My rod pops back up and my line goes slack. Tog 1, Alan 0. A few minutes later, I lost another big tog on the same rock. I've heard blackfish gurus say that big tog stick to rocks in pairs. After losing both members of a pair, I'm a believer.  

    Soon after, the man next to me lands a hickory. I start casting a small pink albie metal, and get picked up. A flash of silver, a jump, and this shad shakes the hook. An oldhead next to me yells a word of advice, but I can't hear it over the wind and waves. I learned over, cupped my hand around my ear, and yelled back. 

    "I'm sorry?"

    "Sorry?" he yelled back. "What you saying sorry for? You're too young to be sorry. Wait until you're old like me, then you're allowed to be sorry. I was telling you that the shad hit sabiki rigs. Go out there and catch 'em." Two different pieces of advice in one exchange, one fishing, one life. It's incredible how much advice concerning the two intertwine out on the water, even in a place like dirty Jersey where everyone's supposed to be an asshole. 

    I continue casting my metal out of sheer laziness, but let it sink to the bottom and jig it, like how someone would fish a sabiki. I get smacked and land my first hickory shad of the year. Victor puts on a sabiki and starts hammering fish on a fast retrieve. 

    The shad were being picky. They wanted a bait fished much closer to the bottom than what I'm usually using for them. I got many hits, but few hook ups and most of the fish I hooked managed to spit the lure. Frustrated, I put on a tog jig and crab and sent it to the bottom. I feel a set of crunches, and swing as hard as I can. The medium bass rod I'm using bends into a hula hoop and I have to cup my spool to give the fish as little room as possible to run into the cover. It breaks the surface, and it's one of my biggest land based togs, missing a chunk out of the top of it's head, most likely from an osprey  encounter when it was young. I harvested that fish for the dinner table. 

    While I was fooling around with tog, Victor continued to put a smackdown on the hickory shad using both sabikis and a variety of small soft plastics. We were a little short of a limit, and lost just about as many fish as we hooked (many more in my case). The acrobatic displays of aerial feats that these silvery little fish can produce more than made up for it. 

    I've never done much land based tog fishing this late in the year. However, I've heard that you get shots at much bigger fish, and after this trip, I'm a believer in both going later and learning the jig. I believe it's light tackle and tog jigs that finally gave these fish the popularity that they deserve, and it makes me happy to see more and more people out every year having fun trying to learn the difference between a scratch and a thump. As for the shad? Hook one in heavy current on light tackle and it'll speak for itself. 

    Cheers, fishy people. 

                                                                                                                                     

October: Day and Night

    It's that time of year. The trees are displaying their coats of reds, oranges, yellows, and browns all across the hillsides of the Delaware, the temperatures are dropping, and the fish are putting on the feed to get ready for the winter. In my opinion, October and April are the two best months of the year to catch big river smallmouth. You won't have a 20 fish day like you may in the summer, but you very seldom need to weed through dinks to find the football shaped trophy caliber fish. 

    It was on a cool October afternoon where I found myself along a stretch of the Delaware further south than my typical stomping grounds. Casting a paddle-tail swimbait, I soon get thumped on a steady retrieve. A flash of bronze, a few leaps and splashes, and soon, I've landed my biggest smallmouth of the fall. I love big smallmouth; there's very little in freshwater that can match a big bronzeback pound for pound in terms of scrappiness. 

    I soon sent her back on her way and continued wandering down the river. I eventually left and drove to one of my spots further up north, hitting some canal locks along the way. Got lost in the woods for a few hours. Holy shit, I needed that. 

    The next night, I found myself at the exact same spot I got that big smallmouth at. This time, however, I had on my mind the things that go bump in the night. October is also around when the local river rats turn their attention towards ol' marble eyes. On my third cast with a purple shadow rap, I got that signature walleye thump. 

        Fall marks a time of immense change for fish, no matter where you are. Everything feels rushed, from the massive push of bunker along the shore and the bass and blues that follow in a mad dash for the Chesapeake, the salmon and steelhead that run up the tribs to spawn, the walleyes and smallmouth that start gorging themselves in preparation for the winter, and the sense that there's too much to do and not enough time to do it before all the leaves are gone and the north winds chill the landscape. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Jersey Mirages

 

    Gulls, terns, and gannets sit around, waiting. A stiff east wind is blowing in my face, kicking up white water and severely restricting my casting distance. Past the outer bar, bait breaks the surface. Or is it just the wind? I make a cast with an epoxy, let it sink, and burn it in. Nothing. 

    Jersey exotics are a weird deal. Typically, they show up around late summer/early fall, when the Gulf Stream starts doing some janky shit. Then, we get shots at Bonito and Spanish Mackerel, False Albacore, Mahi-Mahi, needlefish and houndfish, juvenile jack crevalle, tarpon that get instantly shot once they hit Barnegat Inlet. Jersey used to be a redfish state before the eelgrass went away, but sometimes, they still haunt the backwaters along with speckled trout. 

    Earlier that day, I had paid a visit to my favorite saltwater tackle shop, Grumpy's in Seaside. Picking a few S&S bucktails off the rack, I stopped at a part of the shop I rarely visit, grabbing a few epoxies, thin metals, and resin jigs. 

    "Any hardtails around?" I ask the shop worker, as I slide my items across the counter. 

    "Albies will be showing up any day now. There's Bonito and Spanish in the surf." 

    "Thanks." 

    "Good luck," he responds, as I pay and leave. I'll need that. Reports are a fickle thing when it comes to pelagics. Hardtails are constantly on the move. 

    So far, nothing is showing. The wind keeps blowing out of the east, creating massive wind knots in my spool. Epoxy comes off, on goes a bucktail with a bait-strip, hoping for a bass or blue. Nil. I switch to meat-fishing, putting on a fluke rig. I get slammed, landing an 18 inch keeper fluke. 

    The upwelling occurring along the Jersey shore throughout the summer has produced cooler temperatures from shore. It's certainly made the surf-fluking much better; I'm 2 for 2 on keepers from the unreplenished beaches around IBSP this year. When I was cleaning that fluke, it's stomach was full of calico crabs and sandfleas. He's been hanging around the wash for a while. 

    I only wish the Albies and Spanish would do the same. Until then, I'll keep looking. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Farewell, Summer

 

    As I write this, the north winds are blowing away the throes of what may be our final heatwave of the year, which is going down in a fight creating spitting buckets of rain and flashes of lighting in the crossfire. The mullet will be beginning to run along the Jersey shore, as our last waves of Bonito and Spanish Macks do the same. The bunker will soon follow, with the bass not far behind. By then, our snakeheads and flatheads will be winding down, our walleyes and muskies will be winding up, and the salmon and trout will start petering into the tributaries. By then, the tree frogs will be going silent and the forests will switch out their attire from greens to reds, oranges, and browns. 

    The theme for the summer of 2022 could be pretty much summed up into 3 words: need more water. We had far below average flows, even for summer, making for tough fishing overall. 

    Snakes and bass in shallow water were the bread and butter, and that's exactly what I spent my last day of summer break targeting. Even though it was still August, the chilly nights had cooled down the water consistently. I succeeded in catching a few salad-faced bass on zoom flukes. 

    After missing a snake, I decided to throw a Hail Mary and try topwater, tying on a buzzing toad. Third cast, a wake appears behind it. Speeding up, my frog gets slammed right when it hit a patch of open water. I hit this fish as hard as I can and drag it out of the weeds, a very darkened up 4 lb snake, typical in clear water conditions. I pop the hook out and set her on her way. 

    Goodbye snakehead. Goodbye summer. Cheers to the fall. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

    

Follow the Birds, Follow the Bait

 

    The dog days of summer can drag along slowly. Low and clear water makes striper and flathead fishing tough, high temperatures have most of the big fluke have headed offshore, and everything in general seems to become much more sluggish and deliberate. However, every year on August 1st, a special thing happens, something that serves as a breath of fresh air from the routine hustle and bustle of New Jersey saltwater fishing. You're goddamn right, I'm talking about tog. 

    Max, Victor, and I made plans to head down to a local inlet, hopping rocks from hole to hole for these scrappy bottom dwellers. Getting up early enough to listen to the birds wake up and downing an instant coffee, we made the drive to Central Jersey to catch the tail end of the incoming tide. 

    Today the ocean was a perfect blue-green. East winds had stirred up the water and the sky was gray and occasionally spitting bursts of rain down on us. It just felt fishy. Tog were our primary focus, but also on our minds were bluefish, fluke, weakfish, maybe even the odd bass that stayed in Jersey instead of migrating north to New England. With these conditions and the most open a body of water can get, anything was a possibility. 

    Instead of using the usual green crabs, our tog bait of choice were sandfleas, raked ourselves by hand from the surf zone not 20 yards from where we were tog fishing. After about 10 minutes of raking, I made a drop into a deep hole with a rig. A few seconds later, that signature tautog crunch reverberated up my braided line into the rod. Letting it take the bait for what felt like eternity, I set the hook. My rod bents over into a hula hoop and after the brutal, dirty, tug of war match that pits you against the line shredding boulders these fish call home that characterizes a tog fight, I flipped this fish up. An inch or two short of keeper size, I unhooked her and tossed her back. 

    I've said it before and will continue to say so, the average tog is pound for pound one of the hardest fighting fish out there. They don't take blistering long runs like an albie. Instead, they are slow and meticulous, using that big broomtail to dive under the rocks and cut your line. They know the terrain and will pit you against it. 

    Slowly but surely, Max, Victor, and I began to build the bite. We found a few holes and soon, started picking away at tog. All were short, but all scrapped better than short fish had any business of being. I'll take tog over fluke any day. 

    Several hours, 3 buckets of sandfleas, and countless short fish later, we began wondering where the big fish were. We witnessed several other anglers pull keepers out of the rocks throughout the day but we had no such luck. 

    Throughout the day, we witnessed several schools of bay anchovies and silversides on the prowl. However, as the wind picked up and the currents shifted to the outgoing tide, seagulls and gannets began seeing them as well. Looking up against the beach, a massive school of bait had been pushed up against the shore, larger fish boiling and crashing through, frothing white water while flocks of birds dove on them from above. An angler casting a metal towards the school sets the hook and his rod doubles over with a burst of drag. A minute later, a silver shape breaks the surface. The blues were here. Soon, an angler down at the beach hooked up on a popper. 

    I tied on a Mirrodean and started running towards the beach. Don't run on a wet jetty in Crocs. I soon ate shit and fell into a hole in the jetty, banging up my ribs and knee and getting the wind knocked out of me. After taking a couple minutes to recuperate, I was back on my feet again. By this time, the fish had gone total apeshit, pushing bait right up against the beach and splashing around on the surface. A cast with a Mirrodean, and a fish eats it right on the surface. After a few runs, I drag my 1st bluefish of the year onto the sand, bloody, angry, and spitting up fistfuls of silversides. 

    

    

    Soon, the birds and bait moved further out, concentrating on the tip of the jetty. From there on, it was lights out. I was casting Mirrodeans, Max and Victor were throwing metals, the blues were eating them both. No matter how I fished it, fast, slow, twitches, steady retrieve, there were 3-4 hungry bluefish fighting to eat it every cast. 

    Max and I broke out the pencil poppers, which is when all hell really broke loose. Almost every single cast, a bluefish or five would charge and smack it around. Most of them were too small to get hooked, or connected but then would get off, but we didn't care. An hour or two later, with heavy shoulders and sore arms, I had a loud smack that took my pencil under the surface. Connected and pissed off, this fish runs towards me as I reel as fast as I can to pick up slack, then runs back out. I drag this fish up onto the rocks, which ended up being my personal best bluefish, released to continue gorging on anchovies and hopefully later this fall, mullet and eventually bunker. 

    Always remember, follow the birds, follow the bait. Be patient, but have fun along the way. You can learn important life lessons waiting for a blitz. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

    

The Ghosts of the Neshaminy

 

    When I was first dipping my toes in this whole fishing thing, the place I went to learn was the Neshaminy Creek. A 40 mile long creek running entirely throughout some imaginary lines on a map called Bucks County, a section lay less than 5 minutes down the street from my house. When I was done with school, my mother would drop me off and I would spend hours running around, netting minnows and crawfish and catching stocked trout and scrappy smallmouth. It was at the Neshaminy where I caught my first smallmouth, first brown trout, first trout on the fly, and countless other memories. However, it is also my Sissicu, my U.S. Grant Creek. And while it still has life, it has turned it into a husk of it's former self, a watery shell that once played host to countless moments on the water but has been discarded since by industrialization. 

    The Neshaminy flows past several different smaller industrial plants and construction sites, which served as sources of it's undoing. High amounts of PCB's, heavy metals, and other hazardous chemicals began to find their way into the water. In 2022, the PA Fish and Boat Commission made the decision to stop stocking the Neshaminy, issuing warnings against eating fish from the watershed that the Indians once called, "The Place Where We Drink Twice." 

    I hadn't realized to the fullest what had happened to the Neshaminy until I fished it on a July afternoon with some time to kill. It had been over a year since I had last stepped foot in the creek. What I came to see was almost unrecognizable from it's former self. The schools of killifish that I used to always net and drift as bait for smallmouth and trout were extremely thinned out. Almost no weeds existed in the places were huge hydrilla pads and milfoil once existed, providing cover to many a rockbass or smalljaw. There were no sunfish cruising the shallows. No suckers or chubs. 

    I spent about half an hour casting ned rigs, small swimbaits, jitterbugs, desperately hoping for a tug that never came. A tug that would have served as a symbol of survival, a will to live and consume against all odds. I keep moving upstream. 

    Some mayflies are buzzing around dimpling the surface and creating their own little whirlpools within their own little ocean. Nothing is rising to them. A splash off in the distance creates a fleeting hope that leaves with the wood duck that momentarily touched down in the creek. Still, her presence as well as that of a snapping turtle provide some creature comfort. Life finds a way. The creek will heal. 

    Desperate for a sign of ichthyological life, I tied on a trout magnet and a float, drifting it down the deepest hole I could find. It gets dropped by a native redbreast sunfish in a few drifts. 

    It wasn't anything completely fire, certainly nothing like how it used to be, but I soon was able to catch a few redbreast, green sunfish, and rock bass drifting a magnet. Rock bass were an especially welcome sight because of how sensitive they are to sudden changes in water quality. I admire that about them. Rock bass know what they like and how they like it, traits I greatly respect in people. They don't take crap from anyone. They weren't big fish, but each little tug on the line was a message reading, I'm still here. 

    At this point, I hadn't seen a single smalljaw. I decided to throw a Hail Mary and tie on a topwater popper. I pushed further and further upstream, ringing the doorbell at each and every hole with the short pushes of water emitting from my plug. Soon, someone answers. My popper disappears with a toilet-flush of a blow up. I give a snakehead level hookset and my rod bows up. The fish explodes in a zip of drag, fighting all the way in with that signature smallmouth spunk. It's a big fish too, tapering in just at 19 inches. 

    Unfortunately, she was very thin and malnourished. I always feel bad when I catch fish like that. I love catching smallmouth, but I didn't feel the same amount of joy landing one of my biggest of the year usually would have produced. Some of the biggest smallmouth I've ever laid eyes on were in the hole that I pulled this fish from. Now, it almost feels like they're a dying breed. I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong.

    The Neshaminy isn't the Bushkill. It isn't the Yellowstone. It isn't the Columbia. It doesn't draw angler tourism. However, my guess is that there's thousands of little streams, lakes, and rivers around the world in the same predicament. This story goes out to them all. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Natives, Invasives, and All in Between

Native (noun):

1: One born or reared in a particular place 

2a: An original or indigenous inhabitant

2b: Something indigenous to a particular locality

      These are the words straight from the authority that our society deemed the expert on words, the Webster's Dictionary, that are used to define the term "native." Native is what the Lenni Lenape were to where I live in Pennsylvania, native is what the oaks were that gave them shelter, and native is what the shad were to the river that fed them. In today's modern angling culture, here in the United States, we place a strong emphasis on "native species," one that is well deserved in my opinion, born from a genuine desire to protect the species that called our waters home long before we did, hoping that they will do so long after we are gone. 

    However, here in the North-East, and I assume in many other places in the country, many of our most beloved gamefish species aren't native by definition. What's more American than largemouth bass, for example? While they did originally inhabit this country, largemouth are native to The Deep South. I love a good summertime smallmouth fishing session as much as the next guy. However, there wouldn't be anything sucking down poppers and crushing tube jigs if they hadn't been brought out in buckets from the Ohio River drainage. Muskies? They called the Great Lakes home, as well as northern portions of the Mississippi and Ohio. Ditto for the walleye. Brown Trout are immigrants from Germany. Rainbow Trout were isolated land-locked populations of Steelhead in the Pacific North-west. If not for stocking, the Delaware wouldn't have any of those species, but would still contain numerous suckers, chubs, shad, and stripers. 

    The dilemma seems to have morphed into a simple valuing of all established gamefish species, regardless of their native status. Everyone loves largemouth bass in America. We all love smallmouth, crappies, and walleyes (which I don't understand). You can't find a single person anywhere in this country that hates trout, unless you're talking pelletheads and you're like me. Yet bass anglers especially hate native chain pickerel, and I've seen people kill and dump native suckers while trout fishing. I inadvertently explored this dilemma by targeting two invasive species in the Delaware River that weren't stocked, at least, not on purpose, Northern Snakehead and Flathead Catfish. 

    My original objective for this short afternoon session was to test out a 13 Fishing casting rod that Max had gifted me for my birthday on some snakeheads. Thanks so much, Max. I walked in to the spillway and began throwing a spinnerbait. A snakehead followed it in on my 1st cast. On my 2nd, it got smoked. 

    After the snake unhooked himself and wriggled back, I was soon joined by another angler, an older gentleman and his son, who were throwing live eels for striped bass. Soon, he gets a pick up and swings into another snakehead, which he landed and proceeded to club to death. I don't blame him, when everyone and their mother is claiming that snakeheads wreak havoc on our ecosystem. However, I did make a point of carefully releasing the next fish that I caught, a large female snake that hit a paddle-tail swimbait. 

    I soon moved down to the dam, where I wanted to try to jig some stripers. It was late in the season for my seven-lined friends, but I knew that flatheads were a big possibility too. I put on a pink zoom fluke and began bouncing it off the bottom in a deep hole. Tick. Tick. Tick. Slam. I set the hook and the bass rod I'm using doubles over like a hula hoop. 

    A burst of drag rips out from the reel, followed by another and a series of headshakes that bounce the rod tip almost a foot with each movement. I spent a few minutes cranking and pulling, trying to do my best to get this fish off the bottom. Soon, a shape the color of pine bark materialized into view, a beautiful flathead just under 10lbs, marred by spawning scars. I climbed down from the dam and managed to get a hand under the gill plate, dragging him up. My first flathead on a jig. I'm now convinced that these are one of the hardest fighting fish in freshwater. I'll most certainly be targeting these with lures more. 

   

    Many people blame flathead catfish for the decline in the Delaware River smallmouth fishery. They're certainly a factor in my opinion, as a 30 lb flathead will inhale a 14 inch smallie like a pork roll sandwich, but definitely not the only one. Either way, I'd never kill a fish that I had no intention of eating, and that wasn't an option considering the 90 degree weather and my lack of an ice chest. 

    Make no mistake, flatheads and snakeheads shouldn't be here. However, they're here and there's nothing we can do about it, and if you can't beat them, join them. They are extremely fun and challenging to catch, a worthy target of any angler. Smalljaws ain't supposed to be here either. 

    The point of highlighting snakeheads and flatheads isn't to adopt a pro-invasive species rhetoric, but to high-light how hypocritical we are when addressing native and invasive species. I believe that restoring and protecting native species should be at the forefront of any conservation movement. It would be a dream come true for a re-established native Atlantic Salmon population to reach fruition in the North-East, a healthy population of native chubs and suckers would benefit the entire ecosystem, and I don't want shad and stripers to ever stop running up in the river in their rituals that serve as the harbinger of spring. The snakes and flatties seem to be doing fine on their own. 

Cheers, fishy people.