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.