Old Man Winter has slithered his way over Pennsylvania, seemingly overnight, and enveloped these rolling hills with a thick and cold white blanket. I'm back in my little valley carved amongst the limestone canyons of Central PA, tucked in my dorm room while outside the north winds roar on by carrying flurries of snow with them. While I fell sick during the last few days of my winter break, I managed to get out and do some fishing in places both old and new.
Right now is walleye season on the Delaware. Starting around Halloween, the walleyes start sliding up shallow in the dark to get ready to spawn. All winter long, river rats such as myself beat the banks of the Delaware, freezing our asses off and crawling swimbaits along the bottom painfully slow trying to coax a big marble-eye off the bottom.
I typically don't do very well with river 'eyes in late December into January, usually preferring the red-hot fishing that comes in late February into March. However, I was able to chip away at a few, including a 24 inch fish on a husky jerk for my first fish of 2024.
While fishing a stretch of river further north for marble-eyes, Slavik was bouncing a curly tail jig off the bottom and got snagged. At least that's what we thought. Then it started moving. Slavik fought this fish all the way to the bank, thinking it was a big walleye, until it suddenly porpoised, revealing a bright green back marred with tiger stripes. The muskie opens her maw, shook, and snapped right through the 10 lb test we were using. I'm no stranger to losing muskies, but it never gets less heartbreaking. They're river ghosts, more concept than fish.
Something I've been doing a lot of lately is wintertime panfishing. Yellow perch used to be a January staple for me, fishing reservoirs and spillways for big perch on jigs. However, those perch spots I used to beat up on have declined lately, largely due to poor water management on the smaller reservoirs in my area. Lake Galena in South-Eastern PA has experienced toxic algae blooms for the past few summers, and nearby Core Creek Reservoir has similarly had massive fish kills.
Lately, however, yellow perch have been making a showing in some of my crappie spots along the canals and backcreeks leading into the river. Slavik caught one of the biggest perch I've seen from one of these spots, where we also put some crappies in the cooler for a wintertime fish fry.
Now that I'm back in Central PA, I'll have less time to fish, and on those precious days where I do get to go out, I'll be in pursuit of big wild brown trout, both on spinning gear and fly.
2023 was a pretty good year. I got my first double-digit snakehead, broke my personal best flathead, caught a ton of fish, and introduced so many new people to fishing, especially in my home waters. My favorite moments were probably putting my best friend Sharkey on his personal best largemouth, catching that big flathead from the Schuylkill, and getting Slavik onto his first ever snakehead.
Every New Year I make some fishing related goals that I want to accomplish. Most anglers who partake in yearly goals make them about catching a certain fish of a certain size, but I decided to take the more experiential route. Here are a few:
- explore the swamps of South Jersey
- see the Great Lakes for the first time
- fish more at night
- catch a wild trout on a dry fly
- catch 12 new species that I've not caught before
- do more overnight camping trips up in the Poconos
These aren't set in stone and there are so many more things I'm excited for in 2024. Big changes will be coming to this blog soon.
Cheers, fishy people.
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