On Meditation

    In, out. In, out. I could hardly pay attention to the musings of my own diaphragm. Sight walked out the door, hearing took over feel, and all that was in my head was the sound of air being slowly funneled through nostrils around me. 

    The Apaches used to train children in long distance running by instructing them to take a gulp of water and hold it there while running barefoot through the Chiricahua Mountains, past the briars and rattlesnakes, ignoring all but the one task of focusing on not-swallowing. The upcoming task of spitting the mouthful of Colorado River at the finish-line forced nasal breathing and melted thorns and snakebite into afterthoughts. All you had to focus on was breath. 

    Apaches ran alone though, or in smaller groups, out in the open. It was harder in this basement, flooded by the hammers and hums of artificial light illuminating the plastic desk that I sat in, rather than the sounds of the desert. I had to make my own. 

    I thought of one of my favorite places, an undulating mass of Delaware River down the street from the Lambertville Fire Station that gave it it's name, Fireman's Eddy. At the Eddy, the jutting out of a rock formation caused the river to flow backwards, only for about a 20 yard stretch ten yards out. Yet, these swirling 200 yards made a certain, indescribable yet instantly recognizable sound of fighting currents. This sound was what I used to draw out the hums of electric light, the cacophony of the teacher next door, replacing all breaths in full of river water and out full of river water. 

(This post is dedicated to my English professor, Richard Doyle, someone whose advice has exponentially improved my writing and therefore, this blog. Based off of a writing exercise we did in class.)  

The March of Bass and Salamanders

    "Of course it hurts when buds burst, why else would spring hesitate?" - Karin Boye 

    A good friend of mine recently moved to the city of Seattle, thousands of miles and a Continental Divide away, where rivers no longer flow north to south. We still stay in touch and occasionally, she'll bring up the weather there. There's an ever-present wet and grey that sustains the evergreen and ever-wet forests surrounding the city. As someone whose river is usually cursed with bad flow, I always thought that sounded nice. The past week where I was home from school made me rethink my gloomy disposition. 

    

    My original plan entailed packing up the Buick with jerkbaits and jigs, heading north to the famed Delaware Water Gap, and spend a few days searching for the elusive 30-inch Delaware River walleye I've been hunting like Ahab for several years. The early spring rains had other plans. The Delaware swelled and screamed and raged, far too much for it to be fishable. Therefore, I made the call to stay closer to home and fish still water. 

    Lake fishing was never my forte. Currents are readable; I can look at a stream, a creek, a river, and pin-point the deepest channels and holes, the shallow riffles, where fish are most likely to hold up. In a still-water environment, it's like wiping a poem off a slate, going in blind. Starting over. 

    Still, I know how effective still-water fishing can be, even from shore, and therefore am determined to dial it in. Over the span of a few days throughout my spring break, I managed to catch a decent number of largemouth from a few local lakes, as well as lose a giant that picked up a soft-plastic and ran before I had time to set the hook. Another missed opportunity, another reason to go back. 

    Most of these bass had very red lips and red crushers, a sign that they were feeding on crawfish, so the fact that I was throwing crawfish soft-plastic patterns seemed to work out well. Bites and pick-ups were often extremely subtle, as if they were hesitant as the first few days of spring in which they bit. 

    A species that failed to hesitate, that sped out of their winter holes as quickly as they could, were the salamanders. A week beforehand, I couldn't find a single one. Now almost under every rock, every log, there were Eastern Redbacks that scurried at the sight of the world above. Their numbers will only grow with the passing weeks as we near the vernal equinox. 

Pre-spawn Crappie Fry

    3/4/24. That's the day this year when the first treefrogs of the year finally crawled out from their warming winter mud-burrows and climbed the trees that give them their name and identity, and sang to the top of their lungs, in unison to the setting sun hidden behind a curtain of stormcloud. When I heard them, I was out at the small lake up the street from my house, flipping and pitching soft plastics along the bank for early-season largemouth. They sing for each other and only each other, yet I nearly fell to my knees in thanks. 

   

    The previous day, Slavik and I had a hell of a time fishing for crappies. Lately, I've been referring to crappies by their Cajun moniker, "sac-a-lait," or "milk bag," a name derived from both their milky white flesh and similarity to their Choctaw name, sakli. Sac-a-lait are probably one of my favorite species to guide other people to fish for. My little sister Lauren isn't much of an angler, but she'll come with me to jig for crappies. When you find a big school of them stacked thick enough to catch them on every cast, it's a darn good time. 

    The trip started off, like many, at Skip's Outdoors, a small roadside hunting and fishing business in Stockton NJ, bordering the Delaware River. After securing some panfish jigs and nightcrawlers, I turned south towards one of our favorite confluences, a back creek that positively bristles with sunken trees and the crappies that hide within. 

    Sac-a-lait have a wishy-washy temperament. These Goldilocks fish don't like water temps too hot or cold, won't sit on the bottom, and rarely feed on the surface. What they do like, however, is structure, crowding around docks, sunken trees, rock piles, and each other. When targeting them, I pretty much always fish for them under a bobber, always looking to locate the school. Once the mass is found, picking individual fish off is quite easy. 

    We found the school immediately. Both fishing with floats, I set myself up with a jig and worm, Slavik with a soft plastic. My float dropped on the second cast, the jig being instantly converting to a small, writhing sac-a-lait. The hard part's already done. For the next hour, Slavik and I had a steady pick of crappies, getting float drops almost every single cast.  

   A watched bobber becomes almost like a living thing. Every individual twitch, dart, and slide that gets imparted cease to become fish-work and start to become intrinsically tied to that chunk of bright orange cork, which has a mind of it's own. Float fishing is by far, the quickest and easiest way to become lost, overtaken by tunnel vision.  

    Soon, my float drifts off to the side, never dipping down. I set the hook anyway. The float is converted into a white perch and a big surprise. A never-before seen specimen, at least by me, in this body of water, and too small for the fryer, I tossed him back. 

    Shortly around the time of the emergence of this white perch, a tragedy struck. A combination of shallow pockets, the act of bending down to rebait my jig, and just pure, un-adulterated clumsiness on my part, and soon, my cellphone was out of my pocket, falling off the bridge upon which we stood, and at the bottom of the canal before you could say "sac-a-lait." 

    I let out a few profanities. Slavik looks at me. 

    "What do we do?" 

    "Keep fishing." I had determined that the place my cellphone had fallen in was too deep to retrieve, and even if I could accomplish this task, water damage would probably rendered it useless by now. I would get a new one tomorrow. 

    And so, we fished on, on until the sun dipped down over Goat Mountain, before we packed up, hopped back in my little Buick, and took the half dozen or so crappies we kept back to my house for a fish fry. The tacos were as good as expected. Don't ask for the recipe because there isn't one. Measurements are for fish, not cooking. 

    

Springtime Hauntings

 

    I went looking for snakes today, in Central Pennsylvania, in February. By the book, this is a pretty pointless task. It is almost equally so in practice. But it was so warm today that the urge to go flip rocks was almost impossible to resist. I went and didn't find any; I wasn't expecting to. 

    I can remember the first fish that I ever caught, a summer camp bluegill that bit a worm under a red and white bobber; a bluegill that's started a lifelong journey connecting me to all parts of the world touched by water. I can't remember my first frog, snake, salamander, or turtle though. Flipping rocks was too natural for a little kid, like opening presents on Christmas morning to see what was in them. These presents were everywhere. I can vividly picture sun-bleached and painfully nostalgic Spring Valley Park in Lansdale, PA, a short five minute walk from the house I grew up in, where my grandpa used to take me every day in the summer and where I would stomp around the local creek harassing turtles and frogs. 

    On this too warm February day, I came across and flipped several rocks and logs to no avail. There was one rock that looked picture perfect. Ancient, flat, and moss covered, with a perfect overhang for a racer or rat snake to hide under. But upon turning it over, I merely disturbed the rest of a few rolly-pollies. I set the stone back with a sigh. How many people has that rock seen pass by from when it broke off many years ago? How many snakes and salamanders has it played host to? I recently talked to one of my caving friends who mentioned how he and a friend found a rattlesnake hibernation den whilst looking for a cave entrance. Part of me would like to find something similar one day, although the rest would feel wrong disturbing a hibernating animal. It somehow feels better to disturb the ones who dared venture out, whose little brains disregarded all fear of hawks and feral cats and even idiot herpers like myself who wished them no harm, even the ones in February. Such are the paradoxes that emerge when dealing with wild things. 

    I think I always try to make the spring transition happen too early. In my home river, the Delaware, is the ancient run of American Shad that starts in late March, every year without fail. My buddy Ernest (twice the fisherman and none the drinker of his famed marlin seeking namesake) and I may be the only people under 40 that look forward to the shad run every year. The millions of shad whose invisible thread of life and death pulls them upstream are the first thing to awaken in the Spring. With them are the dogwood trees, the sturgeon, the herring, and the striped bass that follow them. But I've never caught a shad on my first attempt of the season either, instead opting the chase the ghosts of rumors whispered over tackle shop counters, desperately trying to make springtime happen. It doesn't work. You can't rush the river; she flows at whatever pace she wants to. 

    It's March now though. Soon, the dogwoods will bloom, there will be salamanders under every log, and the trees will come alive with the nightly jazz cacophony of tree frogs that lull you to sleep all summer long. I can hardly wait.