Highs and Lows

 

Bro, you free today? 

Let's go for snakes today then. 

    As these two notifications materialized onto my phone screen in little blue clouds, I grinned. A few days ago, I had one of the best snakehead fishing days of my life. With an hour and a half to kill on a June evening, I set out with intentions to just catch one or two. What ensued was a shit ton of hungry snakes pouncing on every topwater and chatterbait that I threw at them. Today? Max wanted in on the snake charming. 

    After about a mile of walking down trails, slogging through creeks, climbing over logs, getting lost and unlost, we ended up at our spot. I rigged up a chatterbait on one rod and a toad on another, Max tied on a jitterbug, and Max's dad ended up throwing a chatter, sticking a nice sized largemouth within 5 minutes of us being here. Max soon also caught one that sipped a jitterbug off the surface. I upped the largemouth count a few minutes later with one that ate my topwater ribbit toad. 

    The log jam that I had slayed snakes on a few days before was pretty empty, so we pushed further and further up the system. I made a cast to the opposite side with the toad and began a steady retrieve on the surface. "Look behind it!" Max hissed at me. Sure enough, trailing the lure was a small northern. A cast back in front it it, twitch twitch, and boom, Kermit got smashed. I flip the fish up onto the bank, and as I'm debating whether or not to harvest this fish, it gave me an early answer by death-rolling out of my hand and flopping back into the water. 

    As my frog is gurgling across the muddy backwater, a pale flash appeared out of nowhere, emerging from underneath to suck it under. However, like a total douselight, I fucked up the hookset. Thinking I just missed a decent snakehead, I was pretty mad, and after Max informed me that judging by the angle in which he saw the blow-up, it was a big pickerel, I was still pretty mad but slightly less so. He soon made a cast with a keitech that got picked up by a mean, lean, and lime green slime machine. A very large slime darter too, one that stretched the tape to around 22 inches. (Chain Pickerel, in my opinion, do not get the love that they deserve. They are a cool and aggressive native fish that more people need to care about. Back to our regularly scheduled program). 

    Soon after, we decided to get out of there. Fast forward with some sketchy ass rapid crossing, and we found ourselves at a spillway we had fished many times before. As I threw jerkbaits and Max fished swimbaits, Victor threw a chatterbait up into the current, sticking 2 schoolie stripers. 

    While Victor was catching stripers and Max was missing hits on keitechs, I was blanking on jerkbaits. I reeled up, walked over to my bag, and started tying on a jig when I saw Max set the hook. A few seconds later, a mottled brown shape flashes into view, confirming that it was our target species. Our excitement soon turned into disappointment however, when that fish gave a headshake and that jig flew out of it's maw. Cinching down my loop knot, I dropped down and started jigging a 4 inch Easy Shiner, getting crushed within 5 minutes by another snakehead. A minute or two of death-rolling ensued, marred by the occasional headshake, duck, and dive, and I soon got a hand underneath the gill plate, and was able to lift the fish up unto shore. Short of 5 lbs and most likely full of eggs, I popped my jig out and sent her along her way. 

    A few minutes later, I threw my jig back in, heard Victor yell and a burst of drag, and looked back to see his rod doubled over like a hula hoop, braid running off the reel as his fish hit the current and used it to it's full advantage. Seconds later, the rod springs back up, the reel goes silent, and the line goes from taunt to slack. We still don't know what it was. If I had to guess, I would wager on it being a large flathead catfish, one that decided to slam what it thought was a small herring or alewife before going ballistic. It's those fish that get away though, that are the ones that keep us coming back. That thump you had on a jig that you missed, the drag screamers that go silent, that topwater blow up that you fucked up, or a fleeting sight of a 40 inch muskie or double digit snakehead that you knew was never going to eat; they all serve as causes for a series of perpetual hopes each and every time we get out onto the water, wondering, what truly swims in here? As anglers, being notorious optimists, we'll keep searching.

Cheers fishy people. 

    

Stacks of Smalljaws

    "Well, shit, I don't know if this is gonna work," were amongst the various expletives and thoughts racing through my mind whilst 52 degrees Delaware River water raced through the hole in my waders. Our original plan for the day was to continue with the Spring shad run, catching a couple silvers before converting some to chunks for channel cats and maybe an early season striper. However, while the river was at a technically fishable level, walking out to the peninsula to get into suitable casting distance to the current break where the shad were stacked up produced great deals of adversity. After trying for a couple minutes, myself and my friend and shad guru Ernie decided to pack it up and try to catch some bluegills or stocked trout to sacrifice to ol' kitty whiskers. 

    Ernie and I soon arrived at one of the many locks of the Delaware and Raritan canal, where gates are positioned to open and close to control flooding. When these gates open during high water, fish from the river can often enter the canal. After periods of heavy rain, superb fishing can be had in these locks with species associated more with the river ending up on the end of your line. So while Ernie was trying to catch trout or something, I put on a keitech and started jigging. Within 5 minutes, I get whacked. A couple short runs, head shakes, and spectacular displays of bronzeback acrobatics later, Ernie sinks his net around my first smalljaw of the year. 

    After a winter full of largely unsuccessful walleye fishing, I had almost forgotten the levels of scrappyness possessed by bronze bass. Largemouth are nice, stripers are great, snakeheads like to either roll right on in or thrash around everywhere and break shit, but nothing in freshwater in my area can pull, jump, and fight quite like a river smallmouth. 

    Soon, Ernie got to experience this for himself. A nice cast into some pocket water, a few cranks of the reel handle, and soon he's got a leaping smallmouth while I'm taking my turn on net duty. After a long tussle, we soon land this fish, which ended up being Ernie's personal best. 

    After we released that red-eyed beauty, I continued throwing swimbaits while Ernie tried to procure some catfish bait. The latter mission was unfortunately, unfruitful, but I was able to connect with a cast all the way up against a wall. As I slowly cranked my keitech in, it gets crushed. I set the hook into an explosion of leaping bronze and green. A soon as I hooked this fish, it was easy to tell it was pushing my personal best as well. In the murky water, this fish was staying down and deep. After a tense minute, I was able to get her head up and Ernie managed to get her into the net, a beautiful tiger striped smallmouth that was one of the biggest I had ever caught. 

    The smallmouth fishery in the Delaware River has declined over the years. For 20 inch bronzebacks and 50 fish days, you would have to travel west to the Susquehanna or south to the Shenandoah, where I've fished in the past and where smalljaws are tucked behind every ledge and boulder of their shallow rocky waters. Some people blame snakeheads, which I am skeptical about. Some people blame flatheads, which I am slightly less skeptical about. Others say it's pollution causing a lack of crawfish, as well as flood conditions during peak spawning season for too many years. Those are the two I find the most compelling, although with all conservation issues, there are too many factors to be able to quantify. While we don't know for sure what's happening to the smallmouth, I do know for damn sure that I want this fishery to stay healthy all my life and to be able to pass it on to a new generation of anglers. 

Cheers fishy people 

Wind and Panfish

 

     People who eat, sleep, and breath fishing are often at the mercy of the unpredictable phenomenon, known as the weather. Among these makers and breakers of fishing trips is our good friend, wind. Wind decided to rear its head the day that Max and I were gonna gear up and fish the brackish marshes of New Jersey for winter-time white perch. However, surprise surprise, I woke up in the morning to a gale warning. Hitting the salt  would have produced a great deal of adversity so we made a plan to fish big, small, and local. We would fish a local spillway/creek for crappies and perch. The lake feeding into the spillway is chock full of muskies, some of which end up in the creek, comprising the big part of the plan. Max's dad had seen muskies in the creek before, so we know they were in there. 

    We all started off at the spillway, throwing various small panfish jigs. Max was the first to break the ice, landing one of the largest yellow perch I have ever seen on a soft-plastic. However, the fishing was very slow, so we decided to move down the creek and try for muskies. 

    The woods in the wintertime are a strange place. Gone are the cicadas and treefrogs singing their songs to each other from the treetops day and night. Instead it is replaced by silence. Still, this was part of the first warming trend of February, and around were green shoots beginning to push their way out of the soil. Soon, the stripers will be running again and the snakeheads will be coming out of the mud. Still, it was nice to get out there, scratching that internal itch to catch fish. 

    We soon arrived at our next location, a place Max's dad took us to where he had seen a muskie in shallow water while crappie fishing. I began throwing large jerkbaits and swimbaits, watching the lure in anticipation of a bright green trailing flash that never appeared. So instead, we went back to drifting crawlers and small jigs for panfish. Soon, we had found a hole where they were stacked up; Max and I began catching bluegills and yellow perch almost every cast. It was nice putting on a bobber and worm, getting back into fishing roots, especially since the river has been unfish-ably frozen for the past few weeks. 

    With enough for a fish fry but still no crappies, we went back to the spillway with the specific intention of catching paper-mouths. Within a few minutes of putting on a jig and float, Max hooked up, flipping the first crappie of the day onto the bank. Where you find one crappie, you typically find many. Fishing ice jigs with small pieces of nightcrawler, Max's friend Jason and I were soon able to also catch a few. 

    I hadn't done any real panfishing for a long while before this day. Even though I consider myself a multi-species angler, I generally target larger gamefish species, especially on my home bodies of water I know well. That will still be what I will love doing the most. However, this day carried an important reminder that fishing can be both hard-core, solo big fish missions, but also relaxing and shooting the shit with your buddies. 

Cheers, fishy people.