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.