Invasives and Mutants

 

    Fish get into places where they're not supposed to be. This is a pretty well known fact among anglers. From the ditch behind the shopping center to the highest alpine lakes, we never know exactly every single species that swims in there. This fact however, remains especially true in an open river system. 

    It was late May, at the tailing end of a massive rainstorm. My friend Max and I gave it a day or two to clear up, then made plans to go attempt to catch our first snakeheads of the year. 

    Early season snakeheads typically involve fishing lower and slower than I'd like to. There are guys that will only fish for snakes with topwater. For them, snakehead fishing is all about watching a fish wake on a frog or buzzbait in shallow water, slowly coaxing it until it opens it's maw and absolutely engulfs your lure in a violent surface explosion. If that's not going to happen, then they don't want to catch them. I'd agree that if snakes will eat on top, then I don't want to catch them any other way. However, I'll tie on a chatterbait or spinnerbait if they're feeling slow and hugging bottom. 

    That seemed to be the type of mood that they were in today. I covered water with a spook, hoping to raise a strike. Nothing except a few largemouths were willing to play. Tying on my trusted white chatterbait, and making a few casts, I got slammed. Felt those signature snakehead-shakes, where the entire body of the fish undulates backwards when it first realizes it's hooked. 

    The first snake of the year is always special. It's a kickoff, a sign that summer is about to come, with it's warm nights, tree frogs, and topwater explosions. A few minutes after I release that fish, Max comes trudging out of the forest to join me. We move on to a different spot, catching many smaller bass and walleyes on swimbaits and jerkbaits. Wanting to fish a little bit deeper, I put on a zoom fluke with a jighead. Popping it off the bottom, something grabs my jig. Setting the hook, I feel dead weight. The fish takes off into the current. On the first flash, I thought walleye, but walleyes don't fight that hard. 

    "Big rainbow!" yells Max. I'm instantly pumped. I've only landed one other holdover trout from the Delaware, and it was years ago. However, I get this fish closer and notice it has a series of vermiculations along the back. Tiger trout. My first one ever. 

    Tiger trout are a funny deal. A hybrid between a brook trout and a brown trout, there are very few places where they'll occur naturally. Largely an artificial hatchery creation, tiger trout are stocked in certain areas, but not around here. Tigers exhibit what's called "hybrid aggression," where cross breeds of two different species are typically much more aggressive than either parent counterpart. That fish must have washed in from a different stocked stream much further north, growing fat in the river on larger baitfish, and holding out through the summers with it's much higher tolerance for heat than both brown and brook trout. Some people are anti-tiger trout because they're unnatural and can outcompete wild fish. I'm not sure how I feel. They're such a rarity in my area that one or two rogue tigers are a sign of celebration, but if I lived in an area where they were more plentiful, I might feel different. 

    After that tiger, we continued picking off walleyes and bass. Max even got a striper. We returned to snakehead fishing, and soon, I managed to pick off another one on a swimbait. Max, however, was still not on the board with a snake. I let him have first shot as we're walking up this creek. All of a sudden, a big snake materializes out of the weeds. Max makes a cast with a chatterbait, slowly starts to bring it back, and this fish slams it right next to the bank. At 28 inches, it was a new personal best for him. 

    Strange fish get into strange places. On this day, we were fish for species that weren't meant to be in these places at all. Yet, they persisted, surviving against all odds, moving with the currents as the river flooded and ebbed. They're never gonna go away. So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Multi-Species May

 

    May is hands down my favorite month to fish. April showers seem to not only cause the hillsides to spring into bloom, but the elevated flows of the river that seem to come every mid-Spring carry thousands of cubic feet of water downstream towards their ocean-bound journey, creating huge pushes of fish that are going the other way. This is striper season, the end of shad, the beginning of snakeheads and flatheads, and the best time to catch big numbers of smallmouth and walleye. And I can't get enough. 

    I always sleep next to an open window. There's a quote from a conservation hero of mine, Aldo Leopold, where he said that he always loved waking up early enough to listen to the birds wake up. It was the birdsong of a few mourning doves that woke me up earlier today, while it was still dark and I still had several hours before I had to go to class, so I opted to drive down to the river hoping to intercept some migrating striped bass. 

    I pulled into the parking lot while another angler was rigging up a large shad swimbait. Shit, I thought. Better get there before him. I strapped on my waders, slung my tackle bag over my shoulder, grabbed my 9ft plugging rod, and started running. Take that old man. Twenty seconds later, he passed me on his bicycle. "Nice try buddy," he said, and I had to admit, he got me there. 

    We arrived at the end of the trail and my new friend and I started throwing lures through a current break. I was using a bucktail while he was throwing his shad. I soon get a hit, but I swing and miss. He starts retrieving the swimbait through a riffle and gets slammed, but the fish breaks him off. At least they're here. 

    Soon, two more anglers showed up, faces of regulars that I recognized. To preserve their anonymous identities, I'll refer to them as Jim and Bill. We set up a rotation, and Jim and I started swinging our lures through the break. All of a sudden, Bill throws straight over our lines. 

    "What the hell man!" yells Jim. "You just threw right fucking over us!" 

    "Oh yeah?" Bill retorted, "I'm just following your example. Every single fucking week I come down here to see your ass taking up the entire fucking spot." He gets right into Jim's face, practically spitting each word out. I reel my bucktail in and step out back from in between the two men. 

    Both men were getting heated at this point. However, even a boiling kettle will eventually spit and steam until eventually it runs out of hot air. That's what North-East fisherman are like. We're usually sarcastic, bitter, shit-talking assholes, but it rarely results in physical altercation. Eventually, they both got it all out and began fishing next to each other like nothing happened. 

    However, four people fishing a rotation usually turns into a shit show anyways, so I decided to head out and try something else. I rigged up by smallmouth rod and started throwing a little swimbait at a much less crowded spot. First cast, I catch a little walleye. Next cast too. Soon, I start picking off little 'eyelets that were stacked up at this spot almost every cast. Soon, something bigger slams my swimbait as I'm letting it flutter to the bottom. This fish runs into a log jam before I manage to pry it back out. It doesn't jump, so that ruled out smallmouth in my mind. Was this the 10lb walleye I've been looking for? It comes into view and I see a long, grayish shape dart into view and dart back out. I laugh out loud. Channel cats on artificial lures are always fun. 

    After I release that catfish and retie my frayed leader, I make another cast. Another pick up, another hookset, and this fish launches itself out of the water. Hello Mr. Bronzeback. I soon play this fish in and flip it up. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a pissed off smalljaw fights harder pound for pound than anything in freshwater. This wasn't a big fish, but he had battle scars, probably from an earlier encounter with an osprey or heron. 

    After the smallmouth, I continued to get a steady pick of walleyes. They were very small, but small walleyes grow to be big walleyes. 

    Even if the average size was small, it was good to see that the fishery in my home river was healthy and would be for the future. And I had more fun having these fish all to myself than any striper I could pull out of a crowd of anglers throwing plugs over your shoulders. 

Cheers, fishy people. 

Cold Front Bites

 

    Cold front lock-jaw is real. When high pressure fronts bring in bluebird skies and cold, heavy winds, fish seem to just shut down and stop feeding. You can still catch them, but the methods often have to be very finesse. For bass guys, these are drop shot conditions. However, in my home river, the shad that run up every spring don't eat. Instead, they merely smack flutterspoons and shad darts out of pure aggression, snapping at something shiny and bright that comes across their face and aggravates them. So on a day with these conditions in early April, I opted to shad fish. 

    Arriving at my spot, the first thing that I noticed was how the wind was ripping. Heavy gusts from the North was stirring up the water, creating ripples all across the surface. I wasn't sure if I could present a dart through the current properly given the conditions. My concerns were immediately dispelled when a nice roe grabbed my dart on the third swing. 

    For the next hour, I had a steady pick of shad on darts. What's interesting is that I was using a double dart rig, with one chartreuse and one orange, and very single fish hit the orange. There's a big debate amongst fisherman on whether lure or fly color matters. Generally, I don't think it does in most circumstances, but with fish that rely so heavily on seeing what you're presenting, I'm not so sure.

    I managed to pull a half-dozen of them from one current seam before the bite died. Shad bites come in waves, and I managed run into one immediately before it eventually petered out as the fish all came through the run, making a mad dash for the next current break where they could rest. After the bite died, I got a text from my friend and biggest shad fan I know, Ernie, saying he was at a spot further south. I met him there, and he proceeded to school me, pulling three nice fish out of a run in a short amount of time while all I got was one buck that spat the hook. 

    Quickly after that however, the bite shut down there too. We headed even further south to find some more willing fish, but the shad seemed to be done for the day. We did, however, catch a mess of largemouth and crappies from a back creek on small swimbaits and trout jigs. 

    The cobra-chickens are nesting, the hydrilla is forming, and the tree frogs are a' croaking. It's spring now folks, and it's shaping up to be a good one. Get out there and fish, folks. 

Cheers, fishy people.