With fingers, eyes and toes crossed, here’s hoping the next two weeks will produce lots more trout and stripers than the last two did, okay?
Striped bass were conspicuous by their absence! Generally speaking, stripers would have been caught in great numbers by mid-April all up and down the coast. However, cold water, we hope, may have caused them to delay their travels.
Sure, some big fish were caught in the upper Hudson River where they travel to spawn each spring and quite a few little bass were taken in the back bays but nowhere near the numbers of recent prior years. Again, hopefully, a few degrees of higher water temperatures are all that is needed and by the time I peck out my next column, the bass will be producing smiles all up and down the coast.
Trout also have been a sad topic, for sure. Disease hit the Pequest State Fish Hatchery in Warren County and as a result, many tens of thousands of them had to be destroyed.
Brook and brown trout were those affected. Yes, huge numbers of rainbow trout were successfully stocked but as pointed out last time, between cold water temperatures, some flooding, and just-plain crankiness on the part of anglers, catch numbers were way down this spring.
Here’s hoping that, as with striped bass fishing, trout lovers will also be wearing smiles from the start of May going forward. Clearly, big-water lovers will have lots of holdover brown, rainbow and lake trout to catch at both Merrill Creek and Round Valley reservoirs.
And the good-guys at the Round Valley Trout Association bought and stocked several hundred huge rainbows in their favorite lake, too, with some ‘bows to doggone near 10 pounds!
My favorite venue, Spruce Run Reservoir, should start to crank out some good catches soon, too, and here’s hoping I will be able to give you a first-hand report or two next time out. I intend to try and score my first carp and hybrid bass catches of the year on the same day. Wish me luck.
Lake Hopatcong was also stocked with far less trout than before but the lake did produce some nice catches of crappie and perch recently along with some nice bass and chain pickerel.
I got a report of a rather strange stocking from the state you may be interested in. The venue is a pretty long car ride away so I won’t tell you the name and location. But the details are kind of weird, if you ask me (and even if you don’t).
A large number of landlocked salmon from 2.5 to 3.5 pounds were stocked in a small but deep lake. However, if I read the release correctly, getting to the water requires a pretty good hike of at least 300 yards from where you park.
And while boats are allowed with electric motors, who on earth is capable of schlepping a car-topper with battery, etc., that far with no vehicle to pull the whole mess? Certainly not anyone I know. Oh well, I think the state is at least trying to please some anglers so give them an “A” (maybe a C-) in effort.
Down the shore, besides guys waiting for stripers, there are some fellows that are scoring with white perch in the back bays and a two-fish limit of winter flounder has been pretty easy to achieve in the Shark and Manasquan rivers.
Offshore, cod, ling, and such are biting so if you want some fun, try that on a light-wind day.
‘Scuze me, gone fishin’.
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