The Nighthawk's Boom

 New Jersey's pine barrens have an ethereal quality as the sun sets. In some areas there is extraordinary uniformity- nearly perfectly flat ground and vegetation all growing to the same height -that adds to this characteristic. As the light gets low, some of the barrens critters begin to awaken. A forlorn whippoorwill call whistles through the trees and accompanies a golden glow. There's almost unsettling stillness, and it becomes easier to understand why this area has garnered enough "spook" to spawn ghost stories aplenty and it's own legendary cryptid, the Jersey Devil, and plentiful rumors of these lands being a mafia body dumping ground. Perhaps these are more than rumors, with quite a few bodies being found over the years. It isn't easy to dismiss. If something needs hidden this would be a good place to do it. The actual pine barrens, in fact, look way more ethereal a creepy than the woods in The Sopranos episode of the same name. That episode was filmed in hilly, mixed forest in Harriman State Park... and at least for me, it shreds the illusion a bit. The real barrens are such a distinct environment that it's hard to fake it.

Spooky though it may be, the pine barrens cemented themselves quickly as one of my favorite places two years ago when I first visited for a few days of looking for amphibians and reptiles. I heard my first pine barrens tree frogs on that trip, though I wouldn't lay eyes on one until a year later. That species had a special place in my memory bank. When I was only little, my mother got me a set of wildlife call cards and a reader- such a 2000's thing -The reader was just a simple device that you slipped the card into and had a speaker. You'd push a button and it would play the corresponding animal call. One card, the only one I really cared about, was frog and toad calls. And perhaps the most annoying one on their was the pine barrens tree frog. They're a very distinct, quite loud caller. I'd long wanted to see one. 

One the second trip that first year, in that waning light, I was trudging through habitat that was much too dry as the sun set just hoping beyond reason that one of those frogs might start calling. In the distance, I caught a brief, punctual, call that I thought was a green frog. Looking on the map there was no sign of water in that direction, but I started to wander in that direction. If there was a pool that had a green frog calling, maybe there was a chance there might be tree frogs around it. Trudging through the knee high  ferns and other low brush I'm woefully ignorant on identifying, there was no sign of a pool. Then came another call, this time from a different direction. More futile searching ensued. Another call. At t his point, my field partner and I were right next to each other. I turned to him; "Are green frogs just calling from out in the dry woods?".

He just shrugged. 

The sound kept happening, and I recalled hearing similar as darkness fell om the previous trip while sitting next to a breeding pool waiting for frogs to call. At the time I thought it was cars hitting rumble strips on the highway. This seemed far too distant, now. Was it the same sound? Could it really travel that far? 

Then it happened right over our heads. A bird, diminutive in size with a distinct profile, performed a rapid acceleration right over the tree tops, dipping low to them as it did so, and made a tremendous booming sound. This was a common nighthawk, specifically a male. The sound was made by the air rushing through his primary feathers. He does this during the mating time, and may have been doing so over us to try to get us to leave. He does it to ladies too but with the opposite goal in mind. Though abundant and widespread (albeit diminishingly so as many species are), I'd never knowingly been privy to this show. What a wonderful one it was! Until we gave up our dreams of finding what we have concluded is North America's quintessential tree frog that night, I was kept in good spirits by the revelation of what was making the boom. The nighthawks swooped overhead and plummeted to the ground making that wonderful sound and I chuckled at how absurdly long it had taken to figure out what it was. Wildlife is fabulous and does fabulous things, and it never fails to enchant if you maintain a sense of wonder.

Common nighthawks are cryptic while on the ground, with patterns not unlike grouse or woodcock which rely on the same crypsis to go unnoticed. They don't nest either, and their chicks rely on the same camouflage. Their eyes are like black marbles and it always looks like they're squinting at you. There's an uncannily adorable look to them. Nighthawks are bug eaters, and they perform acrobatic shows in the evening as they take to the sky to chase down prey. The species has been around a while, with fossils dating back an estimated 400,000 years. Long may these weird little birds boom over the pines of southern New Jersey, and long may their brief displays add to the mystique of a desolate landscape where rumors of a hooved, winged devil persist. The booms dwindled with the daylight, and a  setting sun was framed perfectly in the symmetry of a man made scar on the landscape. I wondered what other surprises the night bring. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Gotta Be a Mango Tree Here Somewhere

 The rumble of the Honda 2.3 disturbed the cool, foggy south Jersey morning as Joe Cermele navigated his Clackacraft up a winding, murky river. In the front was Drew Price, wearing the weary, somewhat tired, but a little bit hopeful mask that anyone has on after three days of doing little other than fishing. I had the same mask on. We'd fished hard in my neighborhood for two days leading up to this. It had been pretty good, too, and I'd managed to get Drew on 11 new species and hybrids on the fly in all sorts of water, from mile long jetties to tiny cemetery ponds. There were some notable chunks of inactivity but there are pretty much any time you voluntarily fish for about 14 hours straight two days in a row. 

Fishing that hard can be a bit of an unfamiliar concept to many folk that call themselves fisherman. Even avid fisherman aren't frequently fishing that hard. There's probably the healthier way to fish anyway, here and there for a few hours throughout the week or some long hard trips scattered through the year. Drew and I beat ourselves up, this wasn't the first time. Last fall I drove up to Vermont to fish with Drew on a boiling hot day after he had a client, pounded big bowfin that afternoon, beat up drum the next day, floated for musky the day after that, I went out on my own and stuck a nice one on foot the day after that, drove to Saranac Lake the next day, I slept in my 4Runner next to the Ausable that night and fished in the Adirondacks all day the next day, then went back to Drew's area to microfish....

Fishing hard this way isn't great for the body or the mind, and I'm not quite sure we do it. A focused angler may not drink as much as they should, or will miss a meal here and there. When we do eat, it isn't infrequently absolute garbage. We may apply sunscreen at the start of the day, or wear good protective clothing, but there's always something exposed that gets singed. On this trip it was my lips. They felt and looked more or less like a desert watering hole in a drought. I was applying chapstick prodigiously but it wasn't saving it. As I type this some cracks and cuts are still there. 

All that hard fishing was the lead in to this river, and a highly intriguing target species. The catch that started it all happened in Crofton, Maryland in 2002, tipping of fisheries biologists to the start of an invasion. Soon the media was running with it, building a mythical reputation around the species, one that almost matches fear mongering in current events. No, Channa argus won't climb out of the Potomac and eat your pet Chihuahua. Invasive fish are certainly not joke, and the northern snakehead should never have ended up in the waters of the Mid Atlantic states. But the media ran with it and ran hard, while other arguably more impactful invasives didn't get nearly the amount of press. I wasn't hearing rumors about blue catfish climbing into people's lawns with evil intent.... 

Northern snakehead did spread, and certainly hurt native species, but along the way they've attracted quite an angling following. Joe Cermele is one such devote of the snake, as evidenced by his profile image image as Fishing Editor for Outdoor Life and in the many media forms he's presented over the years, from video to articles to podcasts. Cermele is ate up with the snakeheads. And he really wanted Drew and I to see just why it was he was so taken with these invasive fish.

We had completely unearned hope in the boat that morning. As anglers, if we can't be optimistic what do we have? The mist rose off the water in cool tendrils as the light of the new day shot across the sky in yellow and orange. Piscivorous birds lingered on the banks and dead trees until the rumble of the motor was too loud for them to abide. Gentle ripples and swirls emanated from surfacing gizzard shard. Carp bubbled, rolled and tailed along the banks. It was quiet but lively away from the main artery of the turnpike and the grime and garbage that lined it. This all felt very Apocalypse Now, though we cracked lines from a drift boat, not a PBR, and instead of Colonel Kurtz the foe we hunted with extreme prejudice was a fish with an elongate dorsal fin, narrow face, and ornate, python like patterning along its flanks. 

 I flexed my fingers as I watched a great blue heron take off from its morning hunting spot. My hands didn't quite feel all there after one day of making cast after bank pounding cast, and looking down I flexed each finger one at a time. I regretted fly line choices, as the floating line I'd brought wasn't quite short and punchy enough in the head for this sort of fishing. It had made me work harder and both my callouses and muscles felt it. I acknowledged this with some indifference and looked back up to the bank, eyeing bits of structure that could hold what we were looking for. Some edges held an almost clover like vegetation that stuck up from the water's surface on short one to four inch stems, bright green and tightly packed, looking like the perfect place for a notorious predator to lurk. The streaking, out-of-nowhere strike of an angry snake was hard to picture but easy to want in that moment. The day before we'd seen but two fish, and only one of them had bothered to move to a fly and had done so only tentatively. Their lack of interest in all of our offerings and seeming absence from most of the water that should have held was a source of frustrating bewilderment for Joe, and Drew and I just had to follow the lead given our lack of experience. Yet we were still optimistic as we started again... why? We always are, each fresh start makes a fisherman feel like things are new and fresh. And they are, to some extent. But if we'd really thought about it, this day wasn't so different. The night was about as cool, the forecast high was the same. The barometric changes were there but minimal and the wind would kick up from the same direction. The moon was only a day advanced and the flow and water clarity was the same. The only real change was an early start, which Joe admitted rarely factored into snakehead success. 

When he'd gotten where we needed to be, Joe cut the motor, got in the rowers seat and Dre and I began pounding banks with loud topwater flies once again. Signs of life were positive and it wasn't long before a few largemouth bass showed interest. 

But that was just a tease. This day would beat us into submission too. We torture ourselves sometimes. I'm not quite sure why. 

 Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, and Hunter for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Gritty Jersey Striper Fishing

The drive to from Hartford CT to New Jersey isn't the most pleasant drive you could ever do. it takes you through the armpit of America, the most developed and industrialized area in the country, through a jumbled road system, and often with some of the worst drivers you'll ever see. But in a way it's kind of beautiful. Sometimes it can only be described as disgustingly beautiful. Alec, Alex and I were riding through the urban jungle under a spectacular sunset that was so spectacular because of air pollution. Driving through this to a place where bait, bass, and birds all still converge despite a completely developed beachfront and a mess of human obstacles was surreal.

When we got to Point Pleasant we immediately went to the closest bait and tackle shop to our hotel. Local knowledge is key, and the owner of Gates Bait and Tackle was the perfect guy to talk to. He didn't sugarcoat things, which some tackle shop owners do to get you to buy more. The surf fishing had been terrible, the worst he'd ever seen, mostly due to beach reclamation burying structure and  crustaceans. there wasn't much of a reason for fish to hold to the beaches and the bigger ones weren't sticking around long. There'd been a push of fish the week before and another push could come any day. Jersey isn't holding water, these fish are moving. The bait is moving, the bass are moving, all on the huge migration back south. None of this was news to me. We weren't in Jersey to not fish though, so we spent a little time on the beach that evening between dinner and straight up passing out in the motel room. The super moon lit the beach up and made for a beautiful scene to skunk in.

We were up before the sun Sunday morning, out of the motel, and at the marina to meet Captain David Goldman of Shore Catch Guide Service (shorecatch.com) at 6:30. We were on the  the 33 Contender Fish Around quickly and  headed off along a long straight, nearly featureless stretch of shoreline. I would really not have the slightest idea how to approach boat fishing this area minus looking for birds and boat groupings. There are  lot of boats looking for stripers along the Jersey shore, and especially when the bunker are around there are often fleets of boats on the schools, which can get hectic. There ended up being a lot of boats out on this day but it wasn't an uncomfortable crowd. If I had been there, in my own boat, without anyone who knew that waters well, I wouldn't have known whether to go north or south, how far out I should go, or how far in either direction. I would be completely inept at finding fish if they weren't all over or feeding visibly. But after a long run Captain Goldman eased us carefully into a n are where Terns were working, and it wasn't long before we were marking bait balls and stripers on the electronics. It was a Jersey blitz soon, not a big one, but stripers were popping, boiling and rolling and birds were dipping diving. I couldn't have been more relieved to see this action, I really wasn't sure I'd get to do much fly fishing on this trip. Oh, and on the way to striper town we spotted a humpback. It has been a long time since I last saw a whale.

I fished a full sink line with big Hollow Fleyes. It was a  bit alien to me, fishing for stripers in 27-40 feet of water about mile from shore. It was really cool to see how the bait and bass behaved way out in open water. These weren't big stripers but they were a blast on the 8wt and in a scenario completely different from what I'm used to. In that deep water it was hard not to feel like I could have locked into a big bass at any moment. We did, eventually, but it was on the troll later in the day and came off after charging the boat. That was a bit of a heart breaker, but I'd personally rather catch a bunch of smaller fish casting than one big one trolling. Unless, that is, the trolling fish were 50 pounds or bigger.

Photo Courtesy David Goldman

We fished, shot the breeze, and had a good time. David was a great guy, he put us on some fish during a pretty tough bite and was just a fun guy. Guides can be extremely knowledgeable and still not give you a fun day, but David was not that kind of guys. He even took us to a bar afterword for some really great wings. We had a good time. It was absolutely worth going even though the fishing was not particularly great. I added a knocked New Jersey off the "states to fish" list, caught some stripers on the fly, got some great photos, and made new friends. That's really all you can ask for.