Fishing in New Jersey Offers Many Winter Choices

Fred relaxes at Round Valley Reservoir, waiting on trout.

More Available than Can Be Done

I’ve ice fished Mount Hope Pond, fished Round Valley, and I’ve fished the South Branch in the past couple of weeks. It’s been a matter of making winter choices between the freeze and open water. Not many fish caught, but a really big one hooked. In any event, New Jersey offers many such choices. Some guys have still been getting out on ice, but I’ll wait and try for Thursday.

Wherever I fish this week, winter offers more New Jersey freshwater possibilities than one man can ever meet. Not to mention saltwater. By choosing wisely, any one of us can create a story out of the material the fishing offers. A memorable experience. Even if success—like mine the last three outings—isn’t overawing.

I did fight a big fish at Round Valley. It was enough. One I’ll never forget, and I had just told Fred about another big one I had on at the same spot some 10 years ago.

Round Valley Reservoir hasn’t begun to freeze, and even if it gets seriously cold and it does ice over, then it’s just another ice fishing choice among hundreds. The river had frozen enough that I chose fishing Round Valley instead with Fred, but some anglers might manage to find the kind of open spots that yield trout if it ices over yet again. I’ll have gone elsewhere, because I’m past the age of aggressively seeking out little open water spots that might produce, though I’ve done it in the past.

Fred’s an Excellent Writer—On Round Valley

I asked Fred Matero to let me know if he thought of anything that might help me with today’s blog post, and he came up with an excellent introduction to the fishing he and I did in the middle of my medley of choices. He even refers to himself in the third person as if I wrote it!

Here it is:

Fred had business north and joined me for a trip to Round Valley in hopes of some trout action.  Originally hoping to fish the South Branch, he felt ice made that fishery dangerous at best. RV reports have not been amazing, but that does not stop us; you can’t catch if you don’t fish.  We made a quick stop at The Sportsmen’s Life for shiners for me, Fred deciding to stick to his favorite gulp and mealies. Luck would be on Fred’s side as the shop had a clearance on his favorite smoker wood chips, a savings of six bucks a bag.  

Weather was spectacular: sunny, light winds. A stop at the main launch ramp found the best water already occupied, so we shot over to the campers launch. The NJ State police were just wrapping up dive practice and no other fishermen were in sight, that’s a first for this popular spot!  We optioned to fish the other side of the cove, as it offered a gentle slope and less shoreline tangles with submerged brush left over from an extended lake drawdown for dam repairs. The first shiner put out was hit before a second pole could be set up. The fish felt large, fought hard against the 11 foot noodle rod, and ultimately won the battle dropping off before being identified. The fight had hints of maybe a bass over a trout, but we were left with only speculation, and no fish for dinner.  

We settled into our seats; conversation was lively, as always is with us. We unintentionally avoided solving world issues and instead spoke of our upcoming April trip to the Outer Banks. Funny how our discussion morphed from what to bring, to how much equipment we own, to how little of it we use, to how we carry it around “just in case”. With that said, we had a hardy chuckle as we noted how we continue to buy the latest and greatest like another $12 plug because it’s what they are biting!!!  Not to mention multiple colors, and 6” or 8”, floating, sinking, and suspending, oh my.  

As the day stretched, mealies/marshmallow and gulp failed to produce for Fred, while a second shiner experienced a quick hit and run. Wind picked up straight over the water, and a chill soon cut through our layers of protection. Good timing for sure as the sun was sinking and Fred was to meet up with his wife and ultimately family for dinner. We parted with talking thoughts of maybe a warmish winter and a shot at ice free river trout, though March seemed more likely, and not forgetting April in NC, both of us pumped and the tackle industry ready for our gotta-haves and another-just-in-case purchases!

Ice Fishing

So Fred still has the river in mind, though it might be March before we get on it. I got over there Christmas Eve, just the black Labrador Loki and I, but it’s especially interesting that we’ve had ice fishing so early in the season. The lakes and ponds never melted out entirely, and with many nights in the low 20’s or colder, there’s been more ice fishing since Oliver Round and I ice fished Mount Hope Pond on Saturday the 13th.

I believe a lot of places remain sketchy, though.

I managed to talk to Eddie Mackin at The New Jersey Multispecies Mayhem Christmas Dinner on Saturday, December 6, and he told me it had been down to nine degrees F the other night up where he lives near Lake Hopatcong. On Sunday, December 7, the first ice fishing I know about took place on a small lake, on two inches of ice. At least one of the guys wore a float suit.

I always appreciate my foldout chairs. I put a throw-carpet out for Loki the black Labrador.

A couple of tip-ups. The wooded shores of Mount Hope Pond I find attractive.

Oliver had been out the day before he and I went on the Saturday, on Friday the 12th, catching two ice pickerel of about 22 inches and a little yellow perch. I had high hopes for Saturday, as reluctant to go through the motions as I had felt, until I got all my tip-ups out and I felt up for all the rest of the outing, including hauling the stuff back to my car. No problem.

Oliver Round’s small pickerel caught pretty close to shore, although most of them seem to roam around the middle of the pond.

Oliver ended up catching the pickerel I shot the photo of. The day before, someone else ice fishing there jigged two rainbow trout recently stocked by the state. He said he tipped the jigs with mousies. A couple of weeks later, I learned that mousies are all but impossible for Andover Hunt and Fish to get. (I assume other shops can’t get them, either.) They’ve been unavailable on the market for a long time. Gerald Mamuric, the shop’s owner, told me so. Unless you want to pay $4.00 apiece for them, he said.

Maybe the guy who caught the trout tipped his jigs with wax worms.

On the Saturday with Oliver, ice was about four-and-a-half inches thick. I just used my splitting bar, though the powerhead for my auger was in my trunk, the auger attachment in front of the back seat.

There is a lot of stuff in the water of Round Valley Reservoir after the low water grow-out.

After a Fish Like That

I’ve caught a couple of big trout in the South Branch during the fall, but the fish I had on at Round Valley…I’ll never know if that was a laker, rainbow, brown, or largemouth bass, but it felt like a largemouth, not a laker, though it could have been rainbow or brown. Whatever it was, it weighed about four pounds, maybe even five.

My noodle rod had danced a jig on the gravel as line streamed off the spool, so I grabbed it, tightened up, set the hook, and on 10-pound-test mono, managed to pump the fish halfway back our way. That’s when it turned and I couldn’t move it, vaguely thinking my line wouldn’t break but reaching to loosen the drag.

But that’s just when the hook pulled free. Quite as if too much pressure was on that fish. At least for how it was hooked.

So now Round Valley is in play and I plan on going there tomorrow. I’m used to fishing the rivers, if there’s no ice fishing, but again, that fish I lost got me very interested.

Wind and sun made the river surface blue, green, and gold.

I Did Get Over to the River

I’ve been working on my book again, and I enjoy that work so much, that it wants to take primary importance in my life. But once I was there at the South Branch fishing—and I stayed for only an hour on Christmas Eve—I appreciated the things like the feel of gravel under leaves as I waded, the blue, green, and gold of the river surface churned by heavy wind, and even how cold my hands got in that wind of about 30 mph. Temperature at 46, 47 degrees, without that wind, they’d have been unaffected.

I fished only an eighth-ounce black marabou jig on the Shimano five-and-a-half-foot ultralight, getting casts to just a couple of yards from the opposite bank. Last year, I hooked a trout pretty close to it, so I like getting casts there.

Loki disappeared beyond the crest of the bank behind me a few times, and I called, “Loki! Loki! Loki!” only to see him run back down the bank from that vanishing point and trounce out into the water to be with his Daddy.

He loves to run free, and as I walk to the spot and back to my car, I let him go do it.