Lake Musconetcong Biggest Hooked Yet

Gen Wong’s little yellow perch hit a jerkbait.

Good Times Bad Times

Having a love affair with a lake isn’t a rare eventuality. Whether or not that love survives over time is like any other sort of love. It must be reenacted time and again. Even if more than a decade has passed. Even if the reason for that absence is the fear of a bad time.

More than a decade ago, before 2010, my son, Matt, and I used to fish Lake Musconetcong whenever we got a chance from June into October. Back then, Stanhope Bait and Bait existed, and I could grab a rowboat for 10 bucks.

Good times. Every time out.

As I would tell Gen Wong as we fished, on one occasion, Matt and I rowed all the way into the very rear of the lake from the front and back again. Lake Musconetcong is 329 acres. Matt wasn’t even 11 years old.

Over the course of four years, we usually caught at least eight or nine in an evening, and as many as 20 bass, lots of pickerel, both species good sized. But I could never get over why we never hooked any largemouths better than 18 inches, nor pickerel better than 24 1/4. Many about that size. Most largemouths 16 inches. Most pickerel 20 or 21.

Who would think. On a day like Gen and I would encounter. Could that day’s yield possibly amount to the biggest fish I’d hooked on the lake yet?

Chemical Treatment

Lake Musconetcong had become something in the past for me. Or so I seemed to think. As if done. Finished. And then recently I wrote about October chatterbaiting for gamefish of virtually any description. New Jersey Federated Sportsmen’s News published the article early this month, and while I’ve written about chatterbaits for The Fisherman and Litton’s Fishing Lines, while I composed the one for the Fed—as I affectionately call the publication—I realized Budd Lake and Lake Musconetcong seem like perfect places to cast these lures.

Naturally, the latter lake occurred to me as a good idea to try. I felt especially drawn by the possibility of tiger muskies. Seduced by the lake to reconnect with my past, I would learn tiger muskies served an ostensible motive.

I got in touch with Gen, and we went on October 3rd.

The possibility of rekindling my deep love of the lake drew me forward, even though I didn’t begin to realize that until on the water. I had exercised it until 2010, when weed killer filled the water with bits of dead plant matter, giving that water a turbid quality. It used to be that you could clearly see a dime on the bottom of the lake’s deepest six feet. I hoped the water would be clearer now, but although it’s not terrible, it’s still off-color. You can see two feet down or better, though.

Chatterbait Lake or Not?

Regarding the depth and the minimal to moderate presence of milfoil, the lake is a lot like the private lake Brian Cronk and I fish. (Extensive shallow flats of four to seven feet deep.) Lake Musconetcong is about five feet deep almost everywhere, although Gen and I discovered a lot of water shallower near where the Musconetcong River enters.

I both cast and trolled a deep-blue Z-Man ChatterBait. I ripped it through milfoil when that situation presented itself, not necessarily a problem, because when you successfully rip a chatterbait, that can trigger a strike. Especially with tiger muskies in the lake now, I thought something might happen, but nothing ever did. Water temperature was 66 degrees, not bad at all, but things had so suddenly cooled off, classic cold front blue overhead. Both Gen and I felt convinced it had put the fish off.

We also fished edges and wide pocket spaces of pad fields. Me with my chatterbait. Gen with the jerkbaits he’s famous for fishing so well. Surely there were some bass under those pads. The fields are an anomaly rather than ubiquitous here. At Furnace Lake, most of the muskies get hooked well outside the weedlines, although the fish swim near them.

I cast my chatterbait away from the edges, too, and although nothing ever hit it, the jury is still out on whether or not the lake qualifies.

Lake Musconetcong pad field.

Jerkbaits Do Produce

You know they produce if Gen hooks up, which he did near the very rear of the lake. Not that he’s at all bad at the game, but that he checks the box if no one else does.

We had trudged along at less than full speed while I ripped and ripped through milfoil, and also lifted my rod high to keep the chatterbait from dragging bottom, maintaining that throb I need to attract any fish. I don’t like fishing a chatterbait too fast. Unless I have to be somewhere else quickly. We eased into a cove-like shallow flat produced by a small point Gen had had his eyes on.

Before I could even lob a cast that way, Gen had one on. He got sight confirmation of a two-and-a-half to three-pound largemouth before the fish threw the hooks. Naturally, we fished the entire area thoroughly, entertained in a disappointing way by leaping carp.

Matt and I never encountered carp during the four years we fished the lake. When fishing last week, they gave me the sickening feeling they always seem to do, but they didn’t bottom out my expectation.

Magic Hour

After Gen lost his bass, I told him we might have a productive magic hour. Wind often dies at sunset, due to the ground cooling. I had brought along my topwater box for that reason. Pushing back up lake in the squareback powered by Minn-Kota, my eye pulled me towards the North Shore.

There we found extensive pads and more of those nasty clumps of invasive water chestnuts. We had witnessed tons of them in the rear of the lake. Thankfully, most of the vegetation here included pads near shore and milfoil out beyond.

I picked a Booyah Frog. I cast and cast that into the pads, bringing it back over them, while Gen tried various lures near the edges. It felt frustrating, because it clearly seemed as if there had to be some fish underneath.

We had fished six hours and had had very little action, but we kept working our lures as if we caught fish.

Making our way along that North Shore towards the lake’s front, we found some laydowns that looked interesting. Rather than switch to a topwater plug proper, I felt the frog might do OK. Finally we found a spot that looked really good to me. Before I would cast in-between two very large overhanging bushes—overhanging by 12 feet at least—I took out my Nikon D850 and shot them. I’m saving the photo for possible magazine use, but use your imagination and visualize a sort of hut created by two bushes of the same species side-by-side hanging over water.

I lay a cast in about as perfectly as was possible. I couldn’t get it all the way back against the bank, and it appeared to me plainly that had I overcompensated on the swing, I would have got caught in the greenery.

The frog was about four feet from the bank. I twitched. Then I twitched and pulled it carefully forward. I twitched and all that happened was a blip, to which I responded with the firmest hookset I could muster. The fish moved out of its hut and began swimming to the left in front of it, my drag ratcheting as I began to wonder if maybe I had it set too light.

I’m in the habit of loosening drags to keep them in good shape, but not well enough in the habit of properly tightening them before fishing again.

The fish leapt before I would have felt forewarned. Largemouth. Big one. The frog flying free.

“Damn!” I said. “You believe that! That bass could have easily been four pounds.”

“Maybe bigger than that,” Gen said.

“It was the biggest bass I’ve ever hooked in this lake.”

Lake Musconetcong’s only island in cool blue light after sundown.