Pressured Fish Through the Ice

Oliver and I got out a couple of times recently, running into Nick Mattei and Kevin Glenn at Round Valley Pond. Nick caught the bass photographed; Kevin got another one 16 ½ inches.

Pressured After a Few Days

Oliver Round and I had fished through the ice of Twin Lakes on the Thursday, enjoying some friendliness from the fish, catching 10 pickerel. I think it was that Tuesday or Wednesday the fishing got underway again after the mild weather. We had five inches, but two inches of that was weak white ice, and the hard and clear—wasn’t so hard. It had some striations.

On the Saturday, Oliver and I headed north and west to Columbia Wildlife Preserve near Delaware Water Gap. We fished Delaware Lake at least two-and-a-half hours. Not only did we get no hits, we saw only one response to a flag from some five or six other guys out there, and spoke to another who has experience catching bass in the lake and knows all the contours. According to him, the 10-foot depths we had set up over were good.

Guys had been out on that lake fishing for days. It made me think of Lake Hopatcong’s State Park ice. When the ice is fresh, fish get caught there. Mostly panfish. But pickerel, too, even some bass. I believe I once read of a walleye caught, even though the depths are about six feet at most. Within a few days of the State Park’s getting hit, the fishing shuts down. I’m far from being the only one who attributes it to pressure.

Oliver’s two equipment buckets on Delaware Lake, the ramp in the distance.

This is one of the few tip-ups I’ve owned from age 15, set up on the pond at Columbia Wildlife Management Area.

At a Pond, too

Oliver and I pulled our 10 devices (he fishes Jaw Jackers, I fish tip-ups). We drove to a pond nearby. Sometimes ponds are full of fresh fish. I used to fish the ponds owned by Princeton Day School, and we always caught bass and pickerel. They were private waters, but we never felt them to be anything other than our own familiar bass ponds.

We fished this one for at least an hour-and-a-half. Oliver got one hit. Others had been out and fished on it, but not on the day we did. It seemed to me it just doesn’t hold many fish.

Not the best ice but it held us.

Interstate 80 just up the incline from the pond’s lot. The third vehicle we think was that of a deer hunter.

Snow on the ice. Phragmites encircle the pond.

The ice was five inches thick with that two inches of white ice and striated clear ice. I couldn’t call it safe, after Oliver showed me that core sample photographed above, but it held us.

Oliver Round checking a Jaw Jacker on Round Valley Pond. Notice the topography. It’s a deep pond.

Nick Mattei and Kevin Glenn on Round Valley Pond.

The Valley had Been Good

On the Monday, which is still less than a week ago as I write, Oliver and I started hauling and pulling our gear down lake on 30-acre Round Valley Pond. I’ve used a Flexible Flyer for years but got a Jet Sled on Tuesday—if I can keep it. If I can store it somewhere. I guess the pond is about 30 acres. We came upon two guys who recognized me. I recognized them. Nick and Kevin.

They had been out the day before. Or at least Nick had. My memory’s not clear on it. But the point is—there were lots of fish caught the Sunday. Nice-sized bass and pickerel.

At one point, I decided to walk back to my car with Loki the black Labrador, when I stopped and spoke to Kevin in his tent. “You got the heater on?” I asked.

“No, I’m warm enough without it.”

He invited me in.

I sat down. “That tip-up is engaged?”

“Yes.”

“You want to try?” He offered me his jigging rod. I reached, when he said, “Unless you’ve got five devices out.” I pulled my hand back.

I had been studying the screen of his Garmin. "That’s the line,” he said. I could see it descend on the screen to a roundish spot. “That’s the split shot, and below that you see the shiner swimming.”

I watched that shiner for maybe four or five minutes, when a shape began to appear to the left of it. That shape became significantly larger on the screen as it turned—away from the shiner.

“That fish is about 16 inches,” Kevin said. “I’m surprised it didn’t take the shiner.”

He paused before he said, “Each of those squares you see on the screen is about a square foot.”

The fish didn’t surprise me much. I have been contemplating pressured fish under the ice for some time. I imagine them seeing the bait but ignoring it. I don’t believe it’s as if they all move to a different part of the lake.

Fish are not only pressured by lures thrown their way. As I say, bait under the ice is rejected, too. And it’s not as if every bass and pickerel out there has to encounter artificially presented shiners to get turned off. Just a dozen or two of them getting caught and released will probably do it. According to at least one study, their biology releases chemicals that alert other fish. Whatever the case really is, what I saw on Kevin’s screen was a real life depiction of what I had been imagining.

I didn’t say so. Nah. I’m not much of a talker. Kevin will surely read this post.

Surprisingly, the ice was as much as six inches thick on Monday. Down here in Hunterdon, and on water that gets as deep as 45 feet. It makes you think about the relations between waters at different latitudes, elevations—and the weather. It must have been just about as cold down here as up north.

I never crossed over those 45-foot depths. Someone had said something about some of the water being open less than a week before we were out on that ice. I couldn’t tell where it might be an inch or two thick. I could have taken my splitting bar from my car, but I relied instead on Oliver’s new drill auger. You need a splitting bar to check ice as you walk.

It mattered, though. The whole point of my mentioning those depths where ice might have been thin, is that along the phragmites growing among the dike boulders, where depths of 10 to 25 feet can usually be fished, the ice fishing is good. I know that from past experience.

Apparently, and here’s the point, that water hadn’t been fished. You can’t get on the ice from the launch area as we used to, at least not in compliance with the new rules. All that dike area probably held fresh fish.

Before Kevin set up his tent, he spoke of the State Park’s being pressured and compared it to what we faced. It made me want to try the dike all the more, though I never ventured out there.

Not Altogether Predictable

The next day, if memory serves me right—was it Wednesday?—Nick phoned me at 9:30 a.m. “Bruce, you got to get out here,” he said, “I’ve only got three of my tip-ups out so far, and I’ve had three flags.”

I was busy with stuff. I knew he had the fish already, anyhow. He had already caught a nice pickerel, and he ended up catching two more nice fish as I remember talking to him later. I might have caught a couple, true.

In any event, Nick’s catch goes against the grain of the pressured fish theory, if you think of that theory as neat and clean, making the fishing altogether predictable. Maybe some places are pretty damn predictable, the way I think of the State Park. But not Round Valley Pond. Nick had set up where Oliver and I had a day or two before.