Twin Lakes Ice Fishing

The largest of 10 little pickerel we caught.

Little Known

Twin Lakes in Kittatinny Valley State Park near Andover, New Jersey, may be better known among a contingent of ice fishermen than it shows up on browsers online. They might complain of lots of little pickerel, but in Oliver’s and my own estimation, the fishing is good.

I used a keyword checker to see how popular searches for the lake are. I came up with “no results” for a number of tries. It made me a little afraid that I’m writing mostly to my regular followers, as it seems very few—if any—will search online for “Twin Lakes Ice Fishing.”

A little secret between you and me, though: I don’t put a whole lot of stock in keyword checkers. For the fun of it, I checked for “Three Bridges to Higginsville,” the name of a South Branch Raritan post from Litton’s Fishing Lines: “No results.”

But I’ve had some organic traffic come and visit that post. I’m very proud of it, too, because it’s just a small slice of the river experience, and yet a few people appreciate it. Google has taken some 400 of my posts off it’s search engine in recent months, too, but not that one. (I haven’t deleted those posts. You can still access them from the site if you want.)

You can see the bottleneck behind Oliver. The drill attached to his auger had quit working.

Dumbbell Shaped

It’s called Twin Lakes because a relatively short bottleneck connects two round ponds, though to the east, the pond is a little larger and certainly deeper. I don’t know how many acres Twin Ponds is altogether. Maybe 30.

When we walked in, I saw people occupying the other “lake” in the distance. Last summer, I had come here when I scouted a few, so I knew the open water of the first of Twin Lakes is a little deeper than the weed-choked, which is where I planned on fishing. During summer, vegetation extended from shore at least 20 or 30 yards all the way around the pond.

I didn’t want to go crowd the people in the distance, either. And no one had fished the smaller pond, so it retained the “virgin effect” of unpressured water.

The pickerel we caught averaged about 15 or 16 inches, possibly overpopulated and stunted, but I’m not a biologist and don’t know.

We Started Catching Little Pickerel Before Setup

We had set up a number of devices, maybe half of them, when we got the first hit. The fish only took it aside a couple of yards, and when I pulled to set the hook, I came up with any empty hook. A yellow perch might have got the bait. Not much later, I caught the first pickerel, about 15 or 16 inches, which didn’t surprise me.

I’ve fished small lakes full of little pickerel elsewhere, where it seems as if they’re overpopulated. Oliver speculated on a big one, and I imagine there might be one or two, a few maybe, but after we had finished fishing Thursday, the biggest one being about 18 inches was no surprise.

A few more ice fishermen came in and trailed on to the second pond. Two guys who had been fishing since earlier had interesting things to tell us.

Word From the Other Lake

After a few other guys came onto the ice and went east, two guys who had been fishing earlier than Oliver and I arrived came our way.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Hey, what’s up.”

“Catch any?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah, I got three bass,” the guy said. He had an outsized Jet Sled on what looked like a finely home-crafted sled-runner-and-wood-frame support. Telling decals on it, too, the whole thing no less than eye-popping. The other guy’s smaller contraption was nice, too. “It’s 30 feet deep back there,” he added.

“We got eight feet here,” Oliver said.

“You guys catch any?” the guy asked.

“Four pickerel so far,” I said.

“Yeah,” the guy laughed, “I hate those pickerel. They’re all over back there close to the weeds.”

The guy pointed at his friend, “He got a four-pound bass.”

“Yeah,” the other guy said, smiling.

“Wow,” Oliver said.

Pickerel are widely known for the slime. It collects snow. Oliver did get the fish back into the lake quickly. At 22 degrees, the danger of gills freezing was high. We photographed a relative few of the fish we caught.

Considering the Other Side

On Oliver’s suggestion, we considered pulling all our tip-ups and going to that larger lake area. Damn good thing we didn’t, because not too long after we considered the act, we noticed we had got low on bait. Besides, we were catching fish. Little fish, yeah, but the action felt very friendly with fish after fish giving itself up to us, some missed hits, too.

Oliver effectively uses Jaw Jackers. I’ve never seen them used by anyone else, but he can’t complain after catching seven pickerel to my three on tip-ups.

One of the ones Oliver caught had an extra shiner in its maw; probably, it also had a hook from another Jaw-Jacker. Oliver had tried to set the hook when the fish bit through. (Jaw Jackers don’t always set the hook immediately.) Neither of us had remembered that previous fish until after Oliver released the pickerel with the two shiners, but it surely was that previous one.

I had popped a shiner from a catch into a hole, but it was all but dead, though it is possible the pickerel grabbed that one.

One of Oliver’s average pickerel.

Oliver Tried Again Yesterday

We stayed until just after sunset. The guys we had watched pack in, had packed out, having caught at least one crappie, I think it was. All the more reason not to have gone over there.

The Magic Hour is sometimes true to ice fishing, the largest fish of an outing hitting, but nothing quite like that happened Thursday. We caught some more small fish, but I did I find—as I packed in my tip-ups—that one of those tip-ups had expended some 25 yards of line from the spool. What kind of fish would do that, other than a bass? Maybe a larger-sized pickerel, true.

The sun behind a cloud as quitting time neared.

Oliver definitely wanted to catch bass, and I told him that on one occasion, my son caught one from six feet of Lake Hopatcong water, with greater depths available to it.

Friday, I had stuff to do, but Oliver got out on the other of Twin Lakes. He got hit in 20 feet of water, and I believe he said 16 feet—definitely two hits but no hook ups.

It’s possible they were crappie, which will take shiners, but I like to think he came close to bringing up the bass he wanted to catch.