New Habit

Luremaking is slowly invading my life. It's great how this shit is completely taking me away even when i'm not fishing yet totally immersed in the mindset. Watching some fishing TV shows passes time but doesn't fulfill my idle hands.

On the note of television and fishing I would love to make a note of Midwest Crappie. This show is absolutely amazing. All about panfishing and crappie fishing with lots of great tips. It's not easy to make a great fishing TV show these days and this show has originality. I really do enjoy a show focusing on something other than the infamous green trout anyhow.

After visiting some yard sales and 'fishing' for bargains I started some reading on what other ideas may have been spun around the interwebs as far as making some lures. This Backwoods Home article came up giving some great ideas. One of the ideas that I really liked was visiting thrift stores for costume jewelery to make into lures.

One thing I have to say is that I dont like a lure I made and I wont buy a lure unless it looks good. I believe confidence has a lot to do with fishing a good lure. This tends to make me create my lures to a professional quality that noone else will be able to land their hands on.

Hidden Lake

Google satellite view is an amazing tool. A friend of mine and I found some well hidden water bodies that we ventured in to find and attempt finding some fish. This time the pod was very local and easy to find.

Any body of water you find in the US is going to contain fish. The most common overall fish you will find is some sort of brim, bream, or sunfish. No matter how you spell it these fish eat most of the insects invading our yards and parks. These fish are often native, or introduced if the water is landlocked.

Upon finding our hidden secret we caught a few big mouths and bluegills. I believe my buddy landed a pumpkin seed and I believe I happened to catch a strange variation of bluegill and pumpkin seed/shell cracker. The water wasnt exactly busy, but seems promising if we find the right color and lure combination. Perhaps even the right weather conditions. Perhaps its a bass prominent pond and possibly better fished in the summer.

Ocean Acres Golf Course

Ocean Acres Country Club is situated right in the outskirts of Manahawkin, NJ and Barnegat, NJ. In this land is a small park with childrens playthings and this makes it accessible to a water hazard. This water hazard has been rumored to house some pigs of bass.

It was windy and very choppy, probablly down in the high 50's with windchill involved. I landed a few sunfish and that was about it. I haven't properly visited this lake in about 6-8 years. Last I remember of this lake I happened to be fishing without a license and a warden showed up and I was luckily already ducking in the woods. Not that I condone unpermitted fishing, but eager is as eager does.

I don't remember this lake producing very well in the past and maybe I should pay it another look when I have the time. For now, I doubt this pond is worthy of the trouble.

Rain & Cold

This week has been rainy and cold and it seems the stormy weather overflows into these blogs. I'm trying to keep up to date but at the moment im working on a few new lures and waiting for the weather to clear up so i can hit the water again.

I went out and hit some local lakes. The damage from the winter's lake draining is still lingering. Sunny beds are non-existent and the water looks much darker. As i moved onto a township favorite spot it seemed like everyone was just catching small bullhead catfish, turtles, and eels.

Soon enough I'll be out hooking some good stuff, but for now I wait.

Relaxation

The past few days here in NJ have been colder, and I decided to take a few days off from the water. Although catching fish is still possible, sometimes the drastic temperature changes cause finicky fishing. It's a great opportunity to catch up on some R&R. You could read that as Rest & Relaxation, or maybe Reading & Research. I'm doing both.

I've been working on Rapala Trophies, a game that I picked up for my Sony Playstation Portable. I also picked it up for the Nintendo Wii, however I had been playing it already on the PSP and want to finish the game. Having a great interest in freshwater fishing I have gone through many video games showcasing the sport. To my exhausting disappointment there just has never been a game that caught any excitement on thrill of fishing. Rapala Trophies, however, is one game that I simply cannot put down. This game is really teaching me a lot on how to work different Rapala lures and is also giving me the opportunity to test/try Rapala brand lures that I wouldn't otherwise be tempted to buy. This game has challenges and a free fishing mode with many sportfish including smallies, bigmouths, crappie, and even catfish. 

One of the lures I tend to look over is the Jigging Rap. They are an odd shaped lure, with hooks out the tail, nose, and a dangling center mount treble. One reason I have shunned the lure is its eyelet is mounted about the dorsal fin area and instead of a diving spoon an acrylic pointed tail is on the opposite end. This lure has so much prospective uses to me that I really need to give this lure a try. What a great idea to mix my two favorite lures... a crank/jerkbait and a jig. Novel!

Crankbaits

This has been the year I have been investing more time into making my own lures. I have a few of the Yo Zuri Snap Bean lures, these are small crank baits with a mid mounted hanging treble. These lures work fairly well at enticing bluegills to strike, often far from their nests. I really like how the lures swim and act in the water. The problem I commonly have with this lure is that the bluegill often bites from the rear and completely misses the hook. If you inspect a bluegill you're looking into his mouth, the mouth is quite small. My take on this lure is a smaller shad body, but with one smaller hook. I carved from a dogwood twig a shad body and snaked a size 6 hook through the body. This has been working wonders. So far its colored silver with black along the dorsal area of the body. Another Yellow/Greenish or Firetiger color would have to be in the works soon.

The pictures are not so great, but the first one gives a size comparison from before finished. The second shows a crappie landed on a finished crank.

Attack on Mirror Lake

Mirror Lake in Browns Mills, NJ is one of the better lakes in the area by far. This is the first time I have ever fished this lake, and after numerous reports online we decided to check this place out. Lake Pemberton is also in this municipality which is one lake I consistently fish. I will further comment on Pemberton when I make it out there next, but mirror lake is much more solid than Pemberton. Upon showing up there are 2 residential roads that outline the perimeter of the lake. Much of it is marked with no parking signs and such but there are a few places to sneak into. At the northernmost points of the lake it is seemingly very shallow, albeit misleading as the water is so dark you can hardly see the bottom in most points.

We snuck into the brush in 3 locations on the north end of the lake first. First we stopped at a public gazebo with a beach like section. It was definitely not for swimming with lots of lake weeds and rocks at the edge from what I could see. I saw a few swirls in the water but had no hits. Second we moved on to the west side of the north end and there was a small place we could park and walk in. Lots of pads and fanwort which is common here. Third, I moved on to another Location just up shore hoping maybe to catch a drop off or some spawnbeds or something.

With identical results on that end of the lake i reluctantly moved on to a public swimming area. This area proved worthwhile. There was a mall walkway with a cove underneath. I dropped a small orange and gold trout jig and instantly landed a 2lb largemouth. Shortly after my fishing buddy landed a large slab of a crappie. Then came out a 3.5lb Largemouth and I had a hit on a topwater bass popper. Then came a small pickerel, a few large bluegills 2 more bass and another crappie. After this we moved on to the other side of the lake where an Island was located, that was private property. However, there was a nice looking cove we overlooked for a public parking area and instantly we landed another crappie and about a 5lb Largemouth.

This is the mark of National Boating & Fishing week, and this lake had a Kids Fishing Derby which seemed to go unnoticed. Though I would have liked to have seen a few kids fishing it also leads on to the fact that its possibly a lake that has less fishing pressure than most other lakes in the area. This is one of the greatest prospect lakes in Ocean County, NJ and definitely the best in size/length producer so far.

Lakewood

Lake Shenandoah is part of Ocean County Park in Lakewood, NJ. I've been to this lake many times in my past and haven't visited in over 4 years. This lake makes a claim to have residents of lake trout, brown trout, largemouth bass, crappie, perch, and an occasional snakehead. Snakeheads are an invasive species and this is the first place i ever ran into one in real life. Shenandoah is not a solid producing lake for shore fishing, it's a disappointment most of the time. There is a spillway with a shad ladder preventing you from fishing in a 100ft radius of the ladder. Shenandoah was made in part of the Metedeconk river and fishing seems better in the river sections behind the spillway and further down. This trip was no exception to the non-producing aspects, perhaps a boat would be better.

After the disappointment at Shenandoah we hastily moved to the lesser known Lake Carasaljo. Less than 2 miles away and upstream of the Metedeconk this lake was a major surprise. On small homemade jigs we were landing perch hand over fist. Also landing quite a few bluegill and a slab of a crappie. This is a dark cedar water lake and brighter orange colors seem to pull them out from the deep. After only fishing the south side of the lake we scouted the north side with a pavillion and a childrens play park. The pavillion over the water looks like a great habitat for anything from crappie depending on the depth, to largemouth and bluegill. This lake certainly deserves a more serious trip.

Color

Fishing south and central New Jersey is mostly unfiltered cedar and marshy murk waters and this has provoked me to really start considering colors of lures. After a lot of research and looking around at what both pros and amateurs alike use for colors the famous Fire Tiger combination has really been proving well. I picked up a Strike King Fire Tiger tiny shad crank. This crank served me well, even picking up a bluegill which is often a bit tougher on a treble hook due to the small mouth. It's a suspending shad body crankbait that I am finding can be worked in a variety of ways. I can jerk the bait, slash the bait, twitch the bait like a jig, and I can even slow or fast retrieve and let it slowly pop to the surface. This particular color combination seems to drive almost any fish nuts. I've been catching Perch, Bluegill, Pickerel, Bass, and Crappie. It's high time I throw this in trout waters and see what comes out.

Catfish Feeding Frenzy.

After a slow afternoon of chasing fish up and down a familiar basin, a friend and I decided to stop and check some water with standing timbers and a clear channel. It was after 9pm now and really dark. Lots of bugs and almost no wind. We hear the fish kissing the surface, thinking they were bluegills. This particular water looked like a bass made habitat and threw out some surface plugs. We started getting bites and realized it was Catfish! Bullhead Catfish to be exact! What an unexpected surprise.

Fringe Tossing

I've been wanting to begin a blog for some time now but couldn't figure what i had to share that i actually cared to write about. With the advent of summer, here in new jersey, i chose fishing. I love fishing from the shore of freshwater lakes and ponds flipping and jigging through the fringes. Fringe tossing is for those who enjoy freshwater lure fishing be it from shore or even small boat. I hope that someone learns something or is at least entertained.