Get In There

Yesterday, Sam and I decided to go fishing again on the Salmon River. Since I broke my rod and had spooled my reel incorrectly – I decided to purchase a new rod and reel combo. I looked around and at Walmart and I found a decent rod and reel set up.

The rod and reel combo is Zebco Genesis. After my last outing I learned that your fishing line pounds needs to match the rod and match the reel. How do you find out how to do this well you read on the labeling of the rod and reel. I was fortunate to have the line set up with 10 lbs. So my rod will not break I read that I need to go lower in lbs on the leader or the line that goes to the hook from the swivel. The reason my rod the last time was because my main line was 15 lbs and my leader line were the same so it would break when I tried to break the line when it was hooked up.

This time we went to the Black Hole Pool with my new pole. Again not sure what we were doing we were just casting and retrieving. Casting far out to the Black Hole Pool and then retrieving. We spent a few hours and it started to rain. After a few hours of casting and retrieving and getting nothing I told Sam I was hungry so we got lunch and then stopped at Fat Nancy’s to pick up some rain ponchos. Those rain ponchos were as expensive as they are at Disney World but we were determined to fish so got the ponchos. As soon as we got out to the car and put the rubbery smelling ponchos on the heavens parted and the sun started shining. I guess its a axiom of life that had we not gotten the ponchos it would have continued to rain.

We drove from Pulaski headed toward Altmar on 13. I remembered from a few days ago that it just seemed like we were on the wrong side of the river at the Trestles Pool so we decided to stop at the Trestle Pool South. This pool’s parking is right of 13 but you have to walk a good 15 minutes on the trail. When we got there the weather had improved and the river seemed crowded. From the actual trestle to the left about 50 yards there were fishermen fishing all over.

My friend Sam does not like crowds – he likes to find a nice piece of water without any other people there. Although this did not seem ideal and not what I thought nevertheless my upbringing in NYC helped me. Sam decided he could not fish there so he went upstream while my thinking was if people are fishing here then there must be fish. After the lack of success of our first outing I decided that I wanted to be around where people were catching fish. Here although crowded people were yelling “Fish On” meaning that they had hooked a fish and if you were near it was polite to lift your line so you did not tangle with the person who had a “fish on“. I decided that this was where I’m staying and using my skills learned on the NYC subway system. What you do is just walk right into the swarm of humanity and just keep your eyes in front of you and then just nuzzle in and people instinctively will just make room for you.

I fished for about an hour and the same thing that happened as the last time. Everyone else was catching except for me. A guy to the left of me was “fish on” every other cast. It started to get annoying and luckily for me I got caught on a rock and had to break off. This time with my new set up my rod did not break. As I was tying my rig again. I sat on the side of the river and I just watched this guy fish. Instead of casting like I was he had extended his fishing line out from the reel and had it on his left hand. As he cast he would only cast the spool that he was holding in his hand. He was using a spinning reel but he was not casting and winding it back in. He rhythmical pulled out the lined and then cast line from his hand and then retrieved it back to his hand. I then noticed he would cast diagonally from himself and then would follow the line in the water to his left as it drifted by and as the line would swing to the end he would retrieve. He would do this like he was a machine and then “Fish on“. I kept fishing the way I was fishing but I kept my eye on him and he continued his approach.

Here is what I think I learned today.

1. Get in there.  You can only learn to fish by getting into where the action is.
2. If you can’t read the water or know where the fish are – follow the other fisherman.
3. You have to be efficient in casting and retrieving your line.  The longer the line is in the water where the fish are the better the chance of catching a fish.
4. Use a longer rod so that you can reach closer to the fish without having to cast far.
5. Spool some line out and then use that as casting and retrieving using your hands instead of retrieving with your reel.

Hopefully I can catch some fish next time.