Post
by rickhem » Mon Sep 23, 2024 1:39 pm
Having grown up in northeastern NJ, my contribution here is going to be more of a favorite fishing "situation" more than a specific location. My town growing up was bordered by the Passaic River, which was pretty much an open sewer for decades. My dad used to tell stories of swimming in it when he was a kid, but told those as a contrast to how it looked when I was in my teens. At low tide, the banks were mud flats that stunk like anything, and if you threw rocks in the water near the mud flats, a nice big rainbow of an oil slick appeared.
Fast forward about 30 years and the efforts to clean up the river have paid dividends. The lower stretches of the river have carp, white perch, and at certain times of the year, striped bass. I know because I've caught them all. The farther upriver you get, the more you find largemouth and smallmouth bass, pickerel, and the state also stocked tiger muskies. The river is still not thought of in a positive way, years of abuse is hard to overcome. But for those of us that suffered the teasing and abuse of the masses, it's turned into a pretty amazing fishery.
My favorite was to park at the back end of an industrial complex, or next to a bridge, or by a billboard along the river, lock up the truck, and then go exploring along the trails that can always be found along both banks. In the upper areas, where it flows through wetlands, there are numerous ponds and what could be called oxbows that hold giant carp and some very aggressive bass. This kind of urban fishing has some complications, and you often walk near homeless encampments, and the banks are still strewn with trash and old tires just about everywhere, but the water is clean enough for smallies, which is pretty clean.
I've fished small feeder creeks that I could almost jump across, and caught 10-12" bass in the shadow of a Home Depot and a Shop Rite from the Saddle River. A nice 5' rod is a good tool in those streams that look more like a drainage ditch.
I think the part I like the best was going against the common mindset that "there's nothing living in that water".
