November 16th, 2013
Water Temperature was 41.5 to 42 degrees
Water Clarity was 16 feet
I hit the Delaware River
Saturday (2013-11-16) evening from 3:30 PM to about 7:00 PM. There
really is something beautiful about the Delaware River in the fall; the fall foliage, the
low seasonal gage level of the river and the clarity at which her water
flows. In 16 feet of water, I could see
my jig bouncing off the bottom; hopping and skipping over the dark colored shale.
One of the more challenging aspects of
fishing in November is trying to figure out the walleye pattern for the fall
turnover. The old adage is true, I am
here to say, “What works in the summer, does not work in the fall.” For late summer, my go to tactic is the bottom
bouncer with a fire-tiger Colorado spoon and a worm harness. I struck out in late September. This weekend I was going to try something new;
an orange & yellow 3/8 once jig tipped with a shiner.
It was a slow evening. The walleye would not cooperate. I did get a hookup after dusk though and
there was no doubt it was a walleye. The
light hit, the constant head shaking and the slow rise from the depth of the
river. Call it intuition, call it
experience, but during the retrieve I never felt like I really got a good
hook-set. Sure enough, before I saw the
fish at the surface, he spit the bit. I
don’t think it was a big fish and most likely was under 18 inches, but it sure
would have been nice to see him.
In the end, a bad day fishing beats a good
day of work.
