A random find...

[Hookmanski]

On my way home I often stop at a gas station/convenience store when I need a little sugary pick me up (I work weird hours so I stop there pretty often). The most recent time I stopped, I noticed a couple of picnic tables down near the edge of the woods that I hadn't noticed before. I went over to check them out and saw a train bridge back there, with light reflecting off the bottom of it. I went down a little game trail and discovered a tiny creek that I didn't even know existed! I headed back to the car to grab the UL and a trout magnet and went back. Didn't see much of anything until I tossed a line in and fish scattered everywhere. A minute later I caught a 8 inch creek chub. I love finding little places like this! Exploration is one of my favorite things, and finding fish while exploring is even better. Hope everyone is getting on some fish this fall, no matter the size or species! Tight lines!

[thmyorke1]

A fellow Chubby chaser! :D

Im a bit embarrassed to admit how much fun I get out of creek chubs here. Damn I can catch one every cast and it's awesome when you get a lengthy one. Did it for hours one day.

[JDTuna]

Thats great! Those little holes off the beaten path are a lot of fun.

[Billfish715]

Way, way back in the day when parents worked all day and there was no parental transportation because there was only one family car; as kids, we had to find our own way to a fishing hole. Creek chubs were often the only gamefish in town in most of the small brooks where we fished. Small pieces of worm or homemade dough balls on size 14 Aberdeen hooks, with a tiny sliver of tree stem for a bobber kept us focused for hours while trying to catch chubs that were often no bigger than 4-5 inches. It taught us patience and touch and persistence which prepped us for when we could actually fish for trout and bass.

We never turned our noses up at anything with fins. If it was a fish, no matter what size, it was fair game. For us kids, catching a sucker was a trophy. Whether it was catching shiners in Echo Lake (Union County) or chubs behind the old trap range in Kenilworth, or red/orange comet goldfish/carp in Nomahegan Pond or sunnies along the banks of the Rahway River, it was all good. Wherever our one-speed, balloon-tired bikes would take us, we fished.

Catching chubs in an uncharted body of water on ultralight gear brings out the kid in all of us. Thanks for stirring up some great memories of a time when life was a lot less complicated.

[thmyorke1]

Way, way back in the day when parents worked all day and there was no parental transportation because there was only one family car; as kids, we had to find our own way to a fishing hole. Creek chubs were often the only gamefish in town in most of the small brooks where we fished. Small pieces of worm or homemade dough balls on size 14 Aberdeen hooks, with a tiny sliver of tree stem for a bobber kept us focused for hours while trying to catch chubs that were often no bigger than 4-5 inches. It taught us patience and touch and persistence which prepped us for when we could actually fish for trout and bass.

We never turned our noses up at anything with fins. If it was a fish, no matter what size, it was fair game. For us kids, catching a sucker was a trophy. Whether it was catching shiners in Echo Lake (Union County) or chubs behind the old trap range in Kenilworth, or red/orange comet goldfish/carp in Nomahegan Pond or sunnies along the banks of the Rahway River, it was all good. Wherever our one-speed, balloon-tired bikes would take us, we fished.

Catching chubs in an uncharted body of water on ultralight gear brings out the kid in all of us. Thanks for stirring up some great memories of a time when life was a lot less complicated.

I found that immensely heartwarming. Somehow nostalgic to me despite just starting my fishing experiences a year ago.

Tight lines, friend.

[bulletbob]

Creek chubs.. ok, I can relate to that..
Up here in some of the creeks we get Fallfish.. I don't know if its a totally different species or not but damn, they sure look exactly like a creek chub, and are in the same places caught on the same bait/lures..
They are huge, some around 20 inches, lots over 12, and are really good game fish.
Active fighters, strong hitters..Only time I ever catch or see them is late fall /early winter..
Not sure you guys in NJ have them, but if you like fooling around with creek chubs, fish later in the season, and try and catch those big Fallfish along with the small chubs... bob

[thmyorke1]

Creek chubs.. ok, I can relate to that..
Up here in some of the creeks we get Fallfish.. I don't know if its a totally different species or not but damn, they sure look exactly like a creek chub, and are in the same places caught on the same bait/lures..
They are huge, some around 20 inches, lots over 12, and are really good game fish.
Active fighters, strong hitters..Only time I ever catch or see them is late fall /early winter..
Not sure you guys in NJ have them, but if you like fooling around with creek chubs, fish later in the season, and try and catch those big Fallfish along with the small chubs... bob

Creek chubs have that bass-like line while fallfish are shiny like a shad, also yes fallfish do get bigger. Both are actually related in the same scientific family.

I've had a fallfish hit a rapals once. Pic related.

https://i.imgur.com/xoLbIkw.jpg

Here's a creek chub to compare.
https://i.imgur.com/hDAAhrP.jpg

[ScowardNJ]

Always lookin around for a good chub hole...:eek::eek::eek::eek:
Sounds like a good spot to make bait quick to further a days fishing for bigger predators.

[Chrisper4694]

now if you mention that spot to anyone, you'll never catch another chub there because it'll get cleaned out for muskie and pike bait haha

[Eskimo]

.


Thanks for that information Thymorke1. Prior to reading that, I always used the names Creek Chub and Fallfish interchangeably.


.

[Mark B.]

Fallfish inhabit the same waters as Smallmouth Bass & are caught on same lures. The big difference is when hooked,........Fallfish = no fight.

As kids in Three Bridges, we would catch Creek Chubs in “The Brook”, an unnamed trib. to the South Branch Raritan. Cool looking in the spring with their fighting horns (breeding tubercles).

Another spring activity in The Brook: Sucker Clubbing.
Kids armed with baseball bats,……the suckers had no chance in shallow water on their spawning run. Not sure why we did it. Just that these big fish were there & vulnerable. We’d stack them up on the shoreline & maybe bring a few back to feed the neighborhood cats.

[Hookmanski]

I love hearing all these stories, keep em coming! Glad to see my little adventure brought back some happy memories. And yeah Chrisper, I'm not giving up the location anytime soon ;)

[Billfish715]

Finding new spots to fish, no matter how small they are, is always fun. Those adventures down the little tributaries off the main flow often turn up some unexpected treasures. I've ventured down some of those side shoots on some of the streams during the trout season and have stumbled across some places that were loaded with fish of all kinds. Check and see where that "find" of yours leads or from where it came. There might be something lurking that might surprise you even more than what you caught.

[Riz]

nice post , always nice to walk thru the woods

[BT67]

as a young kid I fished the Rockaway River in different spots in early summer with the hopes of catching the elusive trout. These fallfish or chubs certainly kept us busy but for me I was always disappointed when I saw it wasn't a trout.

[thmyorke1]

as a young kid I fished the Rockaway River in different spots in early summer with the hopes of catching the elusive trout. These fallfish or chubs certainly kept us busy but for me I was always disappointed when I saw it wasn't a trout.

That's literally me. That fallfish I posted was the same story.

[Mark B.]

"The Brook”: 40.519585, -74.791465

My earliest memory: I was 5 years old, as was my friend Ivy. Ivy’s mother took us to the its bank to go fishing. Rigs / Tackle = 2 sticks w/ cotton string & open safety pins as hooks. No bait, we caught nothing. But it was magical.

Back in the early 1960’s it was a dairy farm. We used to dig under the cow patties for worms. The cows had the vegetation browsed as short as a mowed lawn right up to the brook’s bank. Sometimes, a kid sitting on a high bank, meat hanging a worm, would be kicking his feet. Unwittingly, undermining the bank beneath him,…….suddenly he would be riding a large chunk of earth down in to the brook. In the winter, too, while sledding, someone would always fail to turn / skid out of control & end up in the brook.

In addition to fishing for Creek Chubs, Sunfish & sucker clubbing, we were always building dams. Digging holes, too, that would fill w/ water, & then covering with sticks & grass. A trap set for whomever. Usually it was a buddy who would step, & get the dreaded “wet foot”.

[Billfish715]

Mark, Your experiences stir up great memories from my youth. Digging our own worms! Wow! A coffee can for a bait bucket, a pitchfork, a flashlight ( for night crawlers ) is all you needed. Buying bait? What?

We found worms at a manure pile at a farm on our way to a pond. No. Mom didn't drive us. We rode our bikes. Try to find a manure pile in any neighborhood today. Try to find a farm! If we went to a different pond or stream, we would find
"piss worms" under the leaves. They were slimy and usually broke in half if you tried to put a hook in them.

Did you ever have your mom help you find night crawlers? I did, until I pulled a fat crawler out of a hole. That's when I paraphrased what the older boys called them........c..k suckers. Bam! A right cross by Mom to my lip put an end to that bait gathering adventure!

We learned to keep worm farms (wooden boxes with layers of newspaper, dirt, leaves, and compost filled with garden worms or night crawlers) for those summer days when digging worms was difficult. Powere Bait? How about gummy white bread or homemade dough balls flavored with vanilla or some other extract from the closet.

Thanks, Mark.

[Mark B.]

Yeah, Billfish, those were the days,.....simpler times.

My mother would throw the Percolator coffee grounds in the flower bed outside of the kitchen door. There were always worms there. Fairly often, we would dig up what we called a grub worm. In actuality, a Japanese Beetle larvae. Sunfish, especially, relished them.

The Brook runs under Old York Rd. I would walk there, kneel on the shoulder of the road, & fish w/ a dropline from the low cement wall (“1923” carved into it),………my line running through the same groove in, & over, the wall to the water. Hours upon hours I spent there, staring into the water,………I might have worn that groove in to the cement.

Unbeknownst to me @ the time was that my dropline was my father’s old fly fishing reel (I remember it looked like it was made of pewter), spooled with black nylon line. No mono back then.

Once, I put a leaf on the hook & caught a Sunfish.

[Hookmanski]

Well if we're all telling childhood stories i guess I'll join in...

I grew up with the Spruce Run Creek in my backyard. Spent countless hours swimming, wading, exploring, fishing and goofing around in the woods and creek with all the neighborhood kids, some of who are still my close friends today.

There's a huge rock that sits on the bank of the creek we used to climb all over, and fish under. My friend and I went back there with a pack of hooks and 2 poles, trying to catch whatever would bite. We dug up our own worms and used to slay the rainbows backs there. Later the same summer, we went back and found a dock that had come loose from someones property and flowed downstream. So, like any young adventurer would, we hopped on it and floated down river all the way into town, a good 2 miles. Ill never forget that.

[HBird11]

Buy bait? Whoever heard of such a thing! I grew up in Hope Nj. fishing in tiny little Beaver brook. One of my best childhood memories was when my mother showed me the art of daytime night crawler hunting. A little powedered mustard mixed with water a spoon and two coffee cans one with water in it the other half filled with dirt and off to the back yard find a tiny pile of worm poop in the grass and remove it to uncover the worms underground lair take a spoonful of your liquified mustard pour it in the hole and get ready cause it wasn’t long and TA da! out came Mr. night crawler quickly rinsed it off and chuck it in the can of dirt and on to the next hole! Simple bait catching technique that had me catching sunnies chubs and the occasionally unfortunate turtle! Now them were the good old days that are long gone and unfortunately probably lost

[tycomps]

the good ole days when ticks and mosquitoes were just another bug!

[Billfish715]

Ah yes! The old mustard and water trick. I do remember using it but sneaking around with a flashlight in the yard at night was much more fun. Neighbors would probably call the police if they saw that these days.

Speaking of night time activities, we also used to shine flashlights along the banks of local ponds while fishing for frogs. If we found one, we would take a stick and a string with a hook and small piece of cloth attached and dangled it over the frog's head. The fun was to see just how high we could get the frog to jump to catch the bug ( cloth ). Why cloth? We didn't have extra cash to buy tied flies.

One more daytime activity besides fishing was to catch crawfish by hand. Lots of small brooks had them. We'd sort out the bigger ones and bring them home for a rock lobster boil. Trust me, there were some bigguns!

I hope kids still do kid things like we did. It really gave me an appreciation for what I have today and for why I still love to fish. It makes me feel like a kid and it always will.

[tycomps]

I remember walking up a mid sized creek turning over rocks for crayfish, got to a big one in the middle, reached down, flipped it, AND A MUSKRAT JUMPED UP IN MY FACE, did a pb 50 yard dash outta there!!! :D

[thmyorke1]

Today's biggest catch :)

https://i.imgur.com/NsK2oOL.jpg