Holmdel Lake Sunday

[HuckFinn]

Hi Folks,
What a day on the water. Sunday the 22 my son John and I met up with Crankybait at his home lake Holmdel Park Lake. It is also called Longstreet Farms.
Not sure what the water temp was but it was cold, son guessed that it was around 50 or so when we first got there about 8:00 AM.
The park has two ponds both less than an acre or so. The bigger one which is stocked by the state with trout is about 8 feet deep, the smaller one, no state stocking is about 5 feet deep.
Water clarity was mixed, 6 to 8 inches near shore fading to a pea green color further from the shore. I threw a few white and or chartreuse jigs/lures to test the clarity and it was not that deep at all.
Ok this was and is a tough place to fish. With the nice weather the bigger lake was packed with people, in fact after lunch cranky and I were shoulder to shoulder with kids next to me shoulder to shoulder. Glad they were short, had to cast over their heads. Also had the rock throwers, and the baseball throwers. A typical urban area multi use county park.
Started the day off searching through my gear for the case plastic jacks worms. Found them and put them in my shoulder bag. Got from the parking lot to the lake and could not find the bag of worms. Retraced my steps back to the car and could not find them, searched my kids bag, cause sometimes things fall out of my bag into his J No luck finding the worms. Oh well hope who ever picked them up is an angler and uses them well.
OK not a good start but it could only get better! Wrong! Used a weightless wacky rigged pumpkin colored tiki stick 4 in and NOTHING! By this time Crankybait and his mom came down the hill and after greetings all around we started fishing for real! I’ll let Cranky report on what he used because I could barely keep up with my lure changes let alone his.
Used the fish finder and found out the water depth but no fish. Son found small fish in the small pond with it so we moved to the upper lake. NOTHING
Used worms/plastics weightless, Carolina, Texas, Jersey and any other state I could think of. NOTHING
Switched to top water (knucklehead) black, red. Spinnerbaits chartreuse, white, black. All with no luck. All of this was thrown on a UL spin, Light spin, Med baitcaster.
Son switched to a fly rod and chased some bass around the lake by no hits.
The bass in these lakes just didn’t want to be bothered today. Like I said before this is a typical urban park. The lake is really beat up on the weekends and the bass just hide on the far side where no one can get to them easily. I tried to reach the back side of the upper pond, made it down the hill but just didn’t want to go through knee deep mud to get to the ankle deep mud I would have to stand in to reach the lake.
I was tempted to use a float boat, but the ranger said it was not allowed. And to be honest, with the way some of the “amateurs” were casting, I would be a sitting duck in a float tube.
The day was a washout as far as fish caught. Kids were catching trout with live bait but not many, and nothing but trout were landed. BUT it was the first time in over a year that I spent the day fishing. Because of my operations and recovering I have only been out for short periods of time and only about a total of 5 or 6 days last year.
This was a great day. Crankybait is a fine young man. Very polite and knows a lot more about fishing than he thinks he does. He can read the water and is a very technical angler who will go a long way in his fishing career. And any day I can tie my kid is a good day for me. The rotten kid beats my catch most times out. BUT he did have a GREAT teacher, me J If anyone has the chance to fish with Crankybait I suggest you take it, you will not be disappointed.
Final Score: Cranky John and Tom 0 zip nada
7 year old with a Spiderman combo outfit 1 7inch trout. Good for him, he can get skunked when he gets older. J