Fishing pressure may be the leading cause of lockjaw when it comes to Northeast lakes.
Early in the second week of May, Brenden Kuprel and I fish a local lake where we do perhaps the best fishing of the year. In 2023, we caught 46 fish in less than 6 hours; in 2024, same hours and 61 fish. Most were largemouth over 2 pounds, with pickerel to 26 inches, and we caught a few outsized bluegills to 9-1/2 inches, black crappies to 15 inches, and landlocked salmon as big as 19-1/2. Brenden’s biggest largemouth engulfed a Yum Dinger and taped out at just shy of 20 inches.
Getting under way that first year, I felt baffled at the number of fish coming over the gunwale, with the two of us sometimes bringing in bass at the same time. I was using a 5-inch Yum Dinger to start, but Brenden did better with a little search bait, a 1/16-ounce, 2-1/2-inch Z-Man Slimswimz. You might think he would have caught a lot of bluegills on that little paddletail, but I don’t remember any; his best bluegill came on a Roadrunner-style jig with a little Colorado blade underneath. No more than one or two others were caught between us.
The next year bass and pickerel hit jerkbaits. Lukas Bogosian from out in Northwest New Jersey makes the Bogos Twitch Twitch Boom, and that plug out-fished any other. Had Brenden one to lend me, I’m sure we would have caught upwards of 70 fish. I caught a couple of largemouth baas on a Phoebe, including a fat 2-1/2-pounder that hit mid-lake over 35 feet of water while I trolled the spoon at the surface for salmon.
At one point, I couldn’t believe we fished a public lake. With polarizers on, we gazed over the gunwale of my squareback canoe through windowpane-clear water at 18- and 20-inch bass cruising through as if contained in a hatchery pond. Make no mistake about it, many of our public lakes are full of fish, but the fish know how to deal with pressure. When the pressure’s off, that’s when you might learn just how many fish are really in the water.
Brenden made a point of it. He said, “We’re fishing virgin water.”
I shot him a look of incomprehension. (It’s a public lake that gets pressured almost every day.) “What?” I asked.
“These fish haven’t seen lures all winter,” he said.
By May, some of those fish will have seen some, but the lakes getting the most pressure are those stocked with trout. It makes a difference that during April and May – whether fishing rivers, streams, lakes, or reservoirs – most anglers are after those trout, not bass and pickerel. The pressure’s off, and the fish don’t remember lures from summer and early fall.
I believe pressure might be the leading cause of lockjaw when it comes to fishing in the Northeast. A cold front and cold water might be more daunting, but I’ve been paying attention to the thought that fish are very discriminate when it comes to lures thrown their way. A few summers ago, I fished a river with a size 5 Rapala floater for smallmouth bass. I watched as a trout followed the plug, repeatedly rushing it, nosing in for a close look, finally abandoning it, giving me the impression that the fish judged carefully, when many judge easily without needing to make such an effort. Not because of conditions like clear water or a bluebird sky, but because what’s bustling by is a lure. The fish have turned the concept “lure” on its head.
On a more recent occasion, I fished another river with Mark Licht, also for smallmouths. We approached a large pool beneath a dam, Mark wading halfway across shallows below, me taking position on a flat-topped boulder so I could cast beyond the middle and retrieve parallel to the dam’s edge. Having cast a Ned rig just once, I had a nice one on, which I lost at my feet. Then I cast the pool’s entirety from bank to bank for nothing. Mark, too, before he offered me a nightcrawler. We proceeded to prove the pool had plenty of bass.
