Quote:
Originally Posted by Billfish715
That video takes me back to a time in my life when I perfected my fishing skills by trying to catch whatever tiny fish I could fool into biting a piece of worm on a hook. Of course we had no ultra light anything back then which made catching a tiny shiner, or catfish fry, or fathead, or carp or sunny or anything else that was swimming in one of the local brooks.
That stretch of the Elizabeth River was once groomed as part of a flood control project. If you think the stretch you were fishing was polluted, at that point it hadn't even flowed through Elizabeth. My uncles grew up in Hillside and would often talk about skinny dipping in the Elizabeth River, way back when. They even fished and trapped muskrats along its banks.
The Kean Estate was prime hunting ground during the Depression and of course, things back then were much different. The river flows through, around and under some very congested retail and industrial locations. The amount of litter and silt and petro chemicals that wash into the water from just one highway (Route 22) is staggering. I can't imagine the water temperature along the way.
Yep, killies seem to survive where others fail to make it especially since the stretch you fished is so close to its confluence with the saltwater of the Arthur Kill. One thing is for sure, that stretch will have very few mosquitoes or mosquito larvae because mummichugs (AKA killies) eat them like candy. The state often has requests to stock them in stagnant bodies of water to control those little bloodsuckers.
I am impressed with the fact you caught killies on a hook and line. You have lots of patience and some "mad skills".
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Thanks for all the information. I love learning stuff like that. The history of the area is very interesting to me. I'm a bit of a history nerd with a specific fascination of the early American period from 1776ish to right before the war of 1812. This area with the Kean Estate and whatnot is fascinating with respect to that time period.
You mentioned trying to catch any fish you could. Do you by any chance lifelist? That's something I've also gotten into within the last couple years.
