A Send for Scott
Every year on January 10th, I wake up early in the morning, before my wife and pets, and get in the car to travel to Hunterdon County, New Jersey. I live up in Sussex now, so it’s about an hour and change away. It’s my dad Scott’s birthday, and like every year since his passing in 2016, I make a pilgrimage back to the waters where he taught me to fish for trout for a day of fishing in his honor; affectionately deemed the Send for Scott. Normally, I have plenty of small rivers and creeks to explore, but with this year’s deep freeze most of them were inaccessible. There was one place I knew I could find open water nearby, so I headed over to the shores of Round Valley Reservoir.
As I approached the shoreline with a bucket of shiners and some powerbait, I took a minute to appreciate the water being back at almost full capacity. After years of dam work keeping the levels down, the Valley is finally back to its glory. I set up two bait rods and casted around some lures with a third. Having arrived at 8:30am, I had given myself plenty of time to think while I tried for that cruising brown trout or lost winter lake trout.
My father passed away from suicide in 2016. Often when I fish, memories we shared together flood through my mind. He is the person who showed me how to tie knots, how to bait a hook, everything. He would often call me during my high school and college years with that season’s “trout count”. “Already up to 28 trout so far this season!” He’d boisterously answer the phone with this response before even saying hello.
As the day progressed, the action did not, so I decided to make a move to another spot in a different cove. There, I was sheltered from the wind, and the water looked promising, but there were no fish to be found. With an empty bait bucket and a determination to catch something, I ended my time at the Valley around 1:30PM and began to execute Plan B.
I stopped by my old hometown to see if the creek I grew up within walking distance of was fishable. I walked through the playground, where my brother and I had played hundreds of times together, to check a deep hole on the other side of it. When I crested the small hill looking over the hole, I found only ice; the entire section of the creek had frozen over. “I figured this might be the case,” I thought as I turned back towards the playground. Looking at the baseball field and the swings brought back memories of practicing fielding ground balls with my dad while my brother, Tyler, swung amongst the trees just off the first base line.
In 2024, I also lost my brother to suicide. He was my best friend and although wasn’t a fisherman, he was one of my biggest supporters. January 10th just so happens to be his half birthday, so I was determined more than ever to catch something.
I continued further into Hunterdon County until I reached the mighty Musconetcong. A tributary of the Delaware river, it is a great trout fishery. Thankfully, I was able to find some faster moving water that wasn’t frozen over, so I began hiking the bank in search of trouty-looking spots. I did a bunch of casting, but unfortunately, had no luck. It was approaching 4PM by this point, and I was tired and hungry, but there was one last spot I wanted to try.
At the final spot, I pulled up to one of my favorite sights: an empty parking lot. Not a lot of anglers were braving the cold. I knew of 5 or 6 holes along this stretch that held fish in the past, so I began working my way downstream. The sun was behind the rolling hills now, my time was running out. After fishing all the holes I had intended without a sniff at my lure, I figured I would fish one last hole before calling it quits. I casted my Thomas EP Series spinner under a low hanging tree limb, and right at my feet I connected with a nice male rainbow. After netting and releasing it, I gave it one more cast. On that very next cast, I caught a second rainbow trout. As I reflected on the day, tears rolled down my face. A trout for each of the loved ones I’ve lost, right at the buzzer.
Fishing is perseverance and just like in life, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or a fish in that very last hole.
While this year has been one of the hardest in my life, I share my story in the hopes that it will help someone see that the problems in their life are temporary. Unfortunately, suicide is a permanent solution to those temporary problems. I use this day to advocate for mental health awareness, especially because men are so heavily affected by it and fishing is a male dominated sport. Talk if you need to talk, cry if you need to cry, scream if you need to scream. It doesn’t make you any less of a man.
Tight lines everyone, and take care of yourselves!
Source: https://onthewater.com/a-send-for-scott
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