Surfcasting

This fish was caught and released last night 4/19/2010.  Everyone who saw the fish agreed it was over 80lbs making this a new world record on ANY weight line!

Kudos and salutations to the angler who is a better man then I am. I dont know if I could resist the temptation to kill this fish of everyone’s lifetime!

The Future is Plastics!

Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” uttered that famous line that the future is plastics but he didn’t realize that he was talking about Striped Bass fishing! I went on one of my initial forays of the year for Striped Bass and the only artificial lures we all used were plastic.

Little Neck Bay is a Cul-De-Sac with a mussel bed in the back and an abundance of worms,sand eels,spearing,bunker,crabs and shrimps for the migrating Stripers to feed on. The mussel bed is exposed on low tide and is warmed by the spring sun and when the tide floods there is a nice thermal benefit to this body of water. The fish are not large but they are the first fish of the season outside of the Hudson River in New York State and they are hungry after the winter doldrums!

There is a group of bait fisherman(mostly worms and clams, some bunker chunkers as they become available) but the majority of the fish are caught on artificials. The most popular lures that the in crowd is using are the newest plastics baits that are available. These lures fall into mostly 2 groups. Stick baits and paddle tails.

Stick baits that are available include: Hogys, Sluggos, RonZ’s, and Bass Assasins. This group of baits are mostly long and thin with minimal action generated by the bait. Most of the movement is injected into the bait by the fisherman with the rod tip.

Paddle Tails are usually in the shape of fish and have a tail that is perpendicular to the movement of the bait causing the tail to wiggle as it is pulled thru the water by the angler. The action is generated mostly by reeling continuously with occasional twitches injected into the retrieve for fish triggering strikes. Storm Shads, Tsunamis, Calcutta’s.

Berkeley Gulp makes as assortment of baits in both categories with a major difference. They infuse their plastic baits with a scientific juice that tricks and triggers the fish into striking. I have had tremendous success with the Berkeley Gulp for Fluke on the back of bucktails and for porgies naked on just a hook!

Don’t be afraid to use this innovative group of artificial baits for almost any gamefish as Dustin said “the future is plastics !”

The tide was high @ 3:00am. The wind was East, maybe 20 knots. Not the worst but difficult to cast into with the eels…

Alone, Overcast sky, small waves, but sloppy and getting my Van Staal 300 a little sandy from time to time.

I was using the new 10 foot Lamiglass Super- Surf (120ss m I think?). Love that rod, light,stiff,ballsy,my favorite eelin stick. 40 lb Sufix braid, 40 lb Sufix flourocarbon leader (3 feet) Spro 230lb swivel (overkill but I like the size for grabbing during the end game. Gamagatsu 8/0 octopus hook. Cant decide if i should use the circle hook or not.Keep going back and forth losing fish sometimes with either..shit happens…

The reel is grinding a little during the retrieve and I bring it up to my face and spit between the spool and rotor to get the sand out and all of a sudden I am no longer alone! The eel moves off inside the mouth of a nice fish and I am not ready for the hit…. The line comes tight, wack, wack, wack I set the hook and I’m in!!!

Fish makes a respectable run on a tight drag stops shakes its pissed off head and moves towards the west side of the jetty using the current to its advantage. I had lost a BIG fish last week… story on that later, so I was cautious with my footing and was trying to figure out where to land the fish a couple more shakes one last pull and I am alone again…  hate it when that happens… try and figure out what I did wrong at least learn from the experience and maybe next time I will have some company for me and my eels!

Tight Lines, Bloody Rocks, Screamin Drags…