I think they've been around and sluggish for awhile, but with the bay waters warming thru 50 degrees, they've become more active and are responding to plugs now. Had a couple last night (biggest about 32") and dropped another.

That's good news Mike, glad to hear it. It was very warm today so things should be warming up soon.

'Grats Mike, good to hear. Did you get them on the western side or the eastern? Just wondering how many weaks before we've got 'em (yeh, I'm greedy like that :P )

Save some for us...

Towards the west, John. Backside, between Jones Inlet and Fire Island Lighthouse. I've heard of schoolies out east, but things will now improve every day. You may have them by next weekend.

Sound side is still slow, I hear.

Boy, the reports are coming in hot and heavy---just got off the phone with Brad. First bass/keeper of the year for him, 29" on cut herring. In the back of Onset Bay, near HH Lures "World Headquarters: :-)

Good news Mike. I was on the Cape this weekend and it was chiiiiilllyyyy. SE wind and really raw, 50 on the cape and 85 in Boston.

Hey, whats the new Hawg Plug? I Know the 155 special, the reg pencil, and the Polaris style. What else am I missing? I'm in need of a couple new plugs to break in my freshly wrapped SSB 136-3M :) I think I can say I actually missed glass canal sticks after the stints with the sucky Sabres...

East Tide

Good to hear someone is catching.

I tried today. Tried all my good spots. Large Fin-S, Sluggos, Super Shad Rap and Redfins. I figure if any large were hanging out, they would be feeding on baby shads or any left over herring. No luck.

What's a "left over herring"? You can't tell me that there are never herring in you area?

I'll spell it out for you. Take your small spinner and go to a place where the wind is blowing in your face, you know that it holds little baitfish, has some current and/or white wash and go cast small bucktails, 3/8 to 3/4 but no bigger, with a bucktail teaser rigged up or use a jig and a soft plastic like a queen cocahoe or salt & pepper grub tail and cast up and down and left and right. Work any rip lines, eddys, or wash you can find. Any small inlets in you area? Work those. You don't need large Fin-S fish this time of year in your location. If the bigger fish are moving into your area, try swimming a herring or herring like plug (you won't do anything like the real thing)... Get some schoolies under your belt and worry about the bigger fish after the cabin fever has worn off a little.

Well the herring have moved out of here. The herring come by in November and stay around to March. They start to move out and up to you guys.

I don't think there are any around my parts. I think all of you guys stole them. :)

Fished some of my favored creeks on the North Fork this weekend. Clear water but no fish and no signs of bait. Even the marh grasses had barely started to come up. Still cold water.

I must be living in a seperate reality. I have a Sabre 1089 and a Sabre 967 , both are great. I never saw a "sucky Sabre" ...?

Them CT herring must be different from RI herring Patrick. In RI , they go up to spawn in March and April and drop back out by June. To me , leftover herring is bait from last year or possibly some of the ones that hang out after dropping back out of the rivers after the spawn.

Wait, are you guys talking about Blueback herring or some other kind. We get some fish we call "river herring" in the late fall here. I've snagged a couple when I hit the schools of peanuts. Very stinky fish. I couldn't get the smell out of my hand for 3 days. The only other "herring" I know of are alewives. Maybe what we call alewives, you call herring. You know, a regional name. We get them in Spring. They come up the tidal rivers and we get a few live ones. Once I get a car and a keep alive bait tank, the fish won't know what hit them.

I have one friend who got 3 live alewives, put them in a garbage can with water, threw them in the back of his hatchback and raced down to the marina. First cast, had a 30+ inch fish on.

Saltheart, Maybe we require different needs. I have had a 10 ft 1209 conventional used for plugging, a 1089 used for plug/ jigging, a 9.5 ft 1209 from tip for jigging and a 1209 that is now rockified to 9.5 ft. The only one I truly like is the 9.5 ft 1209 that I use for jiggin because it can heave heavy weights. Other than that the 1209's are so stiff you can't work a pencil, the 1089 says it will handle heavy weights and only flexes in the top 2 ft where the fast taper brings the tip to nearly nothing and feels like it's going to snap. I have found that that rod rated 1-5 oz works best while throwing a 1 oz deadly #^&#^&#^&#^& for albies with a 965 and light mono. I can't cast a plug with it far enough to use in the ditch but do use it for a little lighter jigging around slack. I don't know, they just seem poorly made to me, I guess you get what you pay for though. I just got a All Star 120-8 for eeling. I cut off the top 4" becuase it tapers way fast. Now that seems like it's a nice stick! Nice and light, good taper, nice even flexing solid blank. Back to Lami glass blanks for plugging for me. WHat do you use your Sabres for? Maybe we just have different needs?

East Tide

He has some variations on the pencil poppers, Dave. He's working on a bigger one along the lines of the old Gibbs 5-1/4 oz. He also has something called the Stone Kold, which is a thinner profile pencil, sort of a cross between a pencil and a needlefish, and a smaller flat bottom special he calls the Whining Bill. Occasionally, he'll make some needlefish, which he makes along the lines of the Gibbs Stubby, but longer (thin neck and thicker, round body). Sometimes, he also has some metal-lips made by Plugmakers' Supply to sell. They're made from hardwood and have the groove behind the head to attache an eel skin. He's fooled around with some of his own swimmers, but it's too labor intensive to make it worthwhile. Cutting the head on a Gibbs swimmer is tough and takes a long time to get right. He also doesn't have a duplicator, and with swimmers, you have to get better uniformity in the body than you can achieve by eyeballing it on a lathe, to get it to swim right.

What really works for the Canal, better than anything, is a graphite or composite rod that bends slowly thru the midsection---like my Fisher. Thanks again, JeffH :-) Once something huge gets downcurrent and turns sideways in a rip, fast rods load all the way and lock on you. Guys who are used to glass rods tend to "high-stick" it, because the slower bend keeps the power section of the blank in play. With a fast graphite, when you high-stick it, you're fighting the fish all with the top 2 feet of the tip. But sometimes, you have to lift that sucker off the bottom and that requires high sticking it. Also, the 126 1MH Arra has more of a progressive bend than the 11' one, more of a uniform blank thickness thru the entire rod. I'm not a big fan of the 10' Sabres, either. The 3M S-glass is one of the best fish-fighting tools I've ever wielded, but at full length, it's hard to use in some tight spots, and puts a lot of stress on these 47 year old joints :-( I wish they still made the 2F blank in S-glass. You can cut it a lot of different ways and still not wind up with a total pool cue.

Mike, you definately said it better than I did on the Sabres. That "progressive bend" is what I'm looking for in a graphite stick, but my 24 year old body can handle the glass so I'll stick with that :) The All Star seems pretty smooth. I can't say I have ever even touched a JK Fisher.

I bet that Stone Cold is killer. I need to do some Sagamore shopping soon, price is right too. Thanks for the info as usual, back to my shop to work on that All-Star :)

Dave

I used my Sabre 1089 for jigging the canal and for livelining herring off the RI bridges. It was excellent for casting jigs to 4 OZ. Good fish fighter too. Lots of guys also use the Sabre 1088's. Haven't heard any complaints.
I thought the Sabre 1209 was too stiff. I never liked that particulr blank. I have another sabre 1089 to be built. looking forward to using it again. I also liked the warrantee on the Sabres. You break one , even if its your own fault , you got a new one.

Personally , I go for the fast action graphite for jigging. Maybe its because I simultaniously switched to braids but I like the sensitivity and control I get with the fast action blanks like the Sabre 1089 and the Loomis 108-30 I currently use.

If I were going for a 10 foot canal rod (I use 9 footers) I would get the Allstar 1208 or 1209.

The other thing is you have to match the rod to the application. I remember Dave complaining that the 1209 wouldn't throw small plugs. Well its not suppose to. Its heaviest and stiffest of all the Sabres. You can't expect a rod that is excellent for throwing 4 OZ jigs to be very good throwing a Tobimaru. Just not in the cards for any blank I know of.

Mike,
Did you ever see the swimmers that Floyd Roman used to sell. They did not have a complex nose like the Gibbs Casting swimmer but just an angled cut. They swim/swam very well. Maybe I should drop over to Brad's with a couple of the old ones I have ... if I can find them. They don't look like they would be much more difficult than a PP and definately easier than a Polaris type to make. They cast very well ... like the Gibbs CS 3.

Saltheart, I don't own any small plugs :) Just kidding, but I would never even attempt to use a 1209 (especially the 1209 that I cut 6" off the tip) to throw anything under 2 oz. The 1089 is an ok stick to do that with, but still a little stiff.

The thing I like least about the Sabres is the tip flex and super fast taper to a tiny tip. Like I said, they are a good value and you get what you pay for. I like Lamis and think I like the All Star much better because they load from the mid section up, not in the top 1/4 of the blank.

East Tide

Hey, Mike, been awhile. Brad, I think, does have a Floyd Roman swimmer that either Don Willis or Bill Chapin gave him to play around with. He tried, but you really need better tools than he has at present to make swimmers consistent. The balance and cuts have to be right on the money. Poppers just have to cast and splash to catch fish---swimmers have to actually swim.

Anything showing yet up your way? Figure you're still a couple of weeks away along the backside.

Mike T is looking for a 9" butt extension for the All Star 1208. He thinks if he could take 3" from the tip so a size 10 fits, and add a 9" extension, he'd be able to make a dynamite heavy plugging rod at 10-1/2'. I don't mind the rod as is for throwing plugs, but a lot of guys want the extra length. It fights a fish pretty well. I've bent one side-by-side with a 1208 Sabre that I was holding for a guy down here, after picking it up from Mike. As Dave mentioned, it bends deeper into the mid-section, and is stiffer in the tip than the Sabre. The All Star comes with a size 9 tip, the Sabre an 8 according to specs, but it actually is like a 'tweener between a 7 and an 8. The extra $30 or $40 for the All Star might be worth spending.

I was a little surprised that the 1266/2 All Star has a fairly fast taper. We're still putting it thru its paces, but so far, so good. The thing fires a small darter better than anything else I've tried.

Personally, if there's ever a time when 40s are busting on mackerel or whiting in the Ditch again, I'll be throwing at them with my old cut-down 2F S-glass. Mike F will probably dust off his Harnell, too ;-) Both illustrate that stiff rods don't necessarily have to be fast-taper in design.

Mike,
A few holdovers have become active with the suddenly warmer water. The herring have been running for about 2 weeks now ... so the bass are just about due. By this weekend things should start happening ... I hope!

Roman had a couple of different styles. If I get a chance I'll give them to Brad. Maybe he can come up with something from one or the other.

Many 'new' rods do specific things better than the old ones. Its just that for everything they do better, there are a couple of things they don't do as well. Progress!