[Saltheart]

Its very tricky business trying to save the small late run fish.

As I have written about before , I lived very close to the Atom lure factory and would regularly get seconds by the handsful. They had rules on numbers allowed but they knew me after a while and knew I was not selling them. It also helped to talk to Bob now and then about conservation and to but plenty of the Stripers unlimited tees and sweatshirts and hoodies , etc.

To the point. I would actually ask them to rig the seconds bodies custom for me. In the spring it was treble hooks with bucktail but towards the fall I would load up with 2 OZ atom poppers with the single long J hook on the back end.

Without a doubt the most fun way to catch fall rats is by surface popping in the daylight. It is a ball to see the action. Its also good trainingt for some people who just flip wheh they see a strike and pull the kure out of the strike zone because they are so excited they get spastic.

Now this run of small fish chasing innumerable peanuts up onto the beach in the late fall is posted as a great unuasual thing but in fact it happens every year. Not every morning or every night but it happens many times and sometyimes both morning and night and all day long eevery year.

So trying to save fish from dying I would go with the standard Atom popper single hook set up with everyone over 30 should know well and many younger should occasionally see on the new atom poppers someone else is molding now. After a while though I started going back to a single small treble and then back to a single J hook but with a very short shank.

the trouble is these are small fish. Thet 2 inch long single point hook hanging off the back of a long slender lure (which almost all striper lures are long and slender , not just atom popper) is that the fish gets about half the popper into its mouth and the whole hook. This puts the point of the hook way down into the fishes throat and very often the hook gets through tyhe gils and sticks in there.

Now barbles helps but one the point is in its gut or in its gills and you start pulling on it to bring the fish in you start tairing things up in vital areas of the fish. Add to that all the flopping and fighting the fish do and you are killing some fish on a hundred fish day (its no exageration that a good fisherman fishing morning and night can land 100 of these dinks in a day , day after day if they so choose.

So anyway , what I think is best is to use a short shank single hook with the barb files down. This really does reduce your cahnce for a hookup on any given strike but if you are good at working the plugs , especially not spazzing out on the first strike of a surface plug , you will catch plenty of fish and feel much better about not killing these small fish.

Now maybe people are noot looking or don't want to see but along the beach after a big session of 50 people shoulder to shoulder catching dinks , you will see several fish wash up dead. Sometimes you don't see them until the next morning or after the tied changes diractions but they will be there if you spend a few days on the sand and look.

Now thsi may not agree with what many say about saving these fish but I think sometimes a medium size treble at the front of the lure would be the best solution. These small fish seldom swallow the whole lure but do often swallow the bottom half. If the treble is at the front of the plug its very unlikely you will damage the guts or the gils. You may get some in the ye but IMO that doesn't kill them and happens sometimes anyway with every hook arrangement. This set up will probably greatly reduce your take but you will still catch plenty and have fun trying for the "fish in a barrel" ith a less deadly arrangement. Of course the last extension of the idea is the medium sixe single hook rigged on the front of the lure. Like the treble this will sometimes foul your line and be much harder to get hookups but would probably be the least damaging to the fish .

The last comment I have is on the line used. If you break off a lure thats in the fish its going to die. many people feel its more sporting to go to very light line for these fall rats but in fact that leads to a lot of breakoffs. I think you want to stay with the 16 tp 20 lb test line and of course a thin very high stergth braid would reduce the chance of breakoffs even more.

So anyway , thats my preching for today about how to mionimize the chances of killing these small fish. I originally posted this as a post in the other thread where someone reported a big run of fish but decided its pretty important and deserved its own therad and discusiion.

I'm interested in what other long time fisherman do to reduce mortality when rat fishing these million fish late fall runs.

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Saltheart