An old article I wrote - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Nebe · 11-15-2023, 12:35 PM

Since Piemma has been sharing his, here’s one of mine.

Jigging hard inlet currents is a prime high-summer method

My pet spot—my bail-out spot in fact--seems devoid of life. When the A plan falls through, there's always plan B to save you from the skunk, right? It's a deep inlet that always seems to hold at least one decent fish, sometimes quite a few. I could fish this place all the time if I wanted, but I prefer the thrills of the surf, so I save it for the slow times, the desperation outings. Like this one.

I pull into the parking lot to find a fisherman throwing plugs into the dumping tide. The conversation is quick and goes something like this:

"How's the bite?"

"Terrible."

"You want some jigs?"

"Nope, I'm outta here--had a decent fish earlier, but they left with the tide."

Why is it that he caught fish on the plug an hour ago, and now he's coming up empty? Simple: The fish didn't leave with the tide, they just changed feeding stations. In fact, he's probably been casting right over them for the last hour. This scenario has happened to me countless times, me coming up short as the tide really got going, the stripers turning off like someone hit a switch.

In fast moving water, many fish--not just stripers—head for bottom to stage behind any structure that they can use to their advantage. Around the slack tides, stripers tend to be more active near the surface, but when the tide starts to rip, the fish sound. The common theory is that they expend less energy this way, snatching baitfish, crabs and lobsters as they tumble by in the tide. All the fish needs to do is shoot up a foot or two and grab its dinner off of a liquid conveyor belt. Even if the fish could see the fisherman's plug sweeping above him on the surface, why should it expend energy to swim all the way up to the surface to inhale it?

Reading the water

Pilings and bridge abutments are the most obvious examples of current blockers because they are exposed, but other, less obvious objects can play a strong role in determining striper staging areas. For example, a large boulder, a slight depression in the channel or even abnormal man-made debris like an old shopping cart lying on the bottom will force fast-moving water up and over, creating a pocket out of the immediate flow.

Finding these pinpoint "spots within the spot" areas can be tricky, but if you study the patterns in the currents, you can get a pretty good idea of where the fish are holding. This is a skill that takes time to learn, but the basics are that if you see a strong swirling eddy—a boil--that stands out from the rest the rest of the swirling currents, or a stationary wave on the surface, some sort of structure is responsible. Judging the distance of the object up-tide of the eddies is proportional to the depth of the water and the speed of the flowing water. If it's shallow, the structure could be just beneath the swirls and if it's deep, the structure may be 15 or even 20 feet up tide.

FAST WATER BASICS

I try to carry bullet- or ball-headed jigs from 1 ½ ounces up to 3 for fishing strong inlet currents. I also lug an assortment of curly tail grubs in 4 to 8 inch lengths and I also bring a handful of 10- and 14-inch soft plastic jerk baits. I favor the longer 14-inch baits because they allow the jig to track through the water smoothly like an eel, as opposed to a jig with a pork trailer, which in my opinion tumbles too freely. Pork also has a tendency to hang up on the tip of the hook, making a good hook-set close to impossible.

In a recent article on bucktailing the open beach, I explained the technique I use to find the right weight when fishing calm water, and it's very much the same in moving water. Start off with a lighter jig, say 1 ½ ounces, and take note of the direction of the moving water. Cast up tide. Facing the water, the best placement is 45 degrees up-tide. When you see the jig hit the surface, keep enough tension on your line so you can feel the jig contact bottom. If you have the right weight, your jig should have hit bottom right in front of you or just slightly up-tide. If you never felt it hit bottom then, the jig was too light. When this happens, switch up to a larger jig and consider switching the rubber curly tail to a slender soft plastic stick bait which will create less resistance as the offer swings down-current. When you have the right jig and trailer combo for the speed of current, all that is left to do hunt for fish.

One of my favorite methods is what I call "farming the bottom." Besides focusing my casts on areas with good structure, I use this "farming" technique to thoroughly cover ground. I start out with long casts, and with each cast, land the jig 5 to 10 feet closer to me. This assures that my jig has covered as broad an area as possible. After I have farmed one area, I will move to the next "field" and begin farming again. If the bite is hot, pay attention to where you are hooking into the fish, because if you have a few repeat performances in the same spot, you can assume there is some sort of compelling current-break holding stripers there.

KNOW YOUR FLOW

When you become savvy at jigging with soft plastic trailers, you'll find that in the course of a tide, you'll have to tweak your weight-to-plastic ratios to keep the retrieve speeds and fall rates even as the tidal flow increases and decreases. As the tide starts moving faster, I tend to move up to a heavier jig with a narrower trailer. Then, as the tide slows and eventually slacks, I return to lighter jigs with a wider-profile trailers. This sounds confusing, but to keep things simple I just carry a lot of jigs that I have pre-rigged with Zap-a-Gap glue. Pre-rigging jigs will get you more mileage out of your plastics because the glue will hold everything together. If you use a Sampo snap swivel or, better yet, a Breakaway Fast Link clip, switching jigs is a breeze.

GEARING UP

Jigging fast water, I prefer a 9-foot graphite blank rated for casting loads up to 4 ounces. I look for a blank that has a nice, parabolic, medium-fast action and avoid rods that are stiff with delicate, fast tips. My theory on this is that you need as much power as you can get out of a rod blank when fighting fish in quick water. If you're catching lots of fish, remember that stiffer rods tire fishermen and slower-action rods tire fish.

I highly recommend a conventional reel for fast water jigging. Casting anything over 3 ounces with braided line can be quite painful on your index finger. Look for a reel with adjustable shaft brakes on the spool and a level wind such as an Abu Garcia 7000 Big Game or an Abu Garcia 6500 CS Rocket. The adjustable shaft breaks will enable you to slow the spool down to avoid backlashes.

For line, I stick to 65-pound braid and a long 40- or even 60-pound flourocarbon leader. The reason for this heavy tackle is that jigging along rocky bottoms is not like drifting sand eels or clam worms out of a sandy estuary mouth. Aside from the obvious sharp rocky hang-ups that will try to steal your lead, your leader might get a few nicks from the constant bouncing along the bottom. When you hook into a large bass, and if there are a few nicks in that leader, the extra thickness will give you a little extra comfort. One last thing: a 20-pound striped bass in 3 knots of current feels like a 40-pounder in the surf, so be prepared for epic battles!