What will you use this year in place of herring ?

[striprman]

Rubber shads, your custom herring lures, cripple herring, bucktail jigs... all of the aformentioned ?

[goosefish]

a pearl bomber

[Rockfish9]

Live Mackerel and my custom plugs... herring scale patern of coarse...

[PaulS]

pencil poppers and herring colored dannies

[spinncognito]

I have several dozen 6-inch "spike" mackerel in the freezer that are gonna catch me large when I fish them with a "twitch".

I am still gonna have plenty of herring to fish with as well. Relax, it is ocean herring and with an endless supply being loaded off the boats at the end of my street, I should be good unless they change the regs for mid-water trawlers.

[Clammer]

HERRING

[Flaptail]

Haven't used herring in years anyway so plugs will be it. Herring made it too easy to catch fish. Noticed last year all the herring heroes were remarkably absent from ther canal in spring. To tough for them to try and catch them using a plug.

I t was kind of nice seeing the canal banks clean and free of debris and litter from that crowd.

[basswipe]

Plenty of good plugs out there.Anything olive over white will do but Salty's 1.25oz poppers are the cat's ass.The Fatheads should be the balls then!

[Canalman]

Originally Posted by Flaptail

I t was kind of nice seeing the canal banks clean and free of debris and litter from that crowd.

Amen to that!

I'll stick to Danny's at first and last light and our creation the Hammerhead when the sun sets. Herring suck I'll also be tossing the BigFish pencil I hope to ho at the MSBA show

[Nebe]

I'll be using this- The latest member of the surfhog family..... I just finished up the molds... 5" paddle tail.


not in these colors though (recycled rubbah)

[thefishingfreak]

something else ALIVE..

[bassmaster]

[Pete_G]

9" Tsunami Swim Shads, my weapon of choice in May since the very first year they hit the market. At least as deadly as live lining in upper Narragansett Bay in the spring. I don't think I've ever noticed liveliners catching when I'm not and there's plenty of times I catch when they don't; I don't think it's related to anything other then the fact I'm working deep when they're working shallow. I pick a lot of fish out of the 20 to 70 foot range in May.

It's odd though, on many days I've had trouble getting the bass to eat most plugs. I sometimes think the bass have a LOT of options to eat at this point in the season and get real picky. I don't know if this effect holds true every where though. Only on certain days can I get them to touch a Danny. Swim it over breaking 20 pounders and it gets denied. Spooks will have their days, but that swim shad is just magic. Maybe it's as simple as the fact that it works the bottom and not the top...

[bassmaster]

Pete i can tell U , cause i have done this.
toss a herring im on bring in the bass and his buds are along for the ride. toss plugs till im blue in the face topwater dannys pikes. nothing. toss a herring and im on.
put plug back on nothing
put live on ,, fish
we both know I can plug
I find that on sunny bright days the bass will hit lures in may more often than cloudy.
most peps dont relise that putting a herring on the end of your line does not guarantee fish You need to wrk the fish. You need to hook it if you want it down or on top. so many angles to this

[NIB]

Originally Posted by bassmaster

Pete i can tell U , cause i have done this.
toss a herring im on bring in the bass and his buds are along for the ride. toss plugs till im blue in the face topwater dannys pikes. nothing. toss a herring and im on.
put plug back on nothing
put live on ,, fish
we both know I can plug
I find that on sunny bright days the bass will hit lures in may more often than cloudy.
most peps dont relise that putting a herring on the end of your line does not guarantee fish You need to wrk the fish. You need to hook it if you want it down or on top. so many angles to this

What he said, there is no substitute for the live bait..
Here in NJ i will use herring.not cause they catch better but because they are fun..First light fish are automatic after that u have to work for em an u burn baits, it can drive ya mad but it's still fun.nothing like watching the little bucky swim when u see a flash an a puff of scales..

[Pete_G]

Originally Posted by bassmaster

Pete i can tell U , cause i have done this.
toss a herring im on bring in the bass and his buds are along for the ride. toss plugs till im blue in the face topwater dannys pikes. nothing. toss a herring and im on.
put plug back on nothing
put live on ,, fish
we both know I can plug
I find that on sunny bright days the bass will hit lures in may more often than cloudy.
most peps dont relise that putting a herring on the end of your line does not guarantee fish You need to wrk the fish. You need to hook it if you want it down or on top. so many angles to this

I definitely agree about the sunny day thing now that you mention it.

[Back Beach]

Originally Posted by Pete_G

9" Tsunami Swim Shads, my weapon of choice in May since the very first year they hit the market. At least as deadly as live lining in upper Narragansett Bay in the spring.

Couldn't be a more accurate statement. I actually wish the moratorium went into effect five years ago. I would have picked up on the rubber a lot sooner than I did. The best thing with the rubber is that you can somewhat cull out the small fish. If the herring make a comeback, I will be all to happy to use them again, but my results with artificials last year were much better on larger fish than I ever did on live bait. Also, I attended the Tony O school of bass.

Here's the stomach contents(sea robin) of a fat fish that was caught during "herring" season.

[bassmaster]

pikes shine well when herring are around. I like to stop the pikes and movem slow at times just like a herring on top dropping dead

[Nebe]

scented... bunker...mmmmm///

[keeperreaper]

The same as last year.. Plugs, Storms, etc.

[Little Round]

Fresh Squid