Ebbing Wave Retrieve

[Flaptail]

This is a trick I learned many moons ago on the backside beaches ( Atlantic side ) of Monomoy when you could land a small boat anywhere on the island and fish. I found that with the large swell coming onshore this past weekend I pulled it out of the 'ol memory bank and lo and behold it still works! I was on a Provincelands beach and the swells were abnormaly high. A lot of the beach structure had been washed away leaving a long sloping expanse that the swells would ride way up on. This condition was very similar to the Monomoy surf. The P-Town surf never usually gets like this ( as a matter of fact, big surf is somewhat of a rarity up there as opposed to the more easterly facing beaches of say Truro south to Nauset.) Back then at Monomoy we learned to fish our plugs back very slowly and by trial and error, we knew when our plug was close to the shingle by the amount of drag on the plug and the increase in plug action. We found that by stopping the retrieve in that instance and walking backward ever so slowly the plug could be made to swim but stay stationary in the bulge of the wave which was just behind the breaking edge. The plug although technically still moving was staionary in the mass of water. This bulge is caused by the waves "fetching" up at the point where the slope of the beach meets that zone where there is a small ridge of usually one to two feet that marks the dividing line between bottom and beach slope. As the surge ( bulge) rides up and your bait is suspended in in it, any bass in the area using that dividing edge has a perfect view of the plug and is in the perfect position for an ambush attack. Also, as the the bulge recedes back into the next oncoming wave you, still not reeling, reverse your direction and walk slowly back towards the water all the while keeping tension on the plug in a delicate balance of your motion back into the surf but just slightly slower than the waves actual recession.

If you have a good amount of current up or down (parallel) and the swell is heavy but not breaking in tons of white water you can and we have been able to keep our plugs in the strike zone for hundreds of feet up or down a beach without moving the handle of the reel, all the while that plug, unless fouled by weeds, wiggles excitedly in that bulge of water. This is a rarity of course but it has happened when all the factors needed were in line.

99% of the bass I took Friday night were taken with this method. Try it. It takes a little mastering to get the feel down just right but once you have it nailed it can put a lot of fish on the beach. Good Luck, Flap.