Darter Talk

[DZ]

For your reading pleasure.

Classic Surf Plugs…That Have Made a Difference - Part 3

by Dennis Zambrotta

In the past two issues of Surfcasters Journal we have discussed the Cotton Cordell C10 Series Red Fin in solid black and the 1 ¾ ounce Gibbs Needlefish in Block Island Green. In this issue we look at the next plug that can make or break a casting session. That is if you didn’t have one… you didn’t catch. Unlike the Red Fin and Gibbs Needle this plugs historic reputation was validated all over the Northeast surf. Meet the yellow back/white belly darter.

Plug #3. Gibbs Darter & Super Strike Zig Zag

During my early years of surfcasting for striped bass during the late 1970s I was exposed to the use of bucktail jigs, popping plugs, and then minnow swimmers such as Rebels, Rapala’s and Redfins. As I read more and more about plugging for striped bass I discovered the Atom Junior Metal Lip and then the Gibbs Darter. During that time period many of my local tackle shops didn’t carry a wide assortment of plugs so I would purchase hard to find plugs through mail order catalogs such as The Salt Water Tackle Box in Falmouth, Massachusetts, or Dwindling Acers in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
The very first darter that I started using was at the urging of my surfcasting partner, the late Ezidro “Zeke” Silva. It was the 2 ¼ ounce yellow back/white belly three hook Gibbs Darter.
It was during the beginning of our early summer bass run around Memorial Day that Zeke called me up and told me about the great bite he had the night before. He had caught so many bass on Newport’s Cliff Walk that he had to take two trips to lug all of them back to his truck. We were shipping (selling) bass at the time so everything we caught went to market. He then told me most of the bass came on a Gibbs Darter of which I didn’t own. Fortunately Zeke purchased plugs like candy and gave me a few to try the next night.
On my first casting session using the Gibbs darter I kept trying to impart an exaggerated darting action to the plug and was having no joy with the bass while Zeke was having no problem building on his next paycheck from the fish dealer. Zeke finally told me to slow down my retrieve by just giving the plug a short jerk after it hits the water so as to get it to “dig” then slowly retrieve it for ten turns of the handle, then repeat. I learned the effective action for a darter was not an exaggerated dart but more a slow glide from side to side. That was the ticket for retrieving the darter and once I learned it I also began to put some bass on the rocks. The Gibbs Darter was a very efficient plug during our squid runs in Newport as it seemed to imitate the squid much better than the normal plug we had used which was the old Rebel Windcheater Super Minnows. The Gibbs Darter came equipped with three 2/0 trebles and because of that when a bass would strike it we rarely missed the take. We did have a few problems with the Gibbs Darter, one was that when we hooked larger bass they were able to gain leverage on the three trebles and would often straighten them causing lost fish. We eventually smartened up and began removing the middle treble and fishing the plug with only two trebles. This improved our hookup to land ratio with larger bass. Another problem was the plug was constructed using screw-eyes which were not stainless so they would rust. The screw-eyes that the hooks attached to were adequately strong but the weak point was the smaller screw-eye on the Darter’s nose for attaching the plug to your line. It was a thinner wire and often pulled out as the plug got older. Zeke tried to thru-wire a few of the Gibbs Darters but it ended up more trouble than it was worth. The last problem was not with the plug but where we were fishing it. The coastline of Newport, Rhode Island is very rocky with lots of shelf rock ledges. The straight front edge on the face of the Gibbs Darter would often be gouged out when we had to retrieve it over the rocks. Eventually the front end of the plug would be so worn and damaged it wouldn’t dig in to the surf and glide effectively. Zeke developed a method of adding some sheet metal to the front face of the Gibbs Darter and also the Gibbs Casting Swimmers to extend their life but we still ended up with quite a few unfishable plugs after each season. Eventually we would just buy more darters when the plugs began to look tired.
Our initial success with the Gibbs Darter had us purchasing more in various color patterns such as mackerel, blue back, and all white. We had very limited success with anything but yellow/white which further added to our confidence in that color. (Authors note: After changing ownership a few times in the past 30 years the Gibbs Company has since changed their darter design to a two hook model. Although still productive at times the two hook model is not nearly as effective as the original three hook Gibbs Darter.)
With our success with the Gibbs we began looking for other darters. Our searching brought us to the famous tackle shop Murat’s in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It was there that we found the very unique Floyd Roman Dart N Dart plug. We picked up a half dozen of them but as good as they looked they never panned out for catching more than a very few striped bass for us.
We continued to fish the Gibbs Darter until the mid-1980s when we discovered the plastic constructed Super Strike Zig Zag advertised in The Surfcaster Catalog. We ordered a bunch and were blown away at our success with them. With the Super Strike we had a darter built from plastic that could withstand the abuse of our rocky coastline much better than the Gibbs, was equipped with only two trebles and had wire thru construction, cast much better than the Gibbs, and had action that was always consistent from plug to plug. It became the work horse darter for us and saved us lots of plug money by not having to keep purchasing new plugs each season. We tried all sorts of color patterns with the Zig Zag but the yellow/white continued to outperform all the others. We also learned that it wasn’t just a springtime plug and had success with it anytime we had larger baitfish, especially squid, in the wash. It was highly effective in Newport when we had good white water sweep from heavy surf. Newport doesn’t have much tidal current so moving water from sweep was important to its effectiveness.
Our Block Island crew began using the SS darter effectively in the Block Island surf which was considered primarily needlefish country at the time. On one particular pre-dawn morning I met two New York surfcasters at Dories Cove who were both casting Super Strike darters (Zig Zags) along with a Red Gill Rascal as a teaser. They were cleaning up on almost every cast as I went fishless using my assortment of needlefish and Cotton Cordell Redfins. During other nights my surfcasting partner “Darter” Al Rispoli would often school me using his assortment of darters at Block Island’s Graces Cove. On one particularly memorable occasion he must have taken over two hundred pounds of cow sized bass on his darters while I was casting from a rock mere feet away and could only go through the motions. This wasn’t surprising as Al grew up fishing in the land of the darter; the Montauk surf with its multitude of rip currents where yellow darters were THE PLUG for many years. Al had fished them all including the Danny Pichney darter, Jack “The Professor” Frech darters, and the Donny Musso slim and fat wooden darters. Al Rispoli knows better than most the idiosyncrasies and magic of the darter having had years of fishing experience with some of those famous names of the past. As with any plug oftentimes it’s only as effective as the person who is casting it. For those not familiar with fishing a darter my advice is to also seek other surfcasters opinions on how they fish the darter and what kind of conditions are optimal for their use. There are now multitudes of darters made of various materials to choose from in today’s market. But if someone were to ask me to recommend just one I’d have to go with the instant classic – the darter which has shown consistent quality and effectiveness and has withstood the test of time - the Super Strike Zig Zag with a yellow back and white belly. Still have doubts about the color? When I asked Steve Musso of Super Strike Lures which color Zig Zag has been historically the most popular in sales? Well the Super Strike company records for the past 12 years speak for themselves:
1. Yellow back/white belly
2. White
3. Yellow
4. Blurple
So there you have it. The top three plugs which have made a huge difference in much of the surfcasting community. The black Redfin, BI green Needlefish, and yellow/white Darter can make or break a tide and should be somewhere in your surfcasting tool bag.