"Peelurs is gud bait!"

 July 10, 2000:

        First, one more time for those of you that haven't seen all the new pretty pictures we've been working diligently on. And I'm working on an Odds-n-Ends page right this moment, there's only 2 of the potentially dozens of things on it now, but it's still worth a peek! There's now photo's of the nearly 3oz SOLaris Popper! All the Dani II pictures are finally up. New ones for the Stumpy Needlefish. Pretty much, the only one left to do is the one for the Pencil Poppers! Check 'em out. So far, the new ones are up in Suspending Crystal Minnow, Crystal Minnow, Emperor Minnow, Tobimaru, Lex II, Lex I, Dani I, Dani III, FatBoy I, FatBoy II, and Super Shad Rap pages...whew! Also, we're going to run our very first special, by any 5 Lex Lures and get any 1 ounce Lex for free! Just order 6 total and one 1 oz Lex will be removed from the total! 

   Now, the quote at the top of the page is one that Charlie and I repeated many times over as we fished for a total of 20 minutes the other night, just prior to dusk, and had 5 good hits in 5 casts...we landed 3 fish of the 5 hits...and then we headed home for some grub and to clean up this place as Carole was due home from her family trip. Yes, we got the house cleaned up in time...she'll never know just how bad the place can get when left without a woman around to keep us all on our best behavior...and you need to go through 10 days without your wife once in a while, just so can appreciate all the "little things" they miraculously manage to do to make our lives easier! Back to the fishing. Yup, we raked shedder crabs for about 1 1/2 hours and after we could barely move, we decided to take a few cast before heading home....and it was a pleasure to get so much action in so short a time. This was after our previous all-nighter, we did 5 jetties with rigged eels, one hit was all we managed striper wise...sure, I had a decent weakfish, a big shad when I took a cast with a plug-n-teaser, a fluke that ate a bomber...and I had two more small stripers hit my teaser, I saw them both, as the sun started to light up the horizon. Not spectacular fishing...not even tolerable, we took a lot of casts! So, our brief encounter with the "peelurs" as Plug teasingly calls them, was quite welcomed. We are now fully operational as far as shedding our own calicos goes...watch out bass, we gotta new trick or two for you, that lockjaw crap just won't cut it anymore! ;^) Lots of thanks to Paul Naj and Steve S who have been ever so patient with Charlie and myself getting all the mental and physical kinks worked out. Well, there's still that serious kink in my back, but now that Carole's home, she can help me unravel that kink.....and if that fails, I know an excellent chiropractor who will do it. 

  I finally got around to getting (mostly) caught up with the Photo Pages! Yessir, it was a lot of work and I've been putting it off for quite a while, letting other areas of the site take priority over the photo pages...shame on me! So, who's new to the photos you're asking? Lets see...JohnD, Cowhunter, ChrisG, DaveS, and I added another one to Todd's page. So, stop by, check out this fine lookin' fishes and their captors...and then, send me a pile of your favorite pictures! Don't worry how big the fishes are...or even if there are any fishes at all, just send me the pictures that portray memories that you'd like to share with all the others folks here at StripersOnline! Oh yea, I know I forgot to either create or update somebody's page...I will apologize in advance, beg for forgiveness, and promise to do your page the very moment that you email me one more time to remind me! Sorry <hanging my head in shame> ;^)

   It's 3:30am...and you'll have to excuse me, I have some peelurs that are just dying to go fishin' and who am I to tell them no? 

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent

Beautiful waters

July 11, 2000:

   UPDATE:  Ok, now we're gettin' somewhere! The newest additions to the Photo Pages are up, they include Jesse, IsmailG, Rhodyred, and all the persons listed at the bottom of this page! Whew....am I finally caught up? ;^) Kidding, as far as I'm concerned, you just can't have too many fishin' pictures!

     Well, as I said at the end of yesterday's page, I was headed out to reacquaint some "peelurs" with the ocean. I was fishing by 5am, done by 6:30am. It was nice, the wind was SW about 15-20kts, a little drizzle started and turned to a light rain. Even though I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, this didn't bother me...even when I wear a rain coat in a deluge while fishing, you will very rarely see me put the hood up, I like the rain. In my 1 1/2 hours, I had 5 bass hits, 4 of them I landed, one missed. I caught two fish and missed one hit all on the same crab....just to put on a fresh one and have a sea robin grind it to pieces! The fish weren't big, just shy of legal for the most part...old legal, not "baby" legal or "slot" as it's falsely being called these days. I swear, if you told folks they could take home a 4" striper, many would...just cause they could. Oops...now that's not what I was talking about! ;^) So, this crab thing is becoming quite interesting the Charlie and I...I know, people have been doing this for a long, long time....but it's new to us and there just ain't to many ways to catch stripers that we haven't tried. It's pretty unique when you think about it, you must go and catch your own bait, period. The thing is, when you catch the bait, it's not really bait yet...it needs to now be taken care of until it sheds it's shell and then becomes bait. It'll do this with no help from you other than clean, oxygenated water. Once they shed, you need to put them in the fridge to keep their shells from hardening. Now the timer is set, you must then fish these fellas before they go bad....they work best fresh...they don't work at all once the "turn", just toss 'em. So, here's a bait you gotta catch but can't use for some days afterwards....and then you only have a few days to use it once you can use it....and then you gotta go catch more and start over. I love it! It seems not too many folks are willing to do anything more than stop by the local bait and tackle and grab a bag of clams or bunker, which will certainly work on occasion...but these tasty little morsels rarely sit on the bottom very long. There's much for me to learn about this crab thing, but I will learn it...and it's not the fishing of the crabs that requires all that much thought, it's all the thing surrounding the baits themselves!

    Charlie and I went to rake yesterday afternoon...and stumbled upon Paul Naj and his lil girl Julie, she certainly must get her look from her mother, brains too! ;^) Hey, I can get away with that, Julie and Paul landed 3 fish while Charlie and I were fishing 50 feet away not getting bit. The beach was tight, the surfers had us pinned from the south, Paul and Julie had us from the south...and where my crab was landing, I was rewarded with mussels on the line, every cast from the first to the last. No big deal, I had my critters that morning. It was a blast watching Julie help Paul, er, Paul help Julie reel in a couple stripers...and this attracted an fairly attractive surfer-chick who walked down the beach to watch Julie fight the fish....and this attracted Charlie's attention...I guess the whole thing is kinda like the food chain? ;^) So, Julie and Paul land the fish, let it go, the surf chick says good bye, and I release another pile of mussels.  All told, Julie helped Paul catch 4 or 5 fish, Charlie stuck and lost a good one, and I had landed about 4 tons of mussels....and the water was still beautiful.......

  I finally got around to getting (mostly) caught up with the Photo Pages! Yessir, it was a lot of work and I've been putting it off for quite a while, letting other areas of the site take priority over the photo pages...shame on me! So, who's new to the photos you're asking? Lets see...JohnD, Cowhunter, ChrisG, DaveS, and I added another one to Todd's page. So, stop by, check out this fine lookin' fishes and their captors...and then, send me a pile of your favorite pictures! Don't worry how big the fishes are...or even if there are any fishes at all, just send me the pictures that portray memories that you'd like to share with all the others folks here at StripersOnline! OK, I found the person who's page I had over looked, StriperIG...and I'm workin' on it as we speak! Is there anyone else? I got lots of pictures...tons even, I'm hoping someone else's didn't escape me! I'm also working on some Jesse sent yesterday, and some from the fellas down Hatteras, you know, with all them catfish and carp looking things that JohnM goes down there to help them wrestle? Anyway, I have a couple pictures from those guys, but I'm looking for some more!

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent

Summertime Fishing

July 13, 2000:

 Yessir, we are in the midst of summertime fishing, as we speak it's getting more....well, mellow. This is the time of year that many fish are becoming predictable and reliable...just when the striped bass are becoming more elusive. It's also the one time of year when many die hard striper guys will turn to other species to fill the void...or the freezer, depending on which striper guy we're talkin' about! In years past, I would generally still chase and hunt down the stripers that we all know are still around...and I'd do it with rigged eels and fly rods....yes, we got our butts kicked more than a few times along the way. But we've also had some very memorable trips during this time of year...for stripers that is. I'm expecting there to be a most excellent showing of LARGE weakfish this summer, as July starts to wind down, they'll likely be on every jetty in NJ, every inlet...matter of fact, they'll likely be anywhere the feeding is easy. The stripers? Sure, they're around...they always are. Will they be easy to catch? Yes...sometimes. The absolute best summertime striper fishing trips I can remember all involved a few of the same details....a strong SE wind for the better part of the afternoon dropping out a bit after dark, a good rain or lightning storm followed by heavy, wet clouds, or a regular but moderate nor'easter. I prefer the first one, a heavy SE wind when the waters in the mid 70's is a real trigger...I can barely concentrate all day (like that's anything new ;^) just thinking about the opportunities that will be available that evening...I'll check my rigged eels, put together a half dozen fresh ones if I need to and then wait for it to be dark....not dusk, but 10pm dark. I'll also hope there's a high outgoing tide coinciding with dark. A good SE wind will usually drop the water temp 5 or 6 degrees in just an afternoon....and that gets the bass going! Hmmm...I wasn't going to talk about summertime stripers, I was planning on going over the "other" things that you can score on this time of year....but sometimes my mind, she wanders! ;)

    OK, so let's pretend that we're not really interested in catching stripers in the summertime...I know, I know....we're going to pretend only! About the surest thing this time of year to bend the rod are fluke. They can and will be found in all waters over 2 feet deep in the ocean, we've caught 50-75 of them on one jetty in a couple hours with the fly rods in the past...and some very impressive ones at that. Charlie and I would start at the surf line and work our way out the jetty...often the bulk of the fish would be on the inside, less than 1/4 the way out on the jetty. That's was fine with us, the majority of the fellas out there fishing for fluke were on the end casting east...way beyond most of the fluke. We'd just bang 'em, one after another...on red/white clousers, blue/white half and half's, marabou clousers.....you name it, if it was near the bottom and you were working it right, you got bit. We've even had the bait fluke fishermen invade our little party only to watch them get nothing while we continued to score heavy....sometimes covering the water with something small is much more productive than anchoring day old squid to the bottom...even live killies don't cover enough water, but they will draw the fluke from some distance with their struggling. Anyway, if you wanna catch 'em on a spinning rod, grab a real light rod, some extremely light jigs, like 1/4 to 1/2oz, plain ball jigs....add 4" Fin-S-Fish or small twister tails. Put some Smelly Jelly on it if you got some. Work the whole jetty...cast out...retrieve slowly and steady....and hop it once in a while. The MegaBait jigs in 1 1/2oz are also deadly on fluke, same MO, slow retrieve, hop occasionally. I prefer the fly rod for the fluke, it's just plain fun...and you never know when that striper's gonna whack the little flies...or when the weakfish will show up and start bending the rod...or a big star gazer will inhale it...or, worst of all, perish the thought, some nasty bluefish will move in and you'll start thinning out your fly collection! :( It's all good folks, the fishing is all good...get out there and do some of it!

     It's only a matter of time before the hard SE wind blows or the perfect showers and rain will accompany that NE wind and the bass will bite their heads off....but till then, I'll either be feeding the stripers peelurs or I'll be throwing the fly rod from the jetty during the daylight trying to find a 5# fluke from the rocks. Oh, and don't forget, it won't be all that long till the albacore and bonito show up!?!? Whooo son! Now them's good fighters on the fly rod! :-)

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent

July 14, 2000:

    The weather man has finally thrown down the gauntlet...if they are even half right, this could work out to be some weekend! The forecast is for 10-20kt SE winds, clouds, and rain...what could be more perfect for a full moon weekend. According to the moon-O-meter, Friday through Tuesday are "big fish" days. Couple that with the heavy clouds and rain....and then throw in a hard SE wind to get things moving and groovin'...this could easily be a killer weekend. It's already looking up, Charlie and I set out to rake crabs in the early am this morning....not only was the raking the best we've experienced (in our 5 trips so far), most crabs were so ready to burst, we didn't even need to snap part of the claws off to check them. And as if that weren't good enough, we probably raked about 2 dozen "baits"! A "bait" is a crab that is perfectly fishable in it's present condition, that is anything from fresh and soft to just starting to harden. All the ones that were poked with the rake were put aside and designated as bait for that trip. And believe it or not, that wasn't it...the ones that were ready to pop were about twice the size as they average crab! So, we're sittin' pretty when it comes to peelurs for a while...and we're gonna try to get out and rake this new spot again this afternoon...just to make sure we got plenty of peelurs in case the weatherman is lyin' again! So, bonanza raking....we could have raked longer, the higher tide wasn't bothering the crabs and we were soaked head to toe...but we scored enough crabs and the raking can get quite tiresome when the water's deep. What's left to do? Well somebody had to fish the baits that were speared by the rakes, might as well be us! 

    We both put a bait out, spiked the rods, and within 10 minutes had both landed stripers. A few more minutes and the dang beach cleaner with about 100,000,000 candlepower of lights on the front and back decides to start cleaning the beach right by us...in circles...which is nice because that way it looks a bit like a laser light show from both the head lights of this demon machine as well as the tail lights! Fairly certain that the strobe effect on the very waters that had blessed us with an abundance of crabs and then two stripers...Charlie's was around 10#'s, mine was a weenie boy. An executive decision was made and we moved north about a mile to get outta the way of the lights. Another hour or so of fishing and we beat feet for home, exhausted. But not before we landed 3 more stripers, all nice ones from 12#'s to nearly 20#'s...and missed some serious shots. Like we've recently learned, peelurs is gud bait! ;^) They are almost magic, they have a built in bass sensor...if there are no bass around, the crabs will clean your hook in about 2 minutes...you'll have nothing but salty thread left. If there are bass around but not hitting, your crab will come back unmolested. Most times, the bass just grab these "gummy bears" as we've begun calling the real soft ones...and you know they are around. I ended up with two keepers and a short, the biggest keeper was very upper teens...the smaller keeper was still 12-13#'s....and Charlie had a pair over 10#'s. 

   BrettB came over last night to watch Charlie rig a couple eels...and after I was done putting away a couple orders, I rigged a few eels myself, just  in case the weatherman is actually on target for this weekend...much fun as these peelurs are, I still long to really knock the snot outta the fish with the rigged eels! This could be the weekend, come on weatherman, let's see you pull one outta yer hat! It was nice meeting you Brett, take good care of that eel you rigged, and try to keep it away from the rat bastage oily, stinky bluefish, they'll make short work of that eel! 

    I hope everyone has a great weekend, try to get out there and enjoy the rain and wind....that is, if the weatherman's finally right for once! Also, I'm hoping that this will be the weekend for the return of Rockfish...but that's outta my hands, our resident funny man has been very busy as of late but did promise that the Rockfish would return soon...he didn' say when, so each Saturday morning I check my email with bated breath, hoping there's that family DP email waiting for me to publish a Rockfish! 

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent