What happened to the fish?

June 19, 2000:

      What a weird fishing weekend indeed! From all the reports that I was privy to, it seems that the fish just disappeared this weekend. Yes, there were some caught on bait, there were some caught from boats, but when it came to the artificials crowd, the fish were just not there. The results of this past tournament were dismal, I believe the first place team had just over 90 points! Our club had only 11 or 12 points! :( Sad, sad fishing for mid June. Charlie and I fished for a whopping 7 or 8 hours all told this weekend, I missed two real good shots on Friday night on a big bucktail and pork rind....missed one good shot Saturday night on a rigged eel...the fish crushed my rigged eel, but never got stuck! The weekend culminated with a rat blue fish amputating the tail of a fresh rigged real eel...that was about all I could stand. The fishing was miserable! Clamming was tough, some fish were caught on shedders, and it appears that plugging was nothing more than casting practice. Oh well, you gotta take the good with the bad. The good thing was that of the few fish that I heard were taken, many appeared to be good sized fish, the biggest was 34#, I weighed a 30# 9oz fish for a fella Charlie and I ran into. The fish ate a bucktail right where we were gonna throw bucktails...and right where I was to later miss a real good hit. Not a short in places that are usually chock full of them this time of year. I guess the bright moon had the last laugh, the fishing was way off what it shoulda been. I'm sure half our failure was our own fault, we completely missed any tide on Saturday night, not getting out until the full moon had all but completely drained the local beaches. There were a dozen tricks up our sleeves for Saturday night, but they all involved casting into more than 2 feet of water choked with sea weed! I will hazard to guess that the folks that got out around the high tide on Saturday night may have scored, it sounds like the bigger fish made brief appearances....just not for us! We'll get 'em next time. There's but one more tournament this half of the year, next weekend's hosted by Team Mullet....32" minimum, all open waters. After that, we're clear till October! If all goes well, Charlie and I just might be back at the Cape on this upcoming weekend, but that will remain to be seen as things unfold throughout the week. Good friend Ditch Jigger is up there right now, I would have liked to made the journey with him, but it wasn't in the cards and he's hanging with the locals instead. Get 'em Ditch, there's rumored to be some real beast up there right now, just remember, your fresh outta the hospital! Catch a bunch, but don't bust up your insides doing it!

   I was recently contacted by the Montauk Surfcaster's Association (I liked them just from hearing their name!) They are the proud owners of new website for their non-profit organization. A few of our regulars are members of this group, they suggested and we agreed to welcome their crew to through a link on their site. In other words, their site will be utilizing our message board as their own! There was mention to the fact that there are so many good guy sharing so much there that they thought a new message board wasn't necessary...I'm blushing. So, as they get their sites name out there with their members, we'll be starting to find more and more Montauk folks online with us at ....which is most excellent, Montauk is on my list of places to hit this year and I'm guessing some of these guys will know more than a little about the place! That's not an insult to the many regulars already here with most detailed Montauk mental notes, it's just an excitement to hear from some others with their take on the place! You can visit the Montauk Surfcaster's Association at their site or through the link on the ever expanding    page!

   Plug just sent me an "Urgent" email. It seems that in light of the recent drowning at Indian River Inlet, there is now talk of possibly closing the place to all fishing! Imagine that, government regulation to again protect ourselves from ourselves! Enough, we can fend for ourselves, if you don't take precautions while doing something obviously dangerous, bad things will happen to you. Closing the jetty would just make these careless folks fish somewhere else...and they'll likely get hurt there as well. Sad as the drowning was, it turns out this young man was fishing one of the most dangerous jetties on the coast and didn't know how to swim at all. That's bad planning. Here's a link to the article concerning this possible tragic closure...and it's on this page that you can be heard in the fight against this closure.

SurfTalk and the Ditch saga

June 20, 2000:

      Greeting fellow striper hunters, summer is officially upon us tomorrow. I'm not usually a big fan of summer, I don't like the excessive heat and I'm not a big fan of having to factor in additional hours any time I want to travel a little...but those hot summer nights can be spectacular in the right conditions. Recently, I've been feeling a bit sad for the state of our local waters...it's really hitting home now, the destruction of all the jetties that I grew up fishing, those I've burned thousands of memories on are gone, destroyed, never to be the same. While mentally preparing for a rigged eel trip, my mind naturally wandered to plans of the past...and without exaggeration, I'd say my first 10 choices for high outgoing water w/ 2-3ft waves no longer existed. Those that do still exist are either unreachable from shore due to the cutting of the jetties or the water is so disgustingly shallow that they are basically not worth bothering anyway. This summer will be the first for me to lament the loss of Avon through Bradley Beach jetties, some of the finest in the area. Bradley Beach was home to a current world record striper at one point, a 66lb, 12oz monster taken on November 1, 1979 by Steven Thomas on 12# test. Believe it or not, it's the oldest currently held world record for Striped Bass according to the IGFA by a male. Another oddity, New Jersey currently holds 3 of the 10 world line class striper records, NY holds 3, Mass holds 2, CT and CA each hold one. Back to the point, Bradley Beach, along with Manasquan, Sea Girt, Spring Lake, Avon, Ocean Grove, and Asbury Park, all classic big fish holding waters, are all destroyed. The jetties are buried and/or cut, the water around them is extremely shallow. For what? So that there can be more sand under that water. There's not one beach that's benefited with bigger above water beach, but all have filled in for the length of the jetties. What a sad waste, I will mourn the loss of these jetties for many, many years, the fishing will never be the same and there's nothing we can do about it.

   Back to the CC Canal saga. We last left off with Charlie and I suffering a bright red sun burn from fishing but one mid day trip...we scored well that day on the MegaBait jigs, but we were now to pay for it, even now, my arms are still peeling! Under the cover of darkness, we hit the aquarium at 1am. The wind was screaming SW again, a plague we had to deal with much of the time up there this trip. Once again, Charlie started plucking fish right out from under my nose on the MegaBait jigs, in the dark, on the bottom in 40 feet of water...I was surprised I couldn't get a sniff on the standard 2 1/2oz Smilin' Bill and pork, but after a few fish landed by Charlie, I decided to not fight it and put one on myself. This was quite odd to me, I was always of the mind that metal jigs such as these were for daytime work, but here I was "learning" something new. It only took a couple casts to stick my first one, around 26". After whiffing on a few, I landed it's twin. Charlie was up to 4 or 5 fish, up to 29". We missed more than we landed, a problem often associated with the screaming wind, long casts, and deep water...but we were at least landing a few! We decided to seek bigger fish, the tide should be turning west soon, we had yet to spend any time in the area of the Cribbin and wanted to visit it....making a note to avoid the 100 steps of death this time! I think we grabbed a coffee at the local gas station...we got to the Cribbin area at 4am. The tide was very nearly done headed east...but still had a little hope left in it. Once again, the entire walk, nearly 3/4 of a mile, the smaller fish were breaking right near shore....I reminded myself that these were not the fish we came here to catch! It was difficult to ignore them, far more difficult now after very few fish throwing bigger stuff, than it was when we were fresh and full of "big fish hope". Sure, the big fish hope was still there, but we were beginning to wonder if maybe a few smaller fish wouldn't help ease the pain between long casts w/ 3oz jigs. After hearing a few better fish blow up near shore, we decided to take just two casts each...that was it. I missed one on my first cast with a 4 1/2 MegaBait plug...and Charlie missed one his first cast. Charlie's second cast, he stuck one, but it came unglued on the way in....my second cast was met with a good thump and I soon had a 24" short flopping on the weeds at my feet. That was it, we moved on, just two casts each. If you wanted to catch tons and tons of fish, you could walk anywhere along these dark waters and throw small plugs and jigs and release huge numbers of small fish...but that gets real old for us, we drove the nearly 5 hours to find "Marge"...a nickname, as in LARGE Marge. We found the mussel bar we preferred to fish, and began firing. My first good drift was met by a thunderous thump, and I was momentarily into a pretty good fish...but as quickly as I was in, I was out :( Lamenting losing the only decent critter I stuck so far that night, I cast again....another good shot and a swing and a miss. Charlie just wrestled one on over the weeds, just over 28". Just as we were beginning to expect great things, the tide slowed by half and it was over! No matter, we had come there to fish the beginning of the west tide...now we waited. Just then, there was that most pleasantly familiar voice, Saltheart had sniffed us out and it was, as usual, a pleasure to see him...I've yet to bump into Saltheart when he didn't have a giant smile. We waited with him for the water to turn....and he reminded us how much this area wasn't among his favorites....he said he might as well just empty his jig bag into the water here and at least save himself some fluoro leader! Then he told us a really scary spider in the shower story...one I won't repeat here, but lemme tell ya, it was scary! Ask him next time you run into him ;^) The bugs were removing what skin Charlie had left on his hands and head....and the tide was still dying to the east...we decided to mourn the loss of darkness somewhere east of here and began the march back. Along the way, none other than the illustrious, and as usual, well dressed JPowers met us on his march west! Another Ditch regular for us, and with a smile as big as Saltheart's, always a pleasure to see JP, he's never without a good story or two...and after we shared his disdain for the never ending herring run this spring, we all began the march east. A stop for a few minutes near the herring run itself which yielded nothing more than additional bug bites, we headed east.....but that's tomorrows story!

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent

Lookin' for articles and headin' to the Ditch!

June 21, 2000:

     I've just come to the realization that this site is outgrowing the available hours in the day...actually, I've known this for a while, but I'm ready to face up to it now! One thing that this does is it keeps me from writing any articles that I'd like to...yes, there are some that I will get to writing! I've also noted in the past months that there is a lot of talent on this site, many folks here write at a much higher level than my ramblings. So, I thought I would make a public plea to the fine folks here to send some of your fine writing in so we can put it up in lights here! The daily readership here is outstanding and growing each and everyday, we'd like to be able to show them some of our resident "talent"! It doesn't matter what the topic, so long as it's somewhat fishing oriented, I'll personally peruse each one, edit where necessary, and submit the article back to you for your final approval before posting said article on the site, there won't be any surprises, you'll know first what's going to be made public. It can be funny, serious, full of facts, a story, or a blend of any combination of the above. I just thought I'd let ya know what I was thinking as I read through the thousands of posts on , I can't help but be proud of the group that we've gathered here in our community. I'd like to tap into some of that for a few articles, whadda ya say? You can send 'em to suggestions@stripersonline.com and I'll get immediately in touch with you. No money involved, but I do have lots of "stuff" here and will reward folks accordingly! ;^)

    After some on again, off again planning last night with Paul, we finally ended up going fishing after all. Unfortunately, just after the "off again" phone call, I completely disassembled my Penn Mag 525...a thorough "nuts and bolts" type disassembly for  a good cleaning/oiling. No sooner than I got it all apart, parts all soaking, the "on again" phone call comes! In my mad rush to put it back together again, I came to a "choice", a road block of sorts...and I hastily made a choice....and proceeded to finish putting it all back together. It appeared to be fine when completed. So, rigged eels in my pocket, jetty bag on my hip, I dragged my spinning rod along, just in case. Glad I did, I couldn't fire a cast more than 20 feet with the conventional! No big deal, I'll throw the spinning rod, made a mental note to disassemble the reel and have the diagrams handy when I put it back together this time...sometimes saving a couple minutes can cost you many minutes...make a note, always have the diagram handy when taking apart reels!  The fishing was just plain terrible. We met up with Jeepster and the three of us proceeded to fish three jetties without a hit, not a sniff, not a suspicious bump. Very sad. Yes, the water was pretty calm and the moon somewhat bright, but neither was bad enough to place all the blame on, but it appeared that every fish had left Monmouth county...or at least were seriously ignoring our artificials...even the rigged eels didn't get any attention. It was bad. It looks like bait is the answer at the moment, we stumbled upon a fella who had a nice fat one landed....it ate a shedder crab...and he lost another while we were in the area. That's 2 more hits than the 3 of had on all our stuff.....this was one of those times when bait was likely the answer...bait always works, but usually, artificials will get some attention as well...not last night! Mental note made, next full moon period, fish bait!

    It look like another excursion to the Ditch is imminent, as soon as Thursday evening in fact! That place is certainly addicting, tough to get it out of your mind...especially when the fishing at home is so poor. It's not poor everywhere, the word is there's a lot of nice fish coming from IBSP...all on bait, either clams, crabs, live eels, or fish parts. There's not a lot of fish, but the ones that are there are of good proportion. If you're planning on dunkin' bait, you might consider doing so somewhere south of Point Pleasant. Island Beach State Park would be my absolute last choice, the crowds during the day and the headlights at night keep my far from there, but anywhere else north of there would get the nod. In the calmer waters, I'd recommend fresh bunker parts, possibly fresh clams, and certainly shedder crabs if you got 'em! The good thing about bunker parts is that they are tough and big enough that the crabs can't smoke 'em off your hook in such a hurry, you'll have bait on the hook much longer. Also, I'm of the mind that crab's pulling on your bunker head on the bottom is likely to attract the attention of bass cruising in the area...and get 'em towards your bait to investigate. If there's no wind and you plan on going, make sure you bring the bug juice along, the bugs are in full force everywhere when there's not a breeze...and they'll drive you crazy faster than a pack of ravenous skates slurpin' up all your clams!

   Happy birthday GMiller! Hope the safety helmet and box of band aids come in handy! ;^)

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent

Headed north...again! 

June 22, 2000:

UPDATE: The TripleFish page is now up and functional! Also, the Fireline and Rigged Eel pages are also up! On the Lex Lures front, we've just added the 2 1/2oz SOLaris Popper...I weighed them, they all weighed between 2.5 and 2.8 oz, these are the bombs you guys are looking for. In addition to that, now you can get them and the smaller size with bucktailed Siwash hooks. A new color Surfster is available now, in the same blue scale finish as the A-40. 

     Yup, it's true, Charlie and I will leave under the cover of darkness this evening for another Ditch adventure. Our most esteemed colleague, Ditch Jigger, just returned from said waters...he did very well for a man just healing from surgery! Throwing 2 and 3oz jigs isn't easy even when all your insides haven't been recently on the outside, kudos Mike, hope ya didn't pull anything! ;^)  Eelman, the great and wise Bill Nolan, just called me...in response to a poke from him, I posted a "challenge" of sorts to him. He made reference to "fishing circles" around folks so I invited him to do so...around Charlie and I. It was in fun...mostly! ;^) Anyway, he called to invite Charlie and I to bend rods with him...on his turf and we will indeed do what we can to make it! We'll be up that way this weekend, there's a possible meeting tomorrow night with him, we'll have to see how we feel after the drive and the fishing, but right now, I for one, am game. Funny, he made note at least twice that we should "get it over with"! Don't worry Bill, we're actually nice guys, too! All in good fun, we'd love to fish with him and hope all the stars align just right for us to do so in the next couple days. Our main target, the Cape Cod Canal, will certainly see us tonight, and we hope she's ready to give up some LARGE for us poor traveling fishermen....I get the feeling she's all set to do just that...we'll have to see!

     So, until then, we've got a bajillion things to get wrapped up here before leaving this evening, orders to ship, stuff to pack, and lots of things to gather. Look for updates as to the situation up that way from either JPowers, Saltheart, or one of the other "locals" we love to see whilst we visit the Ditch. 

     Save IRI! <---click here  Plug just sent me an "Urgent" email. It seems that in light of the recent drowning at Indian River Inlet, there is now talk of possibly closing the place to all fishing! Imagine that, government regulation to again protect ourselves from ourselves! Enough, we can fend for ourselves, if you don't take precautions while doing something obviously dangerous, bad things will happen to you. Closing the jetty would just make these careless folks fish somewhere else...and they'll likely get hurt there as well. Sad as the drowning was, it turns out this young man was fishing one of the most dangerous jetties on the coast and didn't know how to swim at all. That's bad planning. Here's a link to the article concerning this possible tragic closure...and it's on this page that you can be heard in the fight against this closure. Save IRI! <---click here

    Some Sales we're having! 6" and 7" MegaBait plugs, reduced $1.50 each, so we can get the babies in more folks hands! Also, 20# and 30# Whiplash, 2000yd bulk spools, reduced $5 each! Lex A-40 3oz Swimmers are reduced $3.00 each! All the Lex Lures in general, have been reduced by 50 cents of more in the recent past, so come check out the ! 

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent