There he stands, draped in more eq
trying to outwit an organism with a
and getting licke
quipment than a telephone lineman,
a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb,
ed in the process.
~Paul O'Neil, 1965
Here we are stringing Christmas lights again, a sure sign that yet another season is coming to an end. Rods need to be washed, hooks need to be replaced and reels taken apart and cleaned. If you have been surf fishing for any length of time, this annual ritual becomes second nature. Spending a lot of time on the beach usually means that your gear needs to be top notch. That is why you spent more on your rod and a reel than your last mortgage payment, regardless what you told your wife, right? But there are benefits that you will experience that have nothing to do with how much bling you carry on your roof rack. The more hours you spend in the water, the less time you spend on the couch. Your chances of getting into some good bites increase exponentially if you put in the time. There is another type of angler on the beach, the one who doesn't really know about the sacrifices we often make to be successful in this sport. He doesn’t realize the hours we put in hunting for fish. He might be struggling to catch a "keeper" all year and he tries really hard. He might be a party boat fisherman who wants to cash in on the fall run on the beach. He might even be a newbie who doesn't know how to cast or properly work a lure.
Yes, it can be maddening to fish in the lineup when the bite is hot and you have to deal with their errant casts or their inability to control a fish when they hook one. What is particularly disturbing is watching them kick fish back into the water like they are footballs. And yes, I do realize that these anglers that swell our ranks by the hundreds in the fall do not understand the consequences of burning a spot on the Internet. But for every yahoo who must shout loudly because he caught a "fat 28 inch keeper" in the fall, there are many more newcomers who ply the beaches in anonymity. They struggle with their casting. They are unsure if they are working their lure correctly. They have a great deal of admiration for some of you �experts� who show up on the beach and proceed to cast a lure a mile. They want to learn but they do not have a friend, a neighbor or a relative who surf fishes who can show them the ropes.
What I notice more and more is a really disturbing trend of talking down to people who are just starting or don't have the "right" gear to suit someone's taste. Have we forgotten what we were like when we started out? I look at some of the pictures of myself a decade ago and I cringe with embarrassment. But on the other hand, I didn't know any better. Which is probably where those new to the sport find themselves today. Instead of derogatory looks and snide remarks, how about we take a minute and show a fellow angler how to improve his cast. Show him how to get the most out of his lure. Explain why the proper release of a fish is so important for their survival. How about a little kindness and a little less arrogance?
After all, this is a season of giving. You have a unique gift of experience and knowledge that you acquired over the years. I am sure someone lent you a hand over the years in your quest to become a better surfcaster. No one is asking you to spill the beans about your favorite spot, but how about making an effort to help a fellow angler who is struggling? Who knows, if you educate him, he might wait to cast next time you are fighting that giant fish and you actually might have a chance of landing it. And that alone is worth the effort. If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. Sincerely Zeno Hromin
Surfcaster’ s Journal Issue #5 WINTER 2010 12-Geared Up 25-The Rod Corner - Caruso 30-Jayson Dodd ” Jay One”- Hromin 53-Henry Gilbey Photographer 67-Percy Heath - Vito Orlando 77-Eben Horton Interview - Hromin 99-Metal Lip Tuning Tips - Dave Anderson 115-The Sound of Fall Running - Troxler 149-Artificials For Big Bass - Muller 166-Contributors
Cover photo: Zeno Hromin Surfcaster's Journal is published quarterly by Surfcasting LLC. Publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any advertising submitted for publication. Surfcasting LLC and Surfcaster's Journal assume no responsibility for errors made except to republish in future issue any advertisement having an error. Use of this material without express written permission of Surfcasting LLC and Surfcaster's Journal is strictly prohibited.
Legendary waters require legendary lures.
The Yellow 2 3/8 oz Rattl'n Little Neck Swimmer v.3
THE RETURN OF A CLASSIC. Secrets of the masters: Al Bentsen, Fred Golofaro and Roger Martin “The knowledge contained between these covers is an invaluable resource that would take you a few lifetimes to gather on your own.” -Zeno Hromin
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First time we looked at the Guides Choice Bunka Boy Swimmer, we did a double take. Is that a “Big O” or are our eyes deceiving us? But as soon as we got our hands on one, we saw that this was a different kind of animal. We said to ourselves, this plug’s got balls! Instead of cheap hook hangers, thin walls prone to cracking and flimsy hooks, you will notice stainless steel wire, heavy duty hangers, Wolverine triple split rings and VMC hooks. All nice and impressive features for sure, but at what cost? How big of a void in my wallet will that sweet 3D bunker pattern swimmer leave? Yes, we admit we can be smitten with plug colors! Believe it or not, we are more partial to fancy stuff on plastic lures than we are on wooden ones but that is probably because we toss a lot of plastic. When we found out the price, we grabbed a handful and ran out of the establishment hoping they wouldn’t change their minds. As we ran across the parking lot, people were turning to see just who was making all that ruckus. We were wondering about it too only to realize that the loud rattles in our lures were the culprits. Ok, so now you have a plastic lip swimmer with a hard top coat, great pattern underneath, internal rattles, premium hardware and balls to cast, what is not to like you might ask? The price. It's way too low!
Why do we say this? Go grab one and take it to the water and you'll quickly see why. Most plastic lures have good hardware on them although Guides Choice seems to have gone all out for the best stuff. But when you cast this lure you'll realize that not only does it cast well but it is more versatile than most lures of its type. You want to crawl it on the top? No problem, just use an agonizingly slow retrieve. You want to fish it just under the surface? No sweat, pick up the pace a bit on your retrieve. You want it to go deep? Either speed up your retrieve or retrieve it cross current and you’ll feel it dive. It has a wonderful wiggling motion with a tail that slaps back and forth while the head kind of rolls side to side. Did we catch fish on them? Hell yeah! Think about it, this lure is a wonderful imitator of baby weakfish, kingfish, peanut bunker, herring and even adult bunker. We tried it, we liked it and we bet you will too. We doubt anyone will reinvent the wheel again or come up with a lure design that hasn't been made before. But we are happy to see the reincarnation of an old favorite, particularly when it's done right.
Are you tired of fighting a losing battle with the rust on your pliers? Admit it, you felt pretty darn smug when you purchased your latest super-duper pliers on EBay. They cut braid really good when you took them out of the package, so shiny and new, you thought you had the world by the balls. But we know your little secret, the one you are too embarrassed to admit to your buddies. It's ok, you can come out of the closet now. We know your predicament because we made the same mistake as you did. We bought shiny pliers at the bargain price only to see them corrode and seize after a few days in the surf. Let's be honest, very few materials are impervious to the corrosiveness of salt water. Toss in a bit of fine sand for good measure and you’d better think twice before handing over your hard-earned money for cheaply made pliers. Even if they are calling your name from a bargain bin, resist the temptation! We generally do not like to fuss too much over fishing equipment. We like to clean our gear with nature’s help, by fishing in the rain. We rinse it only when the odor gets pungent enough to kill a small animal at ten yards. Forget WD40, grease and oils. The only moisturizer we ever used was on our honeymoon when we....oops, too much information there. Instead of working on our tackle, we prefer to spend our free time on a couch with Da Wife eating BonBons and stuffing our face with Doritos.
You must think we probably own one of them fancy titanium pliers that will never rust even if you buried them under the wreck of the Titanic? Well, we do own a pair but we bought those pliers many years before their price grew to match the cost of our last dental implants. These days, we carry 7 inch pliers made by Hansom Tackle from New Jersey. It's a new product that we wore on our belts the entire fall run without ever rinsing it with fresh water. How do they look after three months of being caked in dry salt? Not much different then when we got them thanks to an aluminum handle, center spring parts, replaceable tungsten carbide cutters and replaceable stainless steel jaws. We have never, ever seen pliers cut braid with such ease. We like the fact that you can apply a lot of power to the hook when you need to pop it out of a bluefish’s mouth. We like the ergonomic grip design, replaceable cutters and the fact that they come with a sheath and a lanyard for under $60. Now that is what we would call a good deal! Of course you can always buy your pliers from a bargain bin at Dicks or any other fine fishing retailer like the Sports Authority (note the dripping sarcasm). They won't steer you the wrong way, they are so knowledgeable in the art of fishing they can even tell the difference between a spinning and a conventional reel. On a good day!
When we received a spool of new Sufix 832 Braid line in our mail, we removed the line from the package and proceeded to read the little insert that came with the line. Our curiosity was naturally aroused by a product that recently won the 2010 ICAST Best Line Award. Unfortunately, because our brains still run on Windows Vista, we got dizzy quickly. All we could see is that darn little circle spinning and spinning and spinning. After a cold shower and a Dunkin Donuts coffee with three shots of espresso we were ready to try again. According to the insert, Sufix 832 Advanced Superline™ is the strongest, most durable small diameter braid on the market. R8 Precision Braiding and fiber technology provides superior strength, roundness and line consistency. Constructed of 8 fibers (7 Dyneema® plus 1 GORE® Performance Fiber) and 32 weaves (pics) per inch. GORE® Performance Fibers improve abrasion resistance, increase casting distance & accuracy and reduce line vibration. Dyneema® fibers provide high strength & sensitivity, hydrophobic water-repellent protection and small diameter. Just ducky we thought. More big words to confuse us! So we did what every surf sharpie does these days, we booted up our PC. After checking the fishing reports section to see what we were missing, we made our way to the Sufix website. There, in plain English (although hidden in the PDF file) were the answers we were looking for. The Sufix 832 braid is more rounded than most braids which cuts out the noise, drag and air resistance. In their tests (which certainly are not conducted like ours after a night of binge drinking) they marked a casting distance improvement of 10%. In addition, there was a 20% increase in tensile strength and a 30% higher Palomar knot strength compared to other braids. Sufix 832 braid is constructed by weaving 7 Dyneema fibers plus 1 Gore Performance Fiber 32 times per inch. Dyneema Fibers are strong little suckers, 15 times
stronger than steel while the Gore name is renowned for their high performance fibers that are used in many application from the Space Shuttle to fishing line. Are you dizzy yet? Ok, then, enough about all this technical stuff. Now that you know the inner workings of this line we can tell you that we had the same line on our reel from early September through the end of the season. We fished it on the sandy beaches of Long Island, NY and cast from boulders on Massachusetts shorelines. What do we think? To be perfectly honest, we’ve been using the same brand of braid for the last ten years. We never changed when something new came around, we never wavered when we were told that our braid was flat or that it looks like it’s unraveling. But after fishing with Sufix 832 for the whole fall run we are convinced that this is not only better than what we have been using but possibly the best braid we ever tried. Soft and supple, it casts like a dream, not a single wind knot and lies on the spool beautifully. It flew through the guides without a sound and it exhibited excellent abrasion resistance and a knot strength that left us impressed. You can call us lazy bums but on two consecutive days combined we landed over a hundred giant bluefish without ever retying a knot or losing a lure. With most lines, we are happy to wait for someone else to cut their teeth on it and report back to us. With Sufix 832, we were glad to be among the first to try it.
We recently had a chance to play with a St. Croix Mojo surf rod. We had heard a lot about these rods in recent months. Actually, we were kind of tired of hearing about them. Because everyone is talking about them! Since everyone seems to know more than we do, particularly the internet sharpies, we dragged Surfcaster's Journal Rod Guru, Lou Caruso, to the beach with us kicking and screaming, just so we could get an honest opinion from someone who is qualified to evaluate a rod. Because let's be honest, our talent lies in other things, like removing hooks from a surfcaster's buttocks without having to use a single hand. We have used the rod before this fateful day but we wanted to see just what our own expert thought before we stuck our foot in our mouth...again. We arrived at the beach only to find a large heave and a strong sweep from hard northeast winds. Those that were in the water were already all hooked up but each one of them was unable to fight the fish from the spot they hooked it. Because they used wimpy (we like to call them "spaghetti�) rods, they had no choice but to follow the fish down current. We held our breath when Lou cast a tin but that was only a prelude because within a few cranks, he was hooked up to a striper. We watched him set the hook and looked in amazement at the Mojo stick which was bent from the tip to the reel seat. Unlike the old days of flat spots and rod only bending in the top half, the Mojo had a beautiful arc to it. Because the model we tested (MSS106MM2) is rated 3/4 to 4 ounces, we were worried that Lou might have a hard time controlling his fish in the very fast sweep but he leaned into the fish and held his ground. Although he was fishing in some challenging conditions, he was one of the few anglers who did not have to walk down the beach a hundred yards to land a fish.
Yes, everything you've read about the Mojo is true. There are no flat spots. There is no line slap. It casts better than many one piece rods. It's basically heaven in a stick. The sweet spot for casting is somewhere around 2 ounces and it can work a pencil popper like nobody's business. We would have preferred a rubber butt cap to protect the bottom of the blank when walking on rocks but if you fish on sand most of the time, you won't miss it. We loved that the wraps on the guides are understated making us appear cool as a cucumber instead of crazy wraps that scream "Liberace". Although one piece rods will always have the advantage of having the reel seat mounted where you prefer, with this rod we still managed to cast lures a country mile. Considering that it costs only about two clams, this might be the most value a surfcaster could ever get for his dough when buying a surf rod. And we mean that. Check out Lou's video review including the rod in action on our YouTube channel.
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THE ROD VAULT
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Lou Caruso
Multi Piece Fishing Rods / CTS Blanks Ever notice the stigma that comes with a two piece fishing rod? Many fishermen will tell you: “Not over my dead body�. Back in the day this statement did have some merit. The old fiberglass rods had a big honkin steel ferrule that actually slipped into the reel seat. Usually after a year or two of abuse these rods would fuse together and become a 1piece rod by default.
Then came the early graphite rods with a ferrule that was heavy to begin with and needed to be wrapped the entire length to insure it would not split. Those rods would usually only flex to the split. The bottom end was like a broomstick. There have been tremendous technological advances over the past few years when it comes to today’s two piece fishing rods. Much of that is due to advances made in blanks being made for the distance casting world. With these newer blanks there is no longer a need to wrap the ferrule at all. Another big plus is that the entire blank flexes. We no longer have that top-heavy feeling. A while back, I was asked by a friend to build him a 10’surf rod that he could bring on a plane, and store in the overhead compartment. His plan was to target tarpon at night, around bridges. You can’t fish from the bridges so he would put a crab up on the railing, run down and slip it off into the shadow line. Ingenious!!!!!! I researched and found Lamiglas used to make a 4 piece GSB 1204M blank. I contacted them and they were able to put two of them together for me, as they were no longer in production. With much trepidation I overbuilt the rod and sent him off to Florida. He was unable to land a tarpon since they kept breaking him off in the pilings. He did land a bunch of large barracuda during the day and he said the rod handled flawlessly. He did say that he drew a lot of attention as he was using poppers. It seems in Florida, bait is king.
4 PIECE TRAVEL ROD
I have begun using two piece blanks from a company called CTS (ctsfishing.com). They use 100% carbon construction. The first thing I noticed is the weight. They are extremely lightweight, yet are strong as hell. One of their 11’ blanks that I have been testing this fall feels lighter then a GSB 1321L, yet handled fish as well, if not better. The problem with these blanks is access to them. They are produced in New Zealand. Now the good news, Rich Hedenberg (RH Custom Rods, Galloway, NJ 08205, 609-705-8500) has become the U.S. distributor for CTS. He has teamed up with Steve Petri at Bob’s Bait and Tackle (631-842-7573) and myself at louscustomrods.com (516901-0515) to bring these blanks to Long Island and the tri-state area. You can now contact any one of us to check out these fine blanks or to have a custom rod built. Things, they be a changing for the better!!!!!!!!
LousCustomRods.com
JASON DODD “JAY1”
Turn right on Maratooka , drive until you hit the dirt road and see the beat up shed in front of Grandma’s house. Walking up to the house, we could see all the fishing gear on the porch. I remember sometimes I wouldn’t even go into the house to say hi. I just grabbed a pole and ran down to the water. Surfcasting started when I was real young, spending summers in Mattituck, snapper and weakfishing from the rocky shores at a deep, tiny inlet down the beach from my grandmother’s house. The tiny inlet had the deepest water in the area and rips would form as the water drained out of the back bay area. The weakfish were big and plentiful. From her beach you could see Robin’s Island in the distance. I remember wanting to go out to the Island and thinking the fishing must have been so much better out there. When I eventually did get out near the island, I found that the best fishing in the area was at that tiny inlet. Years ago the house was sold. The shed was ripped down. The dirt road was paved and a sign reading “Private Road” was erected. From the satellite view on my computer, the tiny inlet that held all my memories appears to have been widened and dredged. It’s a time and place I’ll never forget. This is where my obsession with surfcasting began.
Back at home in Long Beach, if my mother ever found out what I did almost every day to go fishing, she would probably have killed me herself. At the age of 8 or 9 years, I would “gather” up money from around the house to pay for bait. Then I’d ride my bike about a mile, crossing the Long Beach Bridge, to go get bait at the Commodore in Island Park. I would end up fishing in any number of places. Looking back on these spots and considering how old I was, none of these places were really safe. The parking lot across from the tennis courts in Long Beach, the canal bridges, under the Long Beach Bridge or at the recreation center’s fishing pier! These were my spots! I lived in Long Beach and grew up fishing around one of the best fishermen I’ll ever know. I suppose if you ask anyone who fishes, they will name one person who they call the best fisherman they ever knew. Well for me, it was a lifelong friend of my father: Bernie Haag. He had a reputation for being the grumpy, old man of the bay. If you ever saw him out fishing you would think he was just some miserable son of a gun who never caught anything. But if you ever got a chance to look into his boat, you would find thirty or forty fish at his feet. The wealth of knowledge and experience learned from him over the years didn’t come easy. I had to learn to stop asking questions and just watch how it was done. If he wanted to tell me how something was done, I had to just shut up and listen because he wasn’t going to tell me twice. He was a master bayman as well as a great surf fisherman. I have never met anyone who consistently landed so many huge linesiders and it’s doubtful I ever will.
BM ATOM JR.
I spent many seasons fishing from the surf in Atlantic Beach and in Debs inlet. I guess, besides being a loner, I have the habit of fishing just one area at a time and trying to figure out everything I can about that location. While all my friends were running out to Montauk and coming back with stories and pictures of huge stripers, I was content fishing my immediate local waters. I had heard stories from the old timers about local spots such the Suicide Jetty or Silver Point in Atlantic Beach. In fact Atlantic Beach is where I was first introduced to and became obsessed with custom wood plugs. One night fishing on a Jetty in Atlantic Beach, I was beyond frustrated and catching nothing. Fishing on the same rock pile with me was a salty old bastard who seemed to land thirty pounders on every other cast. I started asking questions and getting no answers. I must have really gotten on his nerves because after an hour or so of him saying absolutely nothing to me, he finally turned to me and said “It’s a Beachmaster!” I must have gotten on his last nerve or he felt really bad for me because he actually gave me my first Beachmaster plug. It was an Atom Jr. which I still have to this day. He handed it to me and said “It’s not an idiot lure, learn how to use it.“ Then he shut his mouth for the rest of the night. That night I ended up catching one small fish while he must have landed 10 huge fish on the same plug. Never got his name and I always thought I would run into him again but it has been 15 years and I never saw him again.
I began building plugs after being frustrated with not being able to buy Beachmaster plugs. Hearing that Garan’s tackle shop had a new supply of these lures, I always showed up too late to get any. I was a carpenter and as a hobby built fine furniture. When I started building plugs for myself, there were no internet sites to guide you and I found very few articles anywhere on building. My first lathe was a little piece of crap to which I later rigged a Sears lathe duplicator. The first plug I turned on it was was a Danny plug. I cut the lip using tin snips, used a hand held drill for the belly weight and through wire hole. I used galvanized wire from the local hardware store and the grommets were from shelving pins. It was finished off with a rattle can paint job and an epoxy clear coat that I spent way too much money on. I have three plugs that I have retired from use. They all have caught amazing fish. The Atom Jr. that I was given and the other two, the first two plugs I made. The builder who has had the most influence on me is Beachmaster. I suspect that it’s the same with many of the other plug makers. I had an opportunity to meet him a few years ago for the first time at the annual Pint Fling in Point Lookout. I was a little worried about meeting him because the last plug that I had built was a copy of his Cowboy Jr. But my worrying was for nothing, Bobby turned out to be a great guy and even complimented me on the Cowboy Jr. that I was making. He told me that he was asked to do a run of Cowboy Jrs. and decided not to because I was doing a good job with them. So blame me that they haven’t been made for a while.
The greatest compliment of my plugs came from Bobby and was posted on one of the forum boards. He said, "The only plug on the market I consider on a par with ours when it comes to design, durability and finish are Jay1 plugs." I hope someone does an interview with Bobby and John and tells the story of Beachmaster Plugs. I have heard some of the history and stories associated with them and it’s just amazing. I’ve been to his shop a few times and Bobby and John will share any bit of information, show you all the jigs that they use. In fact, the only topic that seems to be off limits concerns the sealer that they use.
Master at Arms / First Class Petty Officer (MA1) Small Boat Coxswain specializing in Anti Terrorism / Force Protection, Port Security, Maritime Interdiction Operations (non compliant vessel boarding search and seizure).
I joined the Navy Reserves in 1999. At the time I was married and had three small children and was working for the City Of Long Beach in the Water and Sewer Dept. as well as driving a cab. I was working about 20hrs a day almost every day. Besides wanting to be a better role model for my children, the horrible atrocities that were happening to impoverished people who could not defend themselves around the globe really pushed me to want to do something to help. Prior to 9-11, being in the military for me was a lot of training and standing by to stand by, but that all changed on 9-11. I was mobilized into active duty and spent most of the next year working Security as an Anti-terrorism/Force Protection specialist in NAS Naples, Italy. I spent the better part of the next two years working for the NCIS Agents in plain clothes operations dealing with threats to US interests overseas. After my first enlistment I re-enlisted for another 6 years and became a member of an Expeditionary Training Command that basically trains third world militaries with my theater of operation being Africa. Since being in this Unit I have deployed more times than I care to count. The missions are very specific, employing three to five man teams and lasting a month to three months. We deployed several times a year. I spent most of last year moving from Gabon to Mozambique to Madagascar to Sierra Leone on and on then back to South America to work in Lima, Peru among other stops before coming home. It’s laughable at times! We deploy to dangerous areas, live in town in plain clothes and have a contingency plan that if something happens to “just get back to the embassy.” It’s definitely not a typical reserve command, the notion of one weekend a month two weeks out of the year has long been forgotten here. I have just recently gotten back from Djibouti and have already been given the dates for my next deployment.
After my first deployment to Africa and having seen the places that were fished by local tribes using spears or small nets off the back of dugout canoes, I decided that I would try to fish in what little “spare” time I had. While working in Gabon, I had to lie, beg, borrow, cheat and steal to end up with some fishing gear from a merchant vessel passing through the area. A six and a half foot light weight spinning rod with one spinner bait was what I was able to “acquire.” After scoping out the area, I had instant success with red snappers and jacks right from the shore. Later at one of the most dangerous inlets I have ever seen in my life I tangled with some barracuda and more huge jacks. The kids from the local fishing village came down to watch as I fished, I showed one of the locals how to use it and left the spinning rod and spinner bait with him. I’ve never seen somebody so thankful in all my life. He told me how this gift would help him feed his family. When we deploy now, I pack and hide from my superiors a two piece travel rod, my VS 150 and a small assortment of plugs everywhere I go. It works out pretty well because we bring charts of the local waters of each area we deploy to and the chart tubes fit a nine or ten foot two piece rod perfectly.
With all the different exotic locations I have been able to fish, my absolute favorite place still right in my back yard: the jetties and shores of Long Island. I’ve met so many people and made so many friends through fishing and plug building. Some folks I ran into while out fishing. Others I encountered sitting around in a local tackle shop BSing. Case in point: one night while fishing by myself on a jetty on the south shore, suddenly people start showing up, one after the other. Before long the jetty was packed! On most nights, I would have gotten pissed about this but on this night, the jetty was packed with friends Zeno Hromin, Willy Young, Beachmaster Bob, Peresh Dave and even Donny Musso! This was not a prearranged fishing trip. They just all showed up to fish the same tide. Plug building got shut down for a bit when I was accepted into the Nassau County Police Department Academy. I’d been taking the Police Test for years and for years I always scored just under the cut off to get hired. Now I was 36 years old, the maximum age for getting hired. I thought that my chances were poor but one morning I get a letter in the mail that they are going to start the investigation process for being hired. At this point I had been working for the City Of Long Beach for 15 years, I was well established and a Vice President of the Union but this was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was the second oldest person in the Academy class of 100 but I made it through. It’s coming up on three years since I was hired and I am just now putting my shop back together.
Everything that comes out of my shop is built 100 percent by me. Like I said, I am a bit of a loner. I really like the look and the classic lines of old striper plugs and the little subtle things on plugs like marks from the jigs that are used to make them. If you look on the plugs that I have made, they all have the same marks from sitting in or getting clamped to jigs that I use, I don’t try and hide them I think it adds character to the plugs. I’m not real crazy about colors or realistic paint jobs on my plugs, sticking with the more traditional two tone silver sided classic paint jobs and my absolute favorite paint job the blue swirl pattern from the Atom 40. In fact on the subject of color, to prove to myself that color really wasn’t as important to the fish as other things, I painted one of the metal lips that I use red and then painted green over it, then sanded it so the red came through the green in areas to create the most hideous painted plug ever seen and then clear coated it in the same manner as all the other plugs. I used this plug for a couple of seasons and found it caught as well if not better than all the other plugs. In fact I have had this plug for about 4 seasons now and find myself constantly reaching to use it over other plugs.
All of the killer plugs that I have had in my bag over the years are the old ones that have the heck beaten out of them. It takes a lot to have reached that status in your surf bag as your “go-to” plug but for me the “goto” plug always seems to be the most beat up thing you have ever seen. It’s the one with the mojo and the really beat up finish. I have experimented with color, shifting additives in the clear coats that I was using and have had amazing feedback from them. It never really made sense to me because the plugs looked amazing when any light hit them. Light dissipates quickly as the plug goes deeper and colors disappear even quicker. Add the fact that I almost always fish at night and the color shifting that needs light to work was gone. But for whatever reason, plugs with the additive in the clear coats have taken fish on nights when nothing else would work. The stuff I was using was extremely expensive but it definitely seemed worth it to add it to the plugs.
It’s never really been about the money with me. You hear so many plug builders talk about a labor of love and that is exactly what it is for me. I make the amount of plugs that I have time to make. I’ll only put out a new design after it has been tested and proven after several years. I’m not rushing or going to drive myself nuts because there is a demand for them. Once that enters the picture, the love of making them goes right out the window. You’ll get them when they’re done!
JASON DODD “JAY1”
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HENRY I guess you could call me an out and out fishing junkie who
GILBEY
photographer
had no choice but to seek a career in this sport. It’s all I know and it’s what I love. Fishing is my life and my work, and my obsession with the photography of all kinds of fishing gets me so bad that I dream as much about the photos as I do about catching fish. Is that mad or sad? Not sure, but I feel passionately committed to trying to make fishing look as good as I possibly can, and I get the shakes real bad when the light, conditions and fishing start to come together. The bulk of my work is photographing and writing about all kinds of fishing all around the world, for magazines, books, websites, catalogues etc. I spend around four months of each year out of the UK on the hunt for material, as well as photographing all kinds of fishing back home. But when I go fishing myself, these days I tend to spend most of that time chasing our own bass – you could call them the European sea bass, but they’re just bass to me. I live near the sea, and the fishing can be pretty good, but my most favourite place on this earth to go (sea) bass fishing is over in Ireland. What a country. Everything you read about it is true. Great people, wonderful landscape, lots of rain, and the Guinness really is how it’s meant to be. And they have a lot more bass than we do. What a great excuse to spend a lot of time over there.
A simple photo, but it says it all to me. That’s a big (sea)
bass for us, and these two anglers laughing about such a magnificent fish makes for a photo that I believe simply says “fishing is the best thing in the world�. We caught so many fish that day in southern Ireland that we lost count, and as is fairly typical, we saw no other fishermen at all.
Ooops. Time to brace yourself and hope for the best. The
secret to my job is not fishing. I want to fish all the time, but fishing means I am going to miss the best photo opportunities. Like this. We like to get right in amongst it for our bass fishing. The trick here is to make sure you have dialed in some minus exposure compensation to “hold� the highlights in the crashing wave. Thinking on your feet. Love it.
The eye of a predator. Very much like your awesome striped bass I imagine. You guys don’t know how badly I want to come and spend some proper time in and around your striped bass fishing. Everything just came together for this photo. It is actually the kind of photo that kind of means very little in the context of a magazine article, but I have always been really proud of it. It is essential that the eye is pin-sharp focused for a picture to work properly.
By nature I am somewhat frenetic, and I get very excited when fishing begins to look really good. This kind of photo loses all impact if you don’t understand the lighting conditions and how your camera is trying to tell you what to do. Don’t let it. Take over, show the thing who’s the boss. A bank of early morning fog is acting as a giant diffuser for the sun, but your camera wants to overexpose a scene like this and lose impact. Deliberately underexpose and hold all that fabulous lighting. I nearly fell off my particular rock with excitement when I snapped this frame.
Your A-typical English surfcasting thing. Long rod, a small
conventional reel, and the angler is blasting out his bait. I am a sucker for awesome skies, and I will always look for any opportunity I can to put the angler against one. Nothing does it for me like the ocean, and I am in love with those areas where the land meets the sea. I head out in boats when I need to, but my first love has always been surf and rock fishing.
Henry Gilbey is a full time fishing photographer, writer and TV presenter. Check out his stuff at www.henry-gilbey.com
PERCY
HEATH BY VITO ORLANDO
“Don’t go into the water without first making a few casts”, Percy Heath yelled as we arrived at the North Bar on a cool June night in 1970. This small bit of information has served me well all these years and was just one of the many lessons learned from one of Montauk’s most accomplished casters. Recognized throughout the music world for his expertise playing the bass fiddle with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy was
equally adept with a surf rod in his hands. His knowledge of the rocks and sands of his beloved Montauk are legendary and his willingness to share this information was the mark of a true gentleman. As a fellow member of the Farragut Striper Club I had an opportunity to meet and talk with Percy on a regular basis during our monthly meetings. It wasn’t long before a friendship developed and we began fishing together whenever our schedules permitted. Those forays took us from the sands of Malibu Beach and Democrat Point to the rocky shoreline of the East End. It was here that Percy felt most comfortable. At the time he and his family lived in St. Albans, Queens. They would relocate to Montauk each summer, renting a house just off the lake. It was only after many years of renting that the family settled into their east end home. When he was not away entertaining Percy could be found casting the shoreline of Montauk. Whether it was driving through the trail next to the now closed garbage dump to get to Culloden Point or taking an unbeaten path just off East Lake Drive to arrive at the Old Boy Scout Camp, no one knew the area better. Percy had a love affair with the striped bass but “Those Blue Devils” as he called the bluefish also held a place of honor. A consummate surfcaster, Percy always seemed to rise to the occasion. I can recall one night while fishing Shagwong during a Farragut Contest that Percy, while fishing next to me, hooked a fish. The drag on his Penn 710 failed and he was forced to back up to the dunes in order to land the 38lb bass. Of course he won the contest. Another time, while drowning sandworms at Split Rock I landed a bass of 15lbs. “King of the Hill” I thought, that is, until Percy’s 33lb bass hit the beach.
As good as he was casting most lures, there was one in particular he dreaded: the bucktail. Rarely used by most Montauk regulars, a Hopkins or Charlie Graves Tin was the preferred substitute. It was not until around 1990 that the bucktail took roots at Montauk. In the early 1970’s Percy returned from a gig in California. With him he brought a plastic lip plug that we have come to know as the Large Red Fin. This California plug, which was popular among western fishermen for striped bass, soon became a favorite of many on the east coast. We had the smaller version of the Red Fin but never the large seven inch which Percy introduced one day under the Bluffs. As much as he loved casting the shores Percy had another love: “The Fiddler”, his boat which was moored at West Lake Marina. On several occasions I was privileged to be invited to try my hand at fluke fishing at which Percy excelled. During our time spent together, I got to know the man pretty well. During World War II, shortly after being drafted, Percy entered into training as one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. Soon after being discharged he began playing the bass fiddle. He rarely spoke about his childhood. He was born in the South and moved to Philadelphia at an early age. He came from a musically gifted family. His mother was a vocalist and his father played the clarinet. Both of his brothers were musicians. In the early nineteen fifties The Modern Jazz Quartet was born. Percy passed away in the spring of 2005. In May, 2006 a Memorial in his honor was erected at Turtle Cove. I was honored when I was asked to say a few words at the dedication ceremony. All who knew him will agree that Percy was not only a highly respected fisherman but also a perfect gentleman.
The Fiddler By Vito Orlando
The Rocks Of Montauk That He Loved So Will Be Void Of A Gentleman From An Era Long Ago
A Dark Cloud Flew Over Montauk That Day When Angels In Waders Took Percy Away
I Remember Him Telling That As A Young Man Coming To This Hallowed Beach With Rod And Reel In His Hand
Off To A Land Where Jazz Is The Rave And Bass And Bluefish Appear With Each Wave
He Introduced The Red Fin While Casting Near The Light And How It Soon Captured The Attention Of All The Regulars That Night
The Sounds Of His Music Will Echo No More No Longer Will He Cast From His Beloved Rocky Shore
He Had A Passion For Music And A Love Affair With The Rod But I Think If You Had Asked Him Striped Bass Fishing Would Get The Nod
He Fought For His Country Against Bigotry Too But Always Managed A Smile When He Would Greet You
He Was Anointed By Kings As He Played In Foreign Lands But Always His Thoughts Were Of Montauk's Rocky Sands
The Engines Of The Fiddler Will Not Again Roar And The Wake That They Created Will Be Seen Never More So Long Old Friend You Are No Longer In Pain So Long Old Perc Montauk Will Never Be The Same May God Rest And Keep You Percy
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an interview with
EBEN HORTON master glass maker . artist . surfcaster
by zeno hromin
We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Master Glass maker, artist and surfcaster, Eben Horton. Although our art skills have not progressed past drawing stick figures, we certainly can appreciate fine art. Just don't let us touch any of it. We’ve been known to drop a thing or two! It seems that not only are you an accomplished artist but you also went through a period in your life when you made wooden lures. Then before long you were the man behind Surf Hog rubber baits. All this was before rubber lures got popular. You seem to like to tinker with "stuff". Is it a case of you trying to make a better mousetrap or having ants in your pants? Well, I know other artists who have some form of ADHD! In my case, I think I had a little bit of both things going on. Being a glass artist, means you have to know how to do many different things. Sometime making glass is secondary to building furnaces, welding up frames for electric ovens to cool the glass after it’s made. You are forced to learn how to think for yourself, look at things with an open mind and find solutions. I started making plugs because I could not find a decent pencil popper that I could cast out 100 yards from Brenton Point to the fish that were holding in the rip. My first pencils were made from hardwood dowels that I shaped on a belt sander and painted with rattle cans. I wish I still had some of those pencils, as they caught lots of fish. I really enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction of catching fish on a stick of wood that I made. That is when “building a better mousetrap” came into play. I bought a lathe and dove into turning out lots of swimmers and needlefish. I even dove into "darter hell' and made some very nice darters. I found that making lures on the lathe was a lot like making wine glasses. You could make hundreds of them in search of perfection. The problem is this: the closer you get to perfection, the less of "you" is in your work. The lure becomes more of a perfect product that looks like it could have been made by a machine.
After I had a life time supply of wooden lures that I turned on the lathe, I remember reading somewhere that eels were about to end up on the endangered species list. I was having good luck with sluggo's and thought that there was a real opportunity to be had if I could develop a rubber lure that was somewhat eel like, but acted more like a lure. The result of this was my Surf Hog eel. The action that I was looking for was what a spook would provide. So I made my prototype with a wide head and a fat belly. There was no learning curve to make these eels, as I already knew how to make molds from the bronze casting
classes that I took in art school. The only thing that I needed to find out was what plastic to use to make the baits. One thing that I am pretty proud of was figuring out how to make the eels with a hook harness cast right inside the rubber. I did this by casting my production mold out of a flexible hard rubber material that had cavities inside it to accept the hooks.
I went at Surfhog full bore for a year until my son was born and I had to back off from fishing to spend more time being a dad. The death knell for my involvement with Surfhog was the night that I accidently poured 450째 bunker oil down my hand while pouring rubber. I lost a lot of skin instantly and had the worst burns on my hand that I have ever had in my life... And trust me, I have had my share of burns!! After the burn, I ended up selling my molds to Bob Neilson and he is still making them. I'm tickled to know that there is a loyal group of Surfhog fans out there who are still using the lure that I developed. Hopefully if Bob plays his cards right, he can build Surfhog into something bigger. At the same time I was tinkering in my basement Michael Hogan was making his first prototypes of the Hogy eel. He has done a bang up job of marketing his lures and I can't deny that I look at what he did with a bit of envy. However, glass is my first career and I would never give it up to make fishing lures full time.
We've read somewhere that your spiritual awakening, at least in regard to fishing occurred in an unlikely place. After all, School for American Crafts in Rochester, New York is not exactly known as a surf fishing Mecca. Care to fill us in? Yes...This is true. I grew up in Newport, RI, which has some pretty good surf casting, but I took for granted what I had in my back yard until I went away to art school. Before I moved to Rochester, I would fish from the surf occasionally with friends, mostly tossing bunker heads off the rocks at Fort Adams or casting poppers at dusk at Second Beach. I grew up on sailboats and in high school, I was more into racing Lasers. I placed 8th in the Nationals when I was 18 (a Laser is a 14 ft racing dinghy). When I moved to Rochester, I immediately went into full blown ocean withdrawal. I ended up buying a sea kayak in Rochester and ended up exploring a lot of the nooks and crannies of Lake Ontario. What struck me was the clarity of the water and how clearly I could see the fish underneath me. I remember going into the glass studio after a day of kayaking and making some fish from memory, fish I saw that day. It's not easy to make a realistic looking blown glass fish, but I think they came out pretty good. After making more and more fish in the glass studio, I started getting very much home sick for Rhode Island and found myself driving back to visit the ocean for a weekend. It was late May if I remember right and the bass were starting to move into their usual early season haunts. At that time, my vehicle was a 1979 VW Westfalia and I had loaded it with fishing gear. It had a cooler rack on the roof, a sink for rinsing off my reels and doing dishes, a stove to cook dinner, a bunk downstairs and a penthouse suite upstairs when I popped the top open. I really miss that Bus! I am in the middle of restoring a 1971 Westfalia for fishing, but I digress. That weekend, I fished like an animal, and did some things that I would never do
today and am surprised I got away with it. There is a sand track that leads down West Beach and I drove my bus right down to the base of the Quonny Breachway. At the time I didn't even know that there was a parking lot on the other side of the breachway! No one was there that night and it was my first time drifting plugs in any sort of outflow. It was by far the best fishing I had ever experienced in my life and I left there with my head spinning. From that night on, I was obsessed. The problem was that it was October of my second year in art school and I had two more years to go in a city that was a six hour drive from the surf. I remember driving my bus back to Rochester amazed that I had figured out how to find fish without asking anyone, reading about it or anything. I just looked at a map, saw the sand trail and went for it. There were no internet fishing sites back then and if you wanted to learn how to surf cast in Rhode Island, you had three choices. Hang out at a tackle shop and ask a million questions, find a mentor to teach you his tricks or go to the library. Being in Rochester, my only choice was the library and I remember checking out more than a few books on saltwater fishing. Most books were geared for boat fishing, but I was able to glean quite a bit of info about the feeding habits of striped bass from these books. Because I had a Sea Kayak, I thought it would be fun to give surfcasting a whirl from the kayak. On my summer vacation, I built an 18 foot Chesapeake Light Craft kayak in my grandmother’s garage. It took 2 weeks to build and I had a blast fishing from it. I would paddle out to seal rock off of Ocean Drive and bail the fish from that rocky island. Most of the time, I wouldn't fish from the kayak, but get out and fish from the rocks. This concept was dreamt up in the middle of a February snow storm. A technique that I developed back then was to wrap about 300 feet of 50 lb mono around the end of my paddle and tie a three ounce bucktail and pork rind. As I would paddle, I would start slowly "unwind" the
paddle until I could feel the jig tick bottom. I caught a lot of fish that way, and to this day I have never felt a hit like I would feel working those jigs. To reel the fish in, all that was required was to rotate the paddle to wind the line back on. The motion of working a kayak paddle is identical to how guys rip wire on the charter boats. So while I wasn't surfcasting from the shores of Rochester, I was fantasizing about how I could chase striped bass when I came home to Newport. And because I had that Vo l k s w a g e n , I w a s unstoppable and could eat, sleep, and haul around all of my fishing gear. Did I say that I miss that bus?
We can certainly understand why glass is your first passion. After all, you are a Master Glass Blower and a respected and well known artist. You have created custom pieces for regular walk-in customers as well as for Stolichnaya, Goreham Crystal and many others. Your “Glass Station� which serves as a studio and a gallery has become a must-see destination for Rhode Island visitors and art lovers. Tell us how your love affair with glass began. When I was 6, my mom and I moved to Newport and she was hired as the assistant curator at the Newport Art Museum. I spent a lot of time there after school and was surrounded by art. Also my grandparents loved to travel and would take me places with them. On one of the trips, we spent a whole summer in London, where I visited just about every art museum and place worth looking at during those months. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was being trained to admire craftsmanship. I remember being amazed by the resting places of the knights
inside Westminster Abby in London and how detailed the stone carving was to provide such realism. My grandfather was one of America’s pioneers of quarrying granite and he would always point out to me things that impressed him and would tell me how they were made. He was brilliant and he taught me that you can make anything and that there is a process that has to be followed to achieve the desired results. When I was 15, I figured it was time to pick up an after school job so that I could buy some sailing equipment. I noticed that there was a help wanted sign at a small glass blowing studio in my town. I applied for the job, but the owner said I was too young, but he would call me in a year or two if he needed some help at that time. I was pretty upset about this, as I knew immediately that I would be good at making glass. I knew at that age that I had to do something with my hands, perhaps in the arts, maybe as a welder or some sort of craftsman. About a week went by and the owner of the glass studio called me and asked me if I wanted to crew on his boat because he needed an extra man and noticed on my job application that I had put down that I was doing a lot of racing. I told him that I would be happy to crew for him if he would hire me at least to sweep the floors and a deal was struck. That was the last job application I ever filled out and to this day I have never had a "real job". I helped out at the glass studio after school and learned all of the basic tricks of the trade.
When I was about to graduate high school, my boss urged me to go to college and basically threw me out of the nest with me kicking and screaming. I had no desire to leave Newport or go to college, but he told me that he would not have any work for me if I did not go. Looking back on this, I really can't thank him enough for doing this. After losing my job, my grandparents of all people suggested that I go to art school to further pursue an education in glass, so off I went to The School for American Crafts. It is part of Rochester Institute of Technology and I chose this school because it was a craft based art program. I looked at Rhode Island School of Design, and quickly realized that there was zero emphasis on "design" in the glass department. All of the students were making whacky conceptual art which didn't interest me. When I got to school in September, I had no idea what to expect and quickly realized that I was given a very special gift by learning how to blow glass at such a young age. It takes years to learn how to blow glass and everything that you do when you're making glass comes from muscle memory. Just like casting a lure, after you've been doing it for a few years. You just do it without thinking.I already knew how to gather glass out of the furnace, and how to make all of the basic forms: vases, bowls, cups, etc. I had been doing this repetitively in a high volume production glass studio. The way that most people learn how to blow glass is that they get to art school and are handed a pipe and pretty much are forced to figure it out on their own. The result is that many people learn bad habits. The teachers didn't know what to do with me, because I was basically a better glass blower than the grad students and the teachers, so I was pretty much left to my own devices and worked on developing my own designs and style. I had such a head start it was almost comical and when I left the School for American Crafts, I was ready to strike out on my own and build my own glass studio.
Do you find any correlation between making custom glass and surfcasting for stripers and blues? There are definitely correlations between glass and surfcasting. The biggest one is patience. It takes years to learn all of the nuances of striped bass and catch them consistently. You go to a spot, look at a rock and see some whitewater with what looks like a deep hole behind it that could hold a fish. You cast a jig in the white water and catch a fish. This is much like scooping up some glass out of the furnace. You already know what you're going to make. It's all about following a thought process and going about set procedures to achieve your goal. I have often thought that when you have entered a fishing tournament, it is much like getting ready to do a glass show. You have to prepare, fine tune your designs and then you have to produce. If you fail in this process, you will fail at the end. Lately though, I have taken several steps away from fishing tournaments all together. For me, the love now is in the process and not in the results. I am just as happy catching a hand full of schoolies as I am about catching a 30 pounder from shore. I might also argue that glass blowing is more like boat fishing than surfcasting. The biggest factor to put you on the fish with a boat is what kind of boat you have and that is very much true about glass blowing. If you have the biggest and best glass equipment, you will be able to make the biggest and best glass. The person who has a 30 foot Contender is going to fish more places and land more fish than the guy who is fishing out of the 14 foot tin boat. That being said, what truly matters is what is between your ears. If you were to put someone with a very nice glass studio or the guy with the 30 foot contender up against the guy with the dumpy glass studio or the 14 foot tin boat, chances are you could be be surprised at the outcome. Remember, it’s what is between your ears that counts.
I think that far too much emphasis is placed on what kind of gear you have to have to catch big fish and what kinds of lures you need to have to be a top angler. I fell for it for a while. I had fancy reels, all the best rods, waders, surf tops and I noticed that I was not catching any more fish. Now, my reel of choice is an Abu Garcia 6500 chrome pro rocket on a Lamiglas GSB 1201 L with four inches cut off the tip. It’s light and I can fish all night with it. It is easy to use, I can work on it and it didn't break the bank to buy it. I also have a nine foot Ugly Stick Intercostal that I am absolutely in love with. Years ago, I would thumb my nose at guys who fished with Ugly Sticks and sat on white buckets, but I have let all of that elitism go by the wayside. The same goes for my glass blowing equipment. I have built everything in my studio from scratch. It doesn't look fancy at all, but I built it and I know exactly how it works and if anything breaks, I know how to fix it. I could have gone out and bought everything new from someone who builds glass blowing equipment for a living, but I believe that there would be no soul in my studio. That being said, I did built my equipment to be the biggest and the best. I have very few limitations when it comes to making my work. Lastly, the biggest correlation between glass and fishing is the success rates. Getting skunked fishing is exactly like blowing glass for 3 hours only to have a pile of broken glass on the floor. You tried... you went through the motions, but something was wrong. You set a goal and you failed. The puzzle is understanding why you failed. Was the tide wrong for this spot? Was my glass too cold when I went to put it in the annealer? What were the breaking fish eating and why wouldn't they touch my lure? Why was my bubble not blowing out evenly and why couldn't I get the lip to flare out evenly? It's all about problem solving. It's all about learning from those that are better than you, and it's all about not getting discouraged and quitting when things don't go as planned. Also, never ever think that you have it all figured out. The day that I sit back and say: "I know everything now" is
the day that I have failed the most. The day that you believe that you don't have to learn anything more is the day you should hang up the rods or throw your glass blowing tools in the dumpster. There are guys who are one trick ponies. They are good at yo-yoing bunker over schools of bass, but they might be awful at working a needlefish over a boulder field. There are glass blowers who can only make one design. I am a firm believer that to truly master a trade or anything for that matter, you have to master everything about it because it is all related. Once you can start putting the puzzle pieces together, everything becomes easier and you can find fish anywhere and catch them. With glass, you can be handed a design drawn on paper and make it without a struggle.
Is there a special piece of artwork that is close to your heart? The last project I worked on was probably my favorite and the one I am the most proud of. I was commissioned by the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts to reproduce the glass hurricane shades that sat inside the old gas lamps on the outside of Fairhaven Town Hall. They needed ten identical glass cylinders that were 12" wide and 18" tall. What made this job so hard was that the glass had to fit inside a beautiful hand forged iron frame and the glass cylinder had to be open on both ends. Because it was open on both ends, I had to blow a "bubble" that was approximately 26 inches tall and cut out the middle of the bubble to get a piece of glass that fit the dimensions. I thought it would be pretty easy to make these pieces but what I didn't predict was that I was going to have a high loss rate in the cutting process and that my calculations were off on the contraction rate of the glass. Therefore, the first nine shades were too wide to fit into the iron frame. When I discovered that my calculations were off, I almost threw in the towel and gave up. However, once I went through the learning curve, things went smoothly and all of the pieces came out great! What made this job so special to me was that I was given a challenge and I had to teach myself how to reproduce a piece of glass that to the best of my knowledge hadn't been made since 1850. This goes back to my grandfather telling me that you can make anything once you figure out the process.
Is there anything we can look forward in the future from you, fishing or art? I wish I could make a crystal ball!! In today's economy I will take what I can get. The days of making whatever I wanted to and expecting it to sell are a thing of the past sadly. My plan is to market my services to architects across the country and try to get some larger custom jobs, be it custom lighting or decorative glass for public spaces. As far as making lures is concerned, I do have an idea for a new soft plastic “weapon of bass destruction”. I don't want to spill the beans, but all I can say is that I have noticed that there is a type of soft plastic lure that is very, very popular, yet in my opinion is slightly flawed for surfcasting. What I intend on doing is breaking down all the fundamentals of the lure that makes it so successful, and then add what I know will make it better. From there, all that is left is to build the body around the engineering of the bait and presto: you have just created a new lure. Thanks, Eben, and good luck in all your future endeavors.
To see more of Eben Horton’s work you can visit The Glass Station at www.ebenhortonglass.com
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DAVE ANDERSON
Maybe it’s the fact that surfcasting originated in the Northeast (Yankee ingenuity), or maybe it stems from the fact that the early surfmen were people who wanted to make a living fishing but could not afford a boat nor could they afford to buy a lot of lures. Therefore they would modify their lures to fit a specific situation rather than buying new ones. Whatever the reason was at the start, we now have the tools to modify our plugs and tune them to work the way we want them to.
Maybe it’s just a case of my not knowing the whole story, but in the “good old days” surfmen were buying plugs from the great plug makers: Danny Pichney, Donny Musso, Bob Pond and Stan Gibbs. But even then surfcasters still made modifications to these master works. These days there are upstart plug builders on every street corner and a lot of them produce poorly made plugs that are painted to look so pretty that a new age plug collector can’t resist them. This means that if you actually intend to fish them rather than hang them from the rafters in your man cave, you’re going to have to put that thing in a sleeper hold and wrestle it into submission. Then there will be the times when you will pack your plug bag to fit a specific situation but the forecast will have been wrong or the fish will have congregated in an area you didn’t expect. You’ll be left with plugs tailored for a shallow point with a strong sweep but you are fishing a deep hole with nothing to penetrate the water column and get down to where the fish are. Enter the “on the fly” modifications that were pioneered by our surfcasting forefathers. It is first important to understand the inner workings of your plugs and to really get intimate with them and know how they work. Since I am a longtime plug builder (yes, another one!) I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of the ins and outs of what makes a plug shimmy and shake.
Metal lip swimmers work on a very simple relationship between buoyancy, weight placement/amount and turbulence caused by the lip. The basics of how a metal lip swims starts with the lip. The lip digs into the water and tries to drag the body of the plug under water, because the wood is so buoyant it fights the lip and rolls on its side, taking the path of least resistance. The game would be over here if some ingenious gentleman hadn’t thought to add weight to the plug body. When enough weight is added, as the plug rolls the weight will take advantage of that pesky thing Isaac Newton discovered called gravity. As the body rolls, gravity pushes down on that added weight causing the plug to roll back down to center. Now, momentum takes hold and the weight swings past center and forces the lip to dig on the other side of the body. This starts the whole process over again only this time it swings the other way. These very basic principles are the mother of that sexy swim we all love so much when we watch that Danny plug snake slowly back toward the boots of our waders. The weight will also be the pivot point for the swimming action of the plug. Most Pikies, for instance, have their weight in the chin (the originals were made this way) and that pivot point up close to the line tie gives the Pikie its signature wide tail wag. A Danny is weighted at just about the mid-point and in turn the signature tight, slow wobble comes from that weight location. Sort of an unfortunate side effect of this pivot point/weight placement fact is that swimmers, as a general rule, do not cast well. If you put the weight in the tail in order to increase the castability of the lure, you make it impossible for the plug to wobble.
The problem we have these days is that there are many plug makers out there who don’t have a grasp on this principle and therefore their metal lips swim like banana peels. So, how can you make the best of a bad buy? One idea is to sit on the plug for a few years and trade it on Stripers Online when the collectors go gaga for it because the builder went out of business. Or you can assess the situation and then take the steps to give the lure new life. I know, just what you want, a chore to do after you spent 30 good bucks on an ill-made swimmer. So what’s the problem? One common problem is that the weighting is situated to the right or left of center which makes the lure swim with a limp. Maybe a better way to describe it is that it wags much more dramatically to one side than the other. Picture Michael Jackson with epilepsy. Fret not, my friends, there is an easy way to put the moonwalk back in your plug’s dance routine. Put the plug in the water and swim it slowly on a short leash of line. Pay particular attention to which side features the more dramatic kick. Remember which side it is. Now get your pliers out and take a firm hold of the neck of the plug, you may curse the name of the builder while doing this—ooh my ears just started to ring! Grasp the lip on the side opposite the drama-wag and curl the edge of the lip in to shorten the reach of that side of the lip. Further finite adjustment may be necessary, so swim the lure again, you should notice a big difference. Essentially what you have done is shortened the lip on one side which makes up for the misplaced weight.
Something that irks me to no end is a plug with wild action. I mean, do these guys even test these things?! If the plug is just overly “rolly”, you might, MIGHT be able to tune it without smelling freshly drilled wood. First, try replacing the belly hook with one a size or two bigger, the added weight is sometimes all that’s needed. If that doesn’t do it try bending the line tie up, bringing the fulcrum closer to the middle of the nose can reduce roll too. If that doesn’t do it, try reducing the angle on the lip bend, the shorter the reach of that lip, the less roll your plug will have. Then try tinkering with different combinations of the above adjustments or just use them all. If you’re still not satisfied—your swimmer needs a tummy tuck.
If the roll couldn’t be tuned out, if the plug kicks out (rolls over) during the retrieve or if the action is a wild wig-wag that you can’t calm, the plug was either not weighted properly or (gasp!) not weighted at all. Fixing this requires major plug surgery in the form of adding weight. If you don’t want to drill holes in your new custom swimmer, by all means don’t! You can try adding giant hooks or even a thick, gaudy tied tail to slow things down. But 99 times out of 100, surgery is your only hope. It’s either that or hang it up like a year-round Christmas ornament (it will also serve as a shining reminder of the money you wasted.) For starters remove the hooks so you don’t end up with a new kind of extreme body jewelry if the drill bit snags. Now inspect the belly of the plug and look for the “shadow” of the existing weight. Most builders’ weights can be seen, try as we might to conceal them. Find that weight and now get ready to drill. If your plug is “rolly” or kicking out, add weight as close to the existing weight as possible, this will preserve the pivot point but will stabilize the swimming action. If your plug swims wildly, add weight roughly one third of the plug body’s overall length back from the weight. This weight placement will fight against the pivot point
and help calm things down. The amount of weight needed is going to vary greatly and will depend on the size of the plug and also the severity of the problem. If your swimmer is kicking out, be prepared to add as much as a half-ounce of weight or more. One ingenious way to find the proper amount of weight was relayed to me through a message board online. Buy a few bags of egg sinkers in 1/8, Ÿ, 3/8 and ½ ounce. Using a pair of pliers to hold the weight, screw a long screw eye through the hole in the weight (a second pair of pliers may be required to turn the screw eye as it digs deeper into the lead.) Do the same to each different weight egg sinkers. I should also mention here that it is advisable to wear protective gloves when handling raw lead. Drill a small pilot hole in the location where you want to add the weight, put the hooks back on and head for some water with a rod. Now you just need to keep swapping out the weights by screwing them into the pilot hole and making test swims to find that perfect weight.
6”
Existing weight. “Just too rolly.” “Too wild.”
(2/3 of the length of the plug body back from the nose).
When you’ve determined the proper weighting, remove the hooks again and drill out that pilot hole to accommodate the proper-sized sinker. If the body of the plug is too narrow to accept the egg sinker check njtackle.com or capecodtackle.com to see if they sell belly weights in a comparable weight that will fit into your swimmer. When drilling, take special care not to hit the thru-wire. Now slather the inside of the hole with five minute epoxy (take special care to cover all bare wood with epoxy to seal it from water intrusion) and press the weight into the epoxy.
You could reattach the hooks now and fish it with great success. If you are a little more particular about the look of your plugs, fill the hole flush with more epoxy or an exteriorgrade wood filler and paint the repair to cover the scar. A great way to match up the pearlized finish of many custom plug paint jobs is with nail polish. You can buy it at WalMart. Depending on your comfort with your own masculinity, you could sift a few bottles of nail polish in with a myriad of more manly items like shotgun ammo, charcoal, motor oil and work boots. You could wimp out and have your wife buy it or you can just man-up and ask the young girl working the cosmetics department which color matches the belly of the plug best! Yes, bring the plug with you. Whatever your method, make sure you buy a solid white and a pearl white and apply a coat of solid first, it’s like primer—get it? And yes, you can find, black, purple, gold… not sure about school bus yellow but the color possibilities are endless. Now let’s talk about poorly laid out plugs. Over the years I have bought, traded for or been given a lot of plugs. Inevitably, there have been some that swam great but were not properly engineered. This means that the hooks might interlock (marry) or that the hook can reach up and round the lip or nose of the plug. One thing I can promise you is this, if you have a plug that can do one of these things, even if it only does it once, it will happen when you have a big fish in your sites. The only option is to fix the problem before it happens.
Very often the fix is as simple as eliminating the split ring from the hook attachment equation. This means using cut hooks. All you have to do is get your hands on a pair of pliers that are capable of cutting the eye of a treble hook and cut one side of the loop as close to the shank as possible. Then grasp the hook eye above the cut and bend the eye open, just enough to let the hook hanger through the space. Then simply bend the loop back shut. If the hooks are still able to marry or hang on the front of the plug, you may want to mention the problem to the builder and see if they might make you a replacement with the hooks placed in a better location. Jointed eel plugs are notorious for having hook marrying problems that can’t be fixed by removing the split ring. This problem stems from the original designs when plugs always seemed to feature more and bigger hooks than we generally use today. I attribute this to the fact that back then every bass had a dollar amount attached to it, so losing a fish was even more painful than it is now (if you can believe that!) The problem is the middle hook, to fix this problem take that middle hook out and go up a size on the remaining two sets of trebles. Jeeze, this is extreme! Okay, I know I have a tendency to take things to the extreme. There are plenty of times when you need your favorite swimmer to hold a little better in a rough sea, or you want that Atom Junior to wake along the surface a little instead of diving 18 inches below. The
best plugs for tuning in my opinion are Atom Juniors, Medium Dannys and Atom 40s. These plugs are versatile and have a proven track record as big fish killers. First off, let’s lay out what these plugs are supposed to do right off the shelf. The Junior is designed to swim within two feet of the surface, and usually settles between 12 and 18 inches below on a slow retrieve. If you want to get a little deeper, bend the nose loop up with your pliers, if that’s not enough, beef up the front treble. If you want the lure to run shallower, bend the loop down and slow your retrieve. I have had some great nights in the spring with an Atom Junior that was tuned to swim right on top. Danny swimmers are designed to swim on the surface, leaving behind a bulging v-wake as the lure wiggles along. Personally, I am almost always happy with this but at times, certain versions of the Danny don’t hold up to the rigors of a rolling surf. For this situation I recommend bending the loop up slightly. This will encourage the Danny to dig into the surf. It might not throw a wake for the whole retrieve, but it will stay very close to the surface and present a very wide and lively silhouette to any striper lurking below the waves. Sometimes a builder will make a Danny that has too much weight and therefore it swims below the surface. To many this is a mortal sin and the plug will be hurled into the nearest trash barrel. The only fix that can save them is to beef up the rear hook and bend the nose loop down. This will decrease the angle of the plug when it pulls itself underwater and in many cases get it to swim on the surface like it’s supposed to do. If you want the Danny to swim deep, do yourself a favor and buy a Conrad. Don’t try to make this plug do what it’s not designed to do.
LIP UP
PLUG DOWN
Ahh, the Atom 40, there is a special place in my heart for it. This swimmer is one that has the ability to cull out the biggest stripers in the school. There is just something about that large silhouette and that deliberate, punchy swimming action that drives stripers insane. Before we get into tuning the 40, I need to tell you that if you don’t carry one at all times, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. There have been many times, like last night, when I couldn’t buy a hit on any of my other pet plugs. I tossed that A40 out there and got slammed. The 40 should swim on top or less the 10 inches below the surface. They are a great option when fishing an area with a strong sweep, you don’t even have to reel, just let that big swimmer chug along and hang on. Sometimes, the 40 can get a little temperamental it may stem from fluctuations in wood buoyancy and since the body is so big it has a greater effect on the motion. I’ve had some that fluttered on top, almost feeling like the old Arbogast Jitterbugs we all used to toss to largemouths. An upward bend in the nose is usually enough to finish off the fluttering. Then there are the ones that feel heavy, getting down a little too much with a more streamlined wiggle. These are the ones you want to save for nights with big surf, but if you must tinker, bend the loop down to bring it back to the surface. Finally, as stated above, the A40 is a killer in the current, but sometimes the current can be a little much for the 40 without a little hotwiring. If your Atom isn’t holding, bend the loop up slightly and consider going up a size on each of the belly trebles.
Being able to tune metal lips properly is a game of experimentation. It’s like cooking or fishing in general, it takes time to develop the touch or the feel to make the right changes. You’ll notice that I barely mention messing with the lip, you really only want to do that in extreme cases. Something that is perhaps even more important than understanding the ins and outs of tuning is buying smart. Don’t be afraid to ask the builder questions about his work, ask about conditions the plugs work best under, ask about action and ask about any design flourishes you see in a builder’s work. You will be able to tell a lot about his passion for plug making and his knowledge of fishing. If you don’t like the answers or he can’t come up with good ones, don’t buy the plug! You will fill your bag with much better choices if you take that one simple step.
THE SOUND OF FALL RUNNING By Rich Troxler
I didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. It Ihappened aminolder now. the same manner that ripe apples drop from their trees. I woke up one morning and looked in the mirror and what looked back at me made me jump. The male ego makes no allowances for occurrences such as these. As if that were not enough, I have recently had the misfortune of losing some family members and friends. The result of these combined experiences has compelled me to examine my own mortality, something I have never truly owned up to until this time. Balancing the scale of one’s life is not an easy task and my own history has proven to be no exception. I have always believed that life goes in one direction and one direction only. You either get busy living or you get busy dying. As such, I have never dwelled much on the past, other than to use it as a quick reference guide for what works and what doesn’t. But now that my own personal “Measuring Stick of Life” is on the line, I have been forced to turn my mind’s eye from forward to back, an introspective that has taken me deep into my past. Ahhhhh, another day of floating in my nice warm pool! Uh-oh, what’s going on, who pulled the plug! What are you pushing me for?? And all these lights, hey bud back off, that’s my noggin you’re grabbin!!!! WHY ARE YOU SPANKING ME???? WHAAAAAA, WHAAAAAAA.
I first saw the light of day on October 13th in the year of our Lord 1952. By standard reckoning, that makes me 57 years old. My Mother told me that the day I was born, most of the day had been beautiful, sun shining and unseasonably warm. Then she said the strangest thing happened. Right about the time I was being born, an intense thunderstorm popped up and knocked out all the power to the hospital. Amidst the ensuing chaos of birthing by battery back up and flashlights, she had a vague memory of the nurses screaming about red glowing eyes, but figured it was just the medications they had given to her earlier. Days later, when my Mother mentioned the storm to our neighbors and friends, none seemed to remember any storm on that particular day. Apparently, it had been a highly localized event. Milford Hospital was the place of my birth and Milford Ct. is the town I grew up in. Milford hospital is about a mile from Long Island Sound, and I sometimes wonder whether my early exposure to the thick, sweet smell of salt water, had anything to do with my later interest in the denizens that swam within it. Milford was an incredible place to grow up in and I consider myself most fortunate for having spent some of my youth there. Nestled between the two bustling cities of Bridgeport and New Haven, Milford was a quaint little town whose major industry was providing summer vacation housing to the city masses. As such, the stretch from Milford Harbor, through Silver Sands Beach to the west, and right on down Broadway, offered every distraction that any kid of my day could have wished for. Miles of open beach, roller-skating rinks, amusement parks, skee-ball palaces, pinball game rooms, you name it and we had it, topped off by every kids ultimate adventure fantasy, Charles Island! No kid could have asked for more.
Unlike today, I grew up in a far simpler time. We didn’t lock our doors when we went out and everybody knew everybody else for at least ten blocks. Unfortunately, in the thralls of my youthful exuberance, I failed to grasp this basic small town paradigm. So, whenever I managed to get into mischief, which was quite often, there was always a wooden spoon waiting for me when I arrived home. Whenever I would ask my Mother how she had known of my transgression, she would always reply, “A little bird told me”. I pondered this for a very long time. Subsequently, I began bringing my BB gun with me everywhere I went, resulting in my unfortunate nickname “Killa”. I would be proud to say that it was my father that first took me fishing and that his influence, his part in my indoctrination into the piscatorial pursuits, was part and parcel in establishing deep bonds between us, but this was simply not the case. My father never caught a fish in his life and I have never held it against him. He taught me many things, but fishing wasn’t one of them. Fishing came to me, like many of the other things we experience in our lives, by random happenstance. Something as simple as a childhood friend of mine getting a cane pole for Christmas and seven months later inviting me along for its inaugural use. At eleven years old, all water had been primarily used for swimming and bathing, but that would soon be changed forever. On that fateful day, we rode our bikes down to the “Ressie”, the local run-off from the state owned reservoirs, with the proverbial can-o-worms and cane pole firmly in hand. A simple bamboo pole, a short length of Dacron line, and a hook, was all it took. We didn’t even have a bobber.
Upon arriving, we parked our bikes at the end of the path and walked out on the concrete embankment that lined the western edge of the pond, heading toward the outflow located roughly in the middle of the embankment. We never made it very far, for as we glanced down into the shallows, we saw several spawning beds scattered amidst the weed clusters, with “sunnies” on them. At this point I feel compelled to say that some things simply get lost over time, during the long transition into adulthood. Looking back, the sheer joy and anticipation we felt as we watched those sunnies chasing each other, defending their territory, is something rarely duplicated in adult life. It is the kind of thing that burns itself into one’s memory and never leaves. Unable to contain our enthusiasm any longer, we finally got a worm on the hook and lowered it down to the nearest bed. To our complete surprise, the resident sunnie jumped on the baited hook in an instant and was promptly lifted out of the water and over the embankment, serenaded by our triumphant yelling. While my friend manned the pole, I scrambled to grab the flopping sunnie, proceeding to get stuck by the fins several times before finally getting it under control. I can clearly remember looking down at that fish in my hands, and thinking that I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. In the short time that followed, I learned that what we had caught was a Pumpkinseed Sunfish, but the true significance of that day was that it was one of the few “singular” events that altered the course of my life forever. My brain had been imprinted by the hand of fate, and there was no turning back. The only question that remained was how I would attain the means to pursue this on my own.
As previously mentioned, I grew up in a time very different than the world we live in today, in many respects. As “youngins”, we were encouraged at an early age to learn the value of working for a buck, and late into my eleventh year, my predisposition for hanging with an “older” crowd paid dividends. With my Father’s cautious approval, I had the great fortune of snagging the ultimate kiddy venture, a paper route, from one of my older friends who had “retired” from the business. I had become an entrepreneur, charged with the enormous task of delivering the New Haven Register to a large area of my neighborhood. It was a great gig, and fairly profitable too. With coin in my pocket, life had never felt so good. Driven by my newly discovered fishing “obsession”, I promptly swore off any frivolous candy and soda expenditures, saving every penny of my profits for that which I knew I must possess. For I had seen the future and it resided in the local Western Auto store, which was the premier hardware and sporting goods store of our quiet little municipality. It took the form of the newly introduced “spinning” reel and matching fiberglass rod, in ghastly orange color. The price tag of this magnificent fish-catching combo was $6.75, a fairly small price to pay for the average adult, but a King’s ransom to a kid of that time. My resolve never wavered.
In the weeks that followed, I spent as much time as I could manage at the “Ressie”, making it a priority to talk to every person that fished there, young or old. In the process, and much to my Mother’s dismay, I started hanging out with a boy several years my senior, who went by the name of Jimmy. My mother’s dismay came from the fact that Jimmy’s family lived in Peter Prudence Village, Milford’s equivalent of the wrong side of the tracks. Compounding this bad geographic location was the fact that Jimmy was a high school drop out with a reputation for being a tough kid who often got into trouble, all this courtesy of my older sister. Despite my family’s negative feelings towards him, it was Jimmy who educated me on every fish that swam the waters of the “Ressie”. Why he answered my incessant questions and tolerated me following him around everywhere he went, I will never know. Perhaps it was my completely naïve nature, or my unabashed fascination with something he also loved to do, whatever the reason, he was an incredible resource of information. Pickerel, Perch, Bluegill, Pumpkinseed, Yellow Shiner, Catfish, all were identified in due time, as well as the tactics for catching them, delivered straight into a mind that could not soak it up fast enough. I craved his knowledge and desired his friendship above all else. I still recall a certain cool, late August afternoon, watching in awe as he calmly hooked and landed seven Pickerel in less than an hour from the Ressie outflow, all on a red and white Daredevil spoon. At the time, I figured that the Daredevil spoon must truly be the answer to all things fishing, and I vowed that it would be my first purchase after I attained my own rod and reel. Jimmy had other ideas. When he handed me his rod
and asked me if I wanted to take a few casts, I remember my hands shaking in anticipation. Under his careful guidance, I managed my first casts with a spinning reel. When I hooked a Pickerel on my seventh cast, the bond of friendship between us was complete. Looking back, Jimmy wasn’t a “bad” kid, he was just high-spirited, with a penchant for making up the rules as he went along. And his influence had an immediate effect on me. As interesting as the “Ressie” was, when he spoke in hushed whispers of the fishing possibilities a mere stone’s throw away, in the state owned reservoirs, I was powerless to refuse his invitation to join him on one of his “fishing safaris”. Seduced by the tales of Pickerel as long as your leg, Perch that attacked your bobber, and Catfish the size of logs, the dangers he related to me involved in treading on this forbidden ground, were mere icing on the cake. This, my first of many adventures with Jimmy, corresponded to the exact time that I had saved enough money to buy my first rod and reel. It should come as no surprise that it was Jimmy who accompanied me to the Western Auto store that day, to share in the joy of claiming my long sought after prize. For me, it was truly a day of days. It wasn’t until late that morning, after counting and recounting my money more than a dozen times, that we finally rode our bikes into town. I could not have been more wound up if I had been a clock.
Upon arriving at the store, I literally jumped off my bike, leaving it sprawled on the sidewalk, and ran inside. Jimmy, the ever street-wise kid, locked both of our bikes with his chain, to the light pole located just outside the entrance. By the time he entered, I had already flagged down the man behind the counter and was well into making my purchase, frantically counting my change to see if I had enough to cover the hitherto unbeknownst “TAX????” As fate would have it, the extra tips I had picked up from my previous weeks paper delivery covered the “mysterious” tax, and the deal was struck. FINALLY, the prize was mine, in all its glory, and I was beyond words. Enveloped in the smell of freshly waxed wood floors, I stood in the aisle, staring in awe at the new world of fishing possibilities held in my outstretched hand, when Jimmy bumped my shoulder and whispered “let’s go”. Mindless and adrift in the afterglow of my new purchase, I offered no refusal to his suggestion. Outside the store, he unlocked the bikes, hastily stowed the chain and lock around his seat, and again suggested his previous recommendation that it was time to leave. We headed back along the well-trodden route from which we came. He was in the lead as we reached the fountain near the center of town, when he unexpectedly slammed on his brakes. I almost crashed into him, this due to my vapid preoccupation with the rod and reel clutched in my right hand. We are never too young to develop good driving skills. My bike skidded to a full stop just to the left of his, having narrowly escaped spearing him in his back with my new rod. He looked at me for a few seconds, as if trying to make up
his mind about something important. As I blankly stared back at him in total ignorance, he reached into his pocket and pulled out two Daredevil spoons, one red / white, and one black / white and handed them to me. I stared at them stupidly. He said, “Take’em, they’re yours”, and he extended his hand further toward me. I took them from his hand, the smiling devil’s head logos leering at me from their cardboard backings. I had no idea what to say, so I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, “Thanks for buying these for me”. He smiled slightly, paused again and then said, ”No problem, five finger discount.” I was totally clueless as to what that meant. So that very afternoon during the first week of September, armed with my new rod and reel, I was off to experience my first “fishing safari”. Our only stop, after Jimmy’s house to pick up his rod and backpack, was the corner Texaco gas station, this for a half-gallon jug of Dad’s Root Beer and a pack of Tareyton Cigarettes. Jimmy, like many kids his age, had taken up the habit, as it was considered the cool thing to do. After that, it was a quick ride west down US1, (the old Post Road that runs from Maine to Florida) to just past Landsdale Ave, where we ditched our bikes in the brush on the side of the road. I received the privilege of lugging the Dad’s Root Beer.
For me, the walk in was probably the most intense thing I had experienced in my short life. The only words Jimmy spoke as we entered the dense pine forest that surrounded the Reservoir were “If you see the Water Company guys, run as fast as you can”. I didn’t bother to ask what would happen if we got caught, because I was sure that it would be worse than the horror story that I had already played out in my mind. The excitement I felt as we crossed into the forbidden zone was palpable. My palms sweated under the weight of my fishing pole in one hand, and the Dad’s in the other and my adrenalin pumped senses reared at every sound and movement. Then a curious thing happened. As we got deeper into the north side of the pine forest, all of the background sounds that I had become accustomed to hearing in my daily life gradually receded, until the only thing I could hear were the bird’s songs, the rhythmic sounds of late summer insects, and the soft padding of our feet on the pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. And then it happened. For a brief moment, in the still of the afternoon sun, time stopped. To this day, anytime I come upon the smell of pine needles baking in a warm afternoon sun, it immediately and without fail, triggers memories of that day. We worked our way around the north face of the Reservoir, neither of us speaking much along the way, to a point that jutted out into the middle of the Reservoir. There was a small island to our right, about a long cast away from the shore that we were walking on. Jimmy informed me that we were on Pickerel Point, and claimed that the largest Pickerel he ever caught came from there. Once again, he had my full and rapt attention.
Upon arriving at his favorite spot, he laid his rod down and pulled a switchblade knife from his pocket, along with a short length of cloths line rope from his backpack. I had never seen a switchblade before, so he showed me how it operated, demonstrating colorfully in mock battle with the nearest trees and bushes. At the conclusion, and with great flourish, he stuck the blade into the ground, right up to the hilt. He took the rope and tied one end to the Dad’s Root Beer finger loop, and made a loop in the other end, which he placed around the hilt of the knife. The Dad’s went straight away into the drink. I hopped out on to the edge of a small hassock, one of many that dotted the shoreline in that area, and bent over to look at the bobbing bottle of Dad’s, amazed by it’s ability to still float. By that point I couldn’t help myself and foolishly asked, “Why did you put the soda in the water?” His response was to put his foot to my ass, and kick me into the water. I plunged in face first, arms waving awkwardly. My initial surprise at being booted into the drink was immediately supplanted by the shock of icy cold water on my skin. I quickly scrambled onto the shore, sputtering and gasping for breath. Laughing, Jimmy reached into his backpack and threw a towel at me. I grabbed it out of the air as a sudden sense of unease, no doubt from the stories I had heard about him, quickly crept into my brain. In response to the obvious confusion and apprehension he must have seen on my face, he said “Cold huh?” My head bobbed up and down in the universal kid motion of assent and as I quickly dried my face, he continued. “Ever wonder why we catch Pickerel and Perch in summer from the Ressie? I replied by shrugging my shoulders, yet another universal kid motion that signified “Dunno”. But because he had mentioned fishing, my apprehension gave way to curiosity, as I figured another fishing lesson was in the offing.
“It’s because this lake comes from springs in the ground, and it flows over at the spillway dam, into the Ressie.” I had absolutely no idea of what he was talking about, this being the typical state of affairs between us, so I tossed out the only thing I knew to say in those situations. “Really?” Again, he laughed. “You got no idea what I just said, right?” I smiled sheepishly and started to laugh. Still laughing, he said, “Just means the water comes up from the ground and it’s really cold. It’s not normal. So how do your balls feel?” At that, we both laughed so hard, we wound up rolling on the ground with aching stomachs. Shortly after my “christening”, we began to fish in earnest. I caught several Pickerel during the first hour or so with my new gear and gifted Daredevil spoon, and I was in fishing heaven. Despite Jimmy’s assertion that they were “small”, they were in fact bigger than anything I had seen caught in the Ressie, so I wound up keeping 3, just to impress my family. Jimmy, on the other hand, had caught squat up to that point. Jimmy was fishing a really big version of the red and white Daredevil spoon. He claimed it looked like a Sunnie to a big Pickerel, but due to his lack of production up to that point, I had my doubts. But the “Doubting Thomas” in me would soon be shown the door. His yell made me jump. I quickly turned to the left and what I saw caused me to stop reeling in mid-retrieve. Jimmy was leaning way back with his rod arched in a completely unnatural manner. Through the unruly shock of red hair covering his eyes, he glanced over at me, a huge smile cutting his freckled face in half. His jubilant cry of “GOT ONE” echoed across the lake and for a moment I cringed at the thought that the “Water Company Guys” might have been in earshot.
I quickly reeled in and moved closer to where Jimmy stood, locked in a battle that could only be described as epic. I had no prior knowledge of what “drag” was, so the buzzing sound coming from his reel was completely alien to my ears. But I dared not ask any questions, as it was apparent even to my thick skull, that combat was being waged and the outcome was in the balance. Jimmy offered no running account of the battle, only the grunts and half muttered words of someone who is used to doing this on their own. I watched intently as he leaned on the fish, repeatedly bringing it to the surface, only to have it streak off each time, leaving large wakes in the surface of the calm lake. But each time, the buzz of the drag grew shorter and gradually the huge fish began to tire. After what seemed like half an hour, but in reality was probably no more than four or five minutes, Jimmy finally dragged the monstrous Pickerel onto the shore. He quickly bent over and grabbed the big Pick by the gill, stepped back and sat down hard, wrapping his legs around the fish to subdue the final slaps of its tail. The battle over, his eyes came back into focus and he looked over at me. The big smile returned, “Nice fish huh?” Once again, my head bobbed up and down in that universal kid motion of assent. By the time he fully vanquished his fish, it was mid afternoon, and knowing that I had to get home early that day, or face the wooden spoon, I started getting ready to leave. While I grabbed a few more swigs from the Dad’s jug, Jimmy produced some more rope from his backpack. He quickly showed me how to string my fish together and asked if I knew the way out. I told him I did, thanked him for the rope and the soda, and started out. I wasn’t happy about having to leave, especially after THAT fish, but school was starting in a couple of days, and my Mother wanted me home early for some thing or other. As it turned out, this would be my last time fishing until after school started.
After getting to where we ditched our bikes, I quickly mounted mine and rode home, proudly displaying my catch from the handlebars for all to see. Arriving home, I parked my bike in the garage and made for the front door, my three Pickerel in tow. Rounding the garage I saw that my Mother was already standing on the front porch and she had that dreaded spoon in her hand. I stopped dead in my tracks, my mind frantically trying to remember what I had screwed up this time. Drawing a blank, I held up my catch in defense, “Look what I caught”. She calmly looked at me and asked “Did you catch them in that Water Company Lake?” Involuntarily, I quickly scanned the skies for aviary informants, ruing the fact that I had neglected to bring my BB gun with me in my earlier haste. Stupidly, I decided to go for it, “No, I caught them in the Ressie, REALLY.” Her gaze sharpened and when she spoke my full name slowly I knew the jig was up, for whenever my Mother spoke my full name, there was always hell to pay. “You know better than to lie, DID YOU CATCH THEM IN THAT LAKE!” Seeing no point in prolonging the agony, I acknowledged defeat and hung my head, “Yes”. She pointed to the door and said “Get in the house NOW”, and seeing where she was standing, I knew what was coming. As I passed her and reached for the doorknob, she let a good one go on my butt. It really didn’t sting much, but I made the same mistake I always made of trying to block the follow up shot with my hand. Her next one caught me clean on the knuckles, and that one did hurt. I wound up getting grounded for a week, during which time school started. The first days of school always sucked. This was due to a couple of older kids that had
my number and after a summer of avoiding them, I knew they would be raring to kick my butt for old time sake. As expected, it didn’t take them long. At the end of the second day of school and just outside school grounds, they cornered me by a ditch in the road where large concrete sewer pipes were being laid. With no place to go, I stood there like a deer in the headlights, knowing only that which would soon come my way. After the customary knocking of the books out of my hands, came the taunts and the shoving. This was the prelude to the main event, served up in slow and savoring manner. Right about the time they were ramping up, I caught sight of Jimmy coming around the corner lazily peddling his bike towards the school. His nose for trouble immediately picked up what was about to happen to me, and he raced over on his bike. My two antagonists were too busy closing in on me to notice his approach.
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Doing the one-foot-on-the-pedal-side-saddle-rapid-dismount thing that boys do, he hopped off his bike in full run, aiming his bike at one of the boys while plowing full bore into the other, knocking him into the ditch that they had me pinned against. Before the other boy knew what had happened, Jimmy had him on the ground and he threw him a beating the likes of which I had never seen before. About the time he was finishing up, several local residents started yelling about calling the cops, so Jimmy hastily collected his bike and we high-tailed it out of there. On the way home, he asked me why he hadn’t seen me around. We came to my street as I finished the story of my grounding and after thanking him for saving my ass, he just laughed and rode off with a wave of his hand. I figured after what had just happened, there was sure to be a wooden spoon waiting for me when I got home, but was pleased to find none when I finally arrived. The little flying tattle-tells must have missed this one. That following Saturday afternoon Jimmy showed up while I was mowing the front lawn. After killing the mower and walking over to the curb, where he impatiently stood with his bike, he asked me if I knew what a “Snapper” was. After my customary shoulder shrug he said, “Grab your rod and let’s go”. I ducked inside to let my Mother know where I was headed, all the while making empty promises about finishing the lawn before Dad came home from work. At the last, I emerged with rod in hand and in short order we were off to the outflow at Silver Sands Beach. On the way, he explained the life cycle of a Bluefish to me as well as how to catch them. Upon taking up our stations on the outflow supports, we proceeded to catch one Snapper after another, again, on Daredevil spoons, but this time with the paint scratched off, courtesy of Jimmy’s ever-present switchblade, leaving nothing but chrome. After the tide ran out too far, Jimmy showed me a quick way of cleaning my
catch, a few scrapes of his blade to remove scales, pinch the head off and pull out the guts. Easy squeezey. Producing an edible food source went a long way in gaining my Father’s forgiveness for not getting the lawn mowed. This day repeated itself a few more times, until Jimmy told me that he had gotten a job and would be pretty busy from there on in. I continued to fish whenever I could, straight through the fall, until the snappers left for warmer waters and skim ice started appearing along the shores of the local ponds. I also entered my 12th year on the planet and in celebration had received a goodly amount of that which I desired most, fishing lures. During the winter, I would occasionally run into Jimmy, sometimes at “Suicide Hill”, the monster hill we rode our sleds down when it snowed, or Niggs Pond, where everybody ice skated when the temperatures favored us with solid ice. He would either be watching over his younger sister or hanging with his older friends, but regardless of the company, he always seemed pleased to see me. Then out of the blue, one Saturday morning somewhere around the middle of February, Jimmy knocks on my door. I was fortunate to answer, considering my Mother’s view of Jimmy was still fairly dim. He seemed out of breath, as if he had just ridden long and hard on his bike, but what really caught my attention was the fishing rod he held in his hand. “The frost fish are in” were the first words out of his mouth after we exchanged the mutual greeting of “Hey”.
“Frost fish?” Responding with my usual blank expression he quickly urged, “C’mon knucklehead, get your rod and let’s go, and bring some boots.” Without any idea of where I was actually headed, I ran a fictitious plan past my Mother for approval, which was reluctantly granted after much begging and pleading on my part. Sweater, coat, gloves, hat, and boots were summarily donned in record time, and out the door I went, rod in hand. Heading in the direction of the Sound, I correctly surmised that this would not be a “sweet-water” adventure. Minutes later, we locked our bikes in the rack at Silver Sands Beach, just east of the Boat Livery, where the sand bar that extends all the way to Charles Island at dead low touches shore. There were a few other hardly souls already there. With Jimmy in the lead and me carrying the pail, we walked out on the receding sand bar heading toward the island, until the water reached our boots. Deeper water lay just off the bar to our left, and this is where we began to fish. With my usual “Golly-Gee” attitude I asked what I should do. He said, “Just pretend you’re fishing for Pickerel or Snappers, you’ll see”. Jimmy was the first to hook up. He cranked the fish straight in, unhooked it, and threw it in the bucket. I stopped fishing and walked over to the pail, just to see exactly what it was that he had caught. It looked like a prehistoric, silver, Pickerel like fish. About the time I had satisfied my curiosity, he threw another in the pail. “You gonna fish, or are you gonna stare at’em all day”. At my no doubt embarrassed expression, he cracked his big smile and started to laugh. “C’mon, let’s go.” It took about four or five casts for me to hook up, but after that, we both had the speed down and the fishing was hot and heavy. We filled the pail in short order, which was a
good thing considering that every extremity of my body had started to go numb. The walk back in was filled with fishing banter, intended to distract us from the cold and pain we felt in out hands and our faces. The ride home was brutal, but the rewards of producing another edible meal for my family were well worth it. My Mother immediately identified the mysterious frost fish as Whiting. Yes, Whiting, in Long Island Sound. How times have changed. After thawing my hands and feet, and regaining some degree of dexterity, I scaled, finned and gutted the Whiting, leaving the head on at my Mother’s request. The reason for this became apparent when she later prepared them for dinner. She took the tail, stuffed it into the fish’s toothy mouth, and then tied it shut using poultry string. The resulting fish ring was dipped in batter and deep-fried, a cooking skill developed from her Southern upbringing. She called them “fish donuts”, and they were exceptional, but would probably not be considered “heart-healthy” by today’s standards. I only saw Jimmy a few more times that winter, during which time he had scored his driver’s license and bought himself a small motorcycle. But spring was coming, and our best adventures awaited its arrival. Sometime around late April Jimmy surfaced again, pulling up in front of my house on his new ride, rod in hand and backpack strapped to the handle bars. “Flounder are going wild at the docks, grab your rod and hop on.” Knowing instinctively that there was no way my Mother would allow it, I told him I would meet him there. He laughed knowingly and took off. Having already done my chores for the day, it was an easy sell to my Mother, and I vowed to be home at the expected time.
I grabbed my rod, hopped on my bike and pedaled quickly, as I had missed Jimmy’s company over the winter and I was anxious to fish with him again. By the time I dismounted my bike at the town dock, Jimmy already had several fat Flounder in his pail, but seemed to be paying little attention to his rod leaning against the piling. He was on one knee, bent over at the edge of the pier, with a piece of twine in his hand and appeared in deep concentration. As I walked up behind him, I couldn’t help noticing that the tip of his rod was bobbing up and down, signaling the presence of a FISH. “Jimmy, you’re rod…” was all I was able to get out before his hand went up in that classic “quiet please” fashion. I stood there, torn between the urge to pick up his rod and reel in whatever was at the other end, and my curiosity at what had so captured Jimmy’s attention. I didn’t need to wait long, as he quickly started pulling in his twine, hand over hand, with the surprising end game of lifting five Eels over the side of the pier, all seemingly stuck to a strange ball at the end of his line. He ran the squiggling payload over to his bucket and dropped them in. Finally acknowledging my presence, the only thing he had to say was “That’s good for a quarter.” As usual, I had no idea of what he was talking about. Using a rag lying next to his bucket, he yanked each Eel off the ball, and when all had been removed, carried the pail over to an old man sitting in a folding chair, rod in hand. After a brief exchange, Jimmy dumped the contents of his pail into the old man’s cooler and returned to reel in the, by now, gut hooked Flounder. A quarter richer, he told me that the old man’s name was Gus and that he paid a nickel a piece for big Eels. I soon learned what the strange ball connected to Jimmy’s line was. As he threw it back into the water, his method for catching the eels was quickly explained as a can of cat food
and a rock, inside a section of women’s hosiery, tied off with a length of rope. Drop it off the dock and leave it for a while until the Eels tangle their teeth in the stocking, then pull them up. I quickly adopted this method of Eel fishing, despite the awkwardness of asking my Mother for her worn nylons. It proved to be an effective means of secondary income throughout the summer, considering the returns I was getting on the cost of the cat food. Until I made the stupid mistake of trying to cheat Gus! Catching him asleep on a warm July afternoon, I snuck the Eels that I had previously sold him out of his cooler, and then woke him to resell them to him. In his slumbered state of mind, he trustingly paid without checking. I thought I was being slick, but the next afternoon when I arrived at the dock, Gus would not even look at me, let alone accept the apology I shamefully offered from what I considered to be a safe distance. I had clearly lost a dependable source of income, but more importantly, I had betrayed the trust of someone who had trusted me. On the cusp, I had learned my first real lesson of adulthood, that making right or wrong decisions is like drinking from a cup. I had mistakenly sipped from the wrong side of the cup, and found the taste to be bitter.
Despite this misstep, I was in the spring of my life and life was truly magnificent. The days flew by in a dizzying series of adventuresome events, some concluding with the ever-present wooden spoon, but with the memory of the day always being well worth the pain. I caught my first Striper later that spring, while fishing solo for Flounder by the old Gulf Street Bridge. It was at most 18”, but fought like nothing I had ever experienced before. Two old men who were fishing nearby came to help out, offering instructions and words of encouragement. “Must be a Striper” suggested one, “Keep the rod tip up, don’t let’er in the rocks” shouted the other as he made his way down to the waters edge. By the time the old man lipped my fish, the adrenal rush had me shaking like a leaf. He brought it up for me to see and having never seen a Striper before, I was immediately struck by the beauty of this fish. The man assured me that it was a keeper, back then 16”, and asked if I wanted to keep it. As much as I was encouraged to bring home fish for the family, for some reason I can no longer recall, I decided to let this one go. When I later told the story to Jimmy, he laughed and wondered how a knucklehead like me could catch a Striper. As spring moved into summer and school let out, it was full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. We started making the trek out to Charles Island to fish new waters, twice getting stuck over night when we lost track of time and had the incoming tide cover the gravel bar going to shore. Those were memorable nights, sleeping by a fire in the rock ruins of the old monastery that once stood on the backside of the island, dining on blackened Porgy, steamed mussels, and all the blueberries, blackberries and raspberries you could eat. The first time was good for a couple extra whacks with the wooden spoon, the next time when I finally returned home, my Mother just shook her head with that “What am I going to do with you” expression and told me to go take a shower. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
For the rest of the summer, we occupied ourselves with several more fishing safaris on Water Company land, in pursuit of what I now believe to be Pike, as there is no way that Pickerel could have ever grown that big. Sadly, I never did get one of them to shore, even though I hooked up twice. We would also wade the Charles Island gravel bar at mid-tide, struggling against the current, gigging Fluke and the occasional skate, with homemade spears. And when we took a break from fishing, there was always Broadway. As summer deepened, we fell into the habit of sneaking out on the livery boats after they had closed for the day, once again, courtesy of a more trusting time. This was a whole lot of fun, until we got caught. Being escorted home in a police car did nothing to endear myself to my parents, and no doubt set the neighborhood tongues awagging. It was during my subsequent grounding that my Father made the announcement. One night, while all were present at the dinner table, he told us that he had taken a new job on Long Island and we would be moving there in three weeks. My two older sisters immediately burst out in tears, excused themselves and ran to their room. I sat there stunned, as my brain slowly wrapped itself around what it had just heard. My baby sister just looked around confused. In the hours and days that followed, the enormity of my situation became a weight to heavy to bear. My sisters and I pleaded with our parents to change their minds. We apologized for things we hadn’t done, made promises we’d never keep, and railed against the injustice of pulling us away from the only place we had ever known, and ever wanted to know. All to no avail. The last two weeks of my time in Milford were spent packing, discarding, cleaning, and more packing, all carried out in a numb gray haze. I was allowed to go fishing a couple of times, but my heart was not really in it. Jimmy did what he could to cheer me up, and
it actually worked for the short time I was in his company. Then the day arrived. The moving van showed up at around 7:00 am and the loading began immediately. Jimmy showed up around 11:00 am and despite my parents long standing dislike for him, he was allowed to hang around the house to keep me company. We obliged by staying out of the way. We talked some, but the grayness of the hour found little expression in words. In what amounted to slightly less than a year, Jimmy had become my benefactor, my protector, and my friend and I knew I would miss him greatly. Fully packed, the moving van left shortly after 3:00 pm. After throwing a few more suitcases, small boxes, and the cats in the back of the rental van, it was time for us to leave. The simple act of climbing into the passenger seat of the van was one of the hardest things I have ever done, and when the door slammed closed, so to had that chapter of my life. As the van backed out of the driveway, Jimmy waved once and took off on his motorcycle. As we drove out of town, I watched through somber eyes as the only place I had ever known disappeared into the rear view mirror. Three days into my new life on Long Island, lost in the disassociated culture shock of “development� housing, streets of bland sameness, sumps, crowded beaches you had to PAY to get into, I would come to learn via my older sister, that Jimmy, at the all too young age of 17, had been killed in a high speed motorcycle accident while being chased by the police for speeding.
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This article has been adapted from "Doc" Muller's Surf Fishing Annual, originally published in 1994. Doc's publication served as our inspiration when we started the Surfcaster's Journal Magazine. We are proud to feature this classic article by Doc Muller in this issue of the Surfcaster's Journal Magazine. It originally appeared in Volume 1 of the Surf Fishing Annual. ARTIFICIALS for BIG BASS Patience and Discipline are Keys to a Trophy By William A. “Doc” Muller The quickest route to a trophy bass is to use bait, and I don’t think too many experts would disagree with this statement. However, many surf fisher people prefer artificials and want a sound plan that will put them into an out-sized bass using artificial baits. Oddly, for all the bait fishing I do, and I do a lot, the biggest bass I’ve caught using bait has been 35 pounds. The 53 pounder that graces the wall of my office was caught on an artificial. In fact, all the fifty pound class bass I’ve caught have been caught on artificial lures.
I share this with you so you’ll be confident that it is possible to catch very large bass on lures. However, there is a hitch. That is, you’ll likely work a lot harder at catching those monsters when you use lures as opposed to bait. KEY FACTS 1. BE PATIENT! If you like lots of action, these techniques are not for you. Inevitably, lots of action involves small fish because there are so many more small fish than large ones. 2. DON’T FISH AROUND SMALL FISH Yes, big fish do swim with small fish, but the smaller fish are so much more aggressive that it becomes next to impossible to catch a big fish with a lure. One Halloween, my friend Brian and I were into a load of bass and blues that were running baby bunker up and down a beach all day. Finally, as the tide neared flood, the fish cornered a load of bunker against a jetty. It was cloudy and the water was gin clear. Brian climbed up on the jetty for a look see and his eyes almost popped out of his head. Mind you, the biggest bass we’d caught was 14 pounds. “Bill, there’s a school of 30s and 40s lying on the sand! Throw your plug over here.” I did as I was directed. Standing on the sand, I angled a cast towards the jetty and began cranking the plug down. “Good! One’s coming off the bottom. Almost there. Keep reeling, almost on it. Damn!” Brian’s play by play told me what my eyes could not see. Although the slower large bass were very interested in my 1 ounce plug, smaller fish beat the big fish to the plug every time. Just in case you’re wondering, we also tried big plugs, tins, and bucktails, but the results were the same.
3. USE LARGE LURES Although it is quite possible to catch a big fish on a small bait, big lures discourage small fish and big bass are often angered by the noise and gaudy action of bigger lures and they will attack them. As you can tell from item #2, it isn’t a perfect world.
4. BE DISCIPLINED If you are unable to stay focused and make every cast count, cast after cast, hour after hour, then your presentation will be sloppy and your odds of fooling a trophy go way down. It takes discipline to concentrate thoroughly on what you’re doing when nothing is happening, but it is an essential ingredient for success. When, after two or three hours, a 45 pound bass wanders into the strike zone of your lure, two things must happen to be successful and catch that fish. One, the presentation must be perfect. Imperfections will cause a fish to either never become curious or lose interest sometime during the pursuit. Second, you must be ready for the hit so you can strike quickly and hard. The mouth of a big bass is tough and you’ll need very sharp hooks and a quick strong set to put the steel home.
5. FISH WITH APPROPRIATE TACKLE. I see so many anglers on our beaches who are under-gunned. They may have fun with the little fish, but the big ones give them and their tackle fits. Look, just because your rod is eleven feet doesn’t mean you’re automatically outfitted correctly. Rapid taper rods, so common everywhere, can not deliver big baits for distance, and they can’t drive even sharp hooks into tough jaws. If it’s a trophy you seek, please get a parabolic eleven foot rod that will allow you the opportunity to hook and land your trophy. While we’re at it, your reel and line must match the rod. I prefer Penn’s recently reintroduced 706Z because it is rugged, casts far, and is reasonably priced. The Daiwa BG 60 and BG 90 are also serviceable reels at a reasonable price. There’s also the Van Staal reel which is a precise instrument but costs up to $400. The Penn 850 SS is another solid surf reel. Please don’t use the 750 SS reel on an 11 foot rod because you’ll be undergunned. Whatever the reel you use, fill the spool with 20 pound test line. Although you’ll gain some distance with 15 pound test over 20, it isn’t a lot of yards in the final analysis. However, what you’ll gain with 20 pound test line is the ability to really lean into a cast with a wind in your face, maintain a 7 or 8 pound drag with confidence, be able to make a solid hook set, and have some insurance against sharp gill plates, rocks, and shells. I like Berkley’s Big Game Line and Fenwick’s Salt Line.
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FIVE GOOD LURES There is almost an infinite variety of lures to choose from in today’s technologically oriented marketplace. However, technology doesn’t necessarily produce a better product, and some of the best lures available are traditional standbys. They work and are still around because they have never stopped catching fish.
SEVEN INCH REDFIN I have been high on this lure for daytime big bassin’ for years. At first I thought I’d stumbled onto something that only I knew. However, the last few years I’ve watched fishing videos where others use this lure to catch big bass in fresh water at places like Norris Lake in Tennessee, the Chattahoochee River in Georgia, and Lake Cumberland in Kentucky. They use the lure the same way I do, catch bass, and have the same problems I do. The biggest problem with this lure is that you lose a lot of fish because of the way the fish rise to, then roll over, the plug when they hit. However folks, this minor drawback is offset by the fact that this lure will attract bass and trigger them to strike when nothing else will in daylight. Further, it will catch them when they are in a neutral or negative feeding stage. I am talking exclusively about the floating model of the lure. It should be retrieved so that it wiggles on the surface, leaving a V-shaped wake. The lure is not suitable for big wave water, but try it in sounds, bays, and inlets. You’ll like it!
BUCKTAILS
No one knows for sure how long bucktail lures have been used to catch fish, but I’ll be modern bucktail has its roots in primitive society. Bucktails catch all species of predators and all over the world. However, they are not idiot lures. That is, you can’t just cast them o must be worked properly. The biggest mistake I see people make is they give the lure motion. A bucktail should flutter, not bounce, for best results. Simply twitch your wrist time. Most hits will come when the lure drops back an inch or so. If the bucktail bounc actually spook a predator. The second biggest mistake I see involves the speed of retrie at least some bucktails to rocks and clutter, then you aren’t fishing them properly. For p bucktail should be worked close to the bottom. Bucktails work best when there is som such as in the inlet channels, under the light at Montauk, off jetty tips, and around bridg porkrind for added attraction and action.
et the precursor of the s in all kinds of water, out and reel in. They e too much bouncing slightly from time to ces wildly you could eve. If you don’t lose peak effectiveness, a me depth to the water ges. Attach a strip of
METAL LIP SWIMMERS This is another plug that requires reasonably calm water, so inlets, channels, bays, and sounds are appropriate places to try them. There are, however, calmer days when big bass chase big bait into the ocean wash or near it, and big metal lips will work great at those times. Although you should feel comfortable adjusting the eye of the plug up and down, don’t bend the lip. Only very experienced surf fishermen can get away with doing this. Most often a bent lip renders a metal lip useless. Bend the front eye down to get the plug to ride higher, and bend it up to get the plug to dig deeper into the water. There’s a time and a place for both. Calm water in daylight, it seems to me, is the right time for a surface swimming plug. On the other hand, night time with some wave action seems to suggest we get the plug a little deeper. Big metal lip plugs like the Atom 40, Atom Junior, Danny Plugs, Larry’s Lures, and Bob Hahn plugs are quality products. Incidentally, metal lip swimmers are the best choice for making an eel skin plug. More about that another time.
BOTTLE PLUGS AND DARTERS These two types of swimming plugs are ideal for rough water and rip fishing. For that reason they have been mainstays at Montauk for years. They cast well and “bite” well. That is, they catch the water well enough so that even the rise and fall of waves doesn’t stop their action. In order to get the most out of them in rough water, stay in touch with the plug at all times. That is, increase and decrease the speed of retrieve as the waves push and pull on the plug so that the plug works at the same speed at all times. In a rip, cast out and retrieve slowly. These big plugs can be used to tempt a trophy at any beach and under any type of water conditions. These plugs should be in your bag at all times from September 1 until the end of the season. Old reliable models such as the Gibbs and Super Strike brands are excellent choices and they have caught a lot of big fish over the years. I recently helped develop and test a new breed of lures called Strike Maker, and this line includes the Throttle Bottle. Believe it or not this is the entire recipe for catching a trophy bass on an artificial, the rest is up to you. Remember, there are no secrets spots or secret lures. All the lures I’ve discussed will catch a wall hanger, but only if you supply the most important ingredient of all. You must not only put your time in, but you must invest a lot of time with discipline, focus, and patience. Hey, if you do catch one, think about letting it go to fight another day. I can tell you from experience, it burns a life-long memory into your brain. Doc has recently teamed up with Zeno Hromin to bring you an updated version of his best selling classic, “Secrets of Surf Fishing at Night”. This classic book that features chapters written by legendary angler Al Bentsen, Fisherman Senior Editor Fred Golofaro, High Hill Striper Club luminary Roger Martin and of course Doc Muller, is now once again available at your local tackle store, Amazon.com and Surfcaster's Journal Online Store.
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Roger Martin has fished the rocky beaches of Rhode Island, plowed through soft sand on Cape Cod beaches and navigated the treacherous rocks of Montauk. But most of the time, you'll find him close to home, on the sandy beaches or the back bay marshes of Long Island’s south shore. Over the last half century he has written numerous articles, authored a chapter in William Muller's book “The Secrets of Surf Fishing at Night” and given many presentations on the subject of surf fishing. He was taught how to rig eels by his friend, the late Al Bentsen and has passed this knowledge on to many others. Roger and his wife Marie are co-editors of the Surfcaster's Journal and they are the ones who labor over our sloppy writing, bad grammar and terrible pronunciation errors. For that alone they should be saluted. Zeno Hromin is the author of two recent bestselling books, “The Art of Surfcasting with Lures” and “The Hunt for Big Stripers.” He is a budding angling photographer who has won numerous awards for his camera skills. He is one of the founders of the Surfcaster's Journal and a frequent contributor to the Surfcaster's Journal Blog. You can get more information about Zeno on his website www.zenohromin.com
Lou Caruso is a long time member of the Farragut Striper Club, Surfcaster's Journal official "Rod Guru" and one of the most well regarded custom rod builders on Long Island, NY. His website is www.louscustomrods.com Tommy Corrigan is an insanely driven, ridiculously talented dude who designs the Surfcaster's Journal magazine from his head. No guidelines, no drafts and no boxes into which to plug articles. Everything that you see is the result of late night inspirations on those nights when his better half makes him stay home. When he manages to sneak out you will probably find him on a local beach, plying his craft. His talents are vast and range from music CD cover designs, to posters, books and t-shirts. Don't be surprised if the design on the shirt you or your kid is wearing was created by our design guru. Vito Orlando might be one of the most popular anglers ever to walk the beach. His ever present smile is disarming while his wonderful sense of humor is infectious. Although he has fished the beaches of Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, Vito is always drawn back to his beloved rocky shores of Montauk Point. One of the true Montauk regulars, Vito is known as a white water bucktailer extraordinaire. William "Doc" Muller is one of the most dedicated and successful surf fishermen on the east coast. An accomplished author, publisher, editor, lecturer and professor, he possesses a wealth of knowledge about the ocean and how to fish it. He authored and coauthored many books on surfcasting and recently teamed up with Zeno Hromin to bring to market an updated edition of his bestselling book “Secrets of Surf Fishing at Night.” Doc has also written two nonfiction books. His latest, “Vanishing Cures” received many accolades and has earned him an Editor Award. Doc published “The Surf Fishing Magazine” in 1990's, an excellent publication which inspired us to start the Surfcaster's Journal magazine.
Dave Anderson is an editor of “The Fisherman Magazine”, New England edition. You have probably read many of the articles on surf fishing he has written over the years for that magazine and other publications. What you probably did not know was that Dave is also a well respected plug builder who creates exceptional lures under the name Surf Asylum. You can receive his newsletter by dropping him a line at surfasylumlures@yahoo.com Rich Troxler has roamed the south shore bridges on Long Island under the cover of darkness longer than he is willing to admit. A very observant angler, he spends many nights following the migration of baitfish in the back bays in order to gain a better understanding of the striper’s feeding habits. Rich is well respected among his peers for his tenacity as well as for his skills. Jason Dodd is an avid surfcaster and a well respected lure builder from Long Island, NY. His creations, built under the simple "Jay's Plugs" name are quite popular although he produces only small batches as his schedule allows. The reason for that is that Jason also serves in the military as a Master at Arms / First Class Petty Officer (MA1) - Small Boat Coxswain specializing in Anti Terrorism / Force Protection, Port Security, Maritime Interdiction Operations (non compliant vessel boarding search and seizure). He has fished in Africa while stationed there and in other exotic locales but his first love always remains chasing stripers on the south shore of Long Island. You can contact Jay at doddjay@yahoo.com
Henry Gilbey is a man of many talents. He is a writer, photographer, TV presenter and consultant, driven by an insane love of fishing. He has served as the host of fishing shows on the Discovery Channel in Great Britain. His photography has graced the pages of many fishing magazines and his skilful photo talents have been used in publishing and by fishing tackle manufacturers. But he will be the first to tell you that first and foremost, he is a fisherman. You can see Henry's work at www.henry-gilbey.com
see you in 2011
surfcasters journal