With the amount of Striped Bass around these days, plugging in the back bays with light tackle can be a GREAT way to catch them. It’s fun, a little more challenging than bait fishing and it can be done from shore, from small boats and even from a kayak.

First things first… the fish you’re targeting… the Striped Bass. Bass are “ambush” predators, no two ways about it, they will find places to set up and wait for food to come to them. They are also very structure oriented, meaning they use things like bridges, marsh banks, bottom contour and currents to find their food. Keeping these basic characteristics in mind you can dramatically narrow down the places to start plugging.

Tackle: There is no wrong or right tackle set up for this type of fishing and the only thing we recommend is to use an outfit that is suited for the plugs or lures you’re planning on using. Personally, for conventional outfits, I like a 7′ (ish) baitcasting style rod with a low profile baitcasting reel. The exact model I use is the St. Croix Premier series PC 70 MHF with the new ABU Garcia Revo Inshore reel. The rod is a fast action, light weight rod that can throw anything between 1/4 ounce and 1 ounce very comfortably and the new Revo reels are smooth as silk, hold plenty of line and they have a massive drag for their size. For line on this outfit I like the good old Berkley Big Game in 12 pound test. For a spinning outfit, again a 7′ rod and reel loaded with 10 or 12 pound test. Personally I like my St. Croix Premier, PS70MHF, and a Shimano Stradic ST4000I.

For lures, there are a million lures that will get a Striper but you should basically have enough to cover the water column, from top to bottom. Starting on the surface, poppers can be an effective and fun way to fish. Some of my personal favorites are the Smack-It’s, You-Zuri Mag Poppers, Storm Chug Bugs, and the Tsunami Talking Poppers. These all work quite well and they’re equipped with hooks that won’t get mashed if a bigger fish eats it. Moving down in the water column, swimming plugs are hard to beat. Some lures swim up near the surface, some deeper and some swim at a depth that you determine. A few of my favorites are the Bomber A-Salt, Yo-Zuri Live Bait Minnow, Yo-Zuri Mag Darter and a variety of plastic baits like Tsunami Swim Shads, Fin-S Fish, Slug-Go’s and Bass Assasin’s. What’s nice about the plastic baits is they can be fished at any depth depending on how you rig them and how you use them… extremely versatile baits! Finally, fishing near the bottom is always effective and lures like the previously mentioned plastic baits and Bucktails are hard to beat. I tell many of our customers that if I had to choose one lure to catch a Striped Bass, for the rest of my life, I would choose a white Bucktail! Bucktails are very diverse too, meaning they can be fished higher in the water column, you can swim them or jig them, but I like a slow steady retrieve along the bottom for this type of fishing.

Where to fish is the most difficult part, but with a little common sense and experience you can easily find places that hold fish on a regular basis. Current and tides play the biggest role in plug fishing in our area and around here it’s hard to go wrong around high tide. I always liked the later half of the incoming tide or the first half of the outgoing, and i do NOT like fishing around slack tide. Remember, these fish stalk they food, so when the current isn’t moving all the bait fish are scattered about and they don’t concentrate in any particular order or any particular condition. But when the current is moving, the bait fish will find a place they like and set up shop and now and then when they try and move off somewhere they get swept into areas where the Bass are waiting… those are the places to fish!

Add this to:

Shake the cobwebs off the gear folks…. It’s spring, the water temps are rising, the ice is gone and it’s time to go fishing again!

Flounder season is basically the start of our entire fishing season in this area and although the Flounder population, in our bays, have been at historically low levels, people still can’t wait to get back out on the water. Many people use the Flounder season as a “shakedown” for the boats and gear… to get everything ready for Bass fishing and Fluke fishing, but for those that still try, there ARE some Flounder to be caught in our area!

Here on the south shore of Long Island, the Winter Flounder season is basically the first fish we can fish for in the spring and although everyone would love to fire up the boats and blast off to their fishing spots, too often the best spots are simply overlooked. The water temps are still cold in the early spring, so those Flounder are going to be hiding in areas that warm up fastest, like the northern sides of our bays. Typically, like any other body of water in North America, the north side gets the most sun, therefore heating up faster. What also helps the water temps are the dark mud bottoms. These conditions can commonly be found in the mouths of back bay creeks and canals. We here of more people catching flounder right from their docks, than from those who venture off into the bays. The canals typically have thick, mucky, mud bottoms and subsequently hold all kinds of bait creatures that the Flounder love to eat… worms, mussels, grass shrimp and crill, to name a few.

The usual Flounder baits are Sandworms, Bloodworms, Clams and Mussels and I know that if I were going Flounder fishing I would absolutely have a little of each. One day they’ll eat the sandworms and the next day they may want the mussels, so I like to have a selection with me… because you just never know! I can recall a number of flounder trips where I was catching fish and others around me were simply watching, because I had one particular type of bait that they did not.

Once you find a good looking spot, START CHUMMING and DON’T STOP! Put the chum pot on the bottom… loaded with clam or mussel chum , break up some mussels, crush some clams or clam shells and don’t forget the corn… yes, corn. Spread it all around the boat, especially up-current from where you’re anchored, to make sure it’s on the bottom where your lines will be. We sell dried corn in the shop or you can swing by any grocery store and pick up a couple cans of corn. The theory behind the corn is that the yellow color resembles part of the inside of a bank mussel and attracts the flounder. I remember working on the party boats as a kid, spreading corn all around the boat while we were fishing and then finding the corn in the bellies of the fish when we fillet them…. so we know they eat it!

Rigging for Flounder is quite simple, one or two hooks with a 12″ leader tied a couple inches above your sinker. Flounder are flat fish that live on the bottom, in some cases buried in the bottom, so make sure whatever rig you choose, it’s the one that will keep your bait laying on the bottom! There are a wide variety of hooks that can be used and there is NO right or wrong hook, so to speak. Flounder have very small mouths and no teeth, so the hooks should be big enough to hold the bait your using and small enough for them to suck it all in, in one bite. Personally, I like a size 6 or size 8 sproat style hook but Flounder hooks with beads on the line, above the hooks, seem to be very popular as well . The yellow beads, for example, seem to have a similar effect as chumming with corn, looking like part of a mussel. Red beads are thought to look like part of a worm and theoretically attracting fish to your bait. Working in a tackle shop affords us the benefit of listening to what everyone is using, even if it seems like a gimmick. People go as far as to paint their sinkers yellow and red, looking for any advantage they can get. Over the past few years we’ve seen rigs with rattles in them, small yellow and red twister tails, blades and about a million other types of hardware too. I don’t know, I’ve used about every hook imaginable and don’t ever recall any beads making a significant difference in my hook up ratios… but it certainly can’t hurt, that much I can say. Pre-tied, ready to fish flounder rigs are also readily available and we stock a wide variety of them. Again, in our opinion, there is NO wrong or right rig to use as long as that rig will keep your bait ON THE BOTTOM!

These are just some of the basics, and it really is a kind of “meat and potatoes” style of fishing. Anchor the boat, chum like crazy, keep those baits on the bottom and have plenty of patience.

Go Get Em!!

Add this to: