Swing for the fences for weakfish, bluefish, bass and fluke on one trip.
Up for a challenge? How about catching virtually every bayside game species available all in the course of one day? Transitional water temperatures, days and nights that skirt both comfortably cool and pleasantly warm, and generally placid weather patterns are a synergistic overlap making June the prime time month to bat for the cycle of weakfish, striped bass, bluefish and fluke all in a one day affair.
New Jersey waters offer up plenty of opportunistic bayside haunts hit it out of the park including Barnegat Bay, Great Egg Harbor, Little Egg Harbor, Ludlam’s Bay, Cape May backwaters or even Sandy Hook’s bayside among many other rivers and shallow bay systems. Once you have your destination, here’s how dial in the pitch.
#1 Weakfish (Night)
Might as well start off with the most elusive of our outback Big Four. Tiderunner weakfish patrol the night shift of the bayside channels and flats, silently mauling baitfish up until the subtle crimson glow of the predawn hours. Drift over a flat or ledge, and cast uptide with a 5-3/4-inch Bubble Gum Fin-S Fish or pink Zoom grub, working it back at an ultra-slow pace in the mid to lower part of the water column, gingerly raising the rod vertically up and down, with an occasional twitch here and there. Weakfish will lightly hang on the artificial, and once you feel a light tap, set the hook forcefully but set an ultra-light drag to insure the hooks do not rip through the weakfish’s paper mouth.
To target smaller, but albeit many more weakfish, switch up to grass shrimping. Anchor up on a descending ledge, dishing out handfuls of shrimp into the water where a running tide will set up the buffet line. Set back with a float rig, a 24-inch piece of 15-pound fluorocarbon line, and a size 1/0 baitholder hook lanced with three shrimp, the first through the carapace, then the other two piled on, hooked on through the rostrum. Send the float back out 20 yards into the slick and leave the bail open, awaiting the strike to set the hook when the line peels off for a good three count.
#2 Striped Bass (Dusk/Dawn)
Stripers may also offer up a bit of a challenge as they may only be feeding during low light hours of night, sunrise and sunset, limiting your time window to target them effectively. False dawn is the most preferred time to work near the inlet areas or along any prolific sod banks of the backwaters. Poppers or rubber baits tossed against the sod banks or around inlet rock jetties at sunup are the top two ways to score.
On outgoing tides baitfish schools spill out of the channels into the baywaters where you can deftly launch a popper right up the sod bank, then draw it off gurgling to trick a bass to ambush the popper from below. In deeper channels or toward Inlet rocks, drop down 3 to 4-inch Storm paddletail shads or NLBN soft baits on half-ounce to 1-ounce leadheads, jigging them off the bottom.
#3 Fluke (Daytime)
The easiest pitch to hit is most certainly the fluke as prime time fishing abounds in most backwaters for flatfish throughout the whole month of June. Find fluke sunning up on the 4- to 7-foot flats outside the ICW channel edges in the breakfast hours, then when lunchtime comes around, work the slopes of the ICW channel as fluke begin to hunker down in the deeper slope of the channel into 10- to 15-foot depths. Personally, 3/8- to half-ounce white, or white/yellow, or white/chartreuse round head bucktails with a white 2/0 bucktail teaser 18 inches above do deadly damage to hang fluke during the peak tide hours around the slack times, as bucktails can be utilized to maximum capacity on a vertical approach.
When the tide gets running to fast to effectively use a bucktail, switch up to strip baits on a fishfinder slide rig, with a 50-pound barrel swivel, then the sinker slide with a 3 ounce bank sinker, a 30-inch piece of 25-pound fluorocarbon leader, and a size 3/0 Octopus hook snelled on the tail end with a fresh cut 4- to 5-inch strip of mackerel, bluefish, sea robin, spearing or squid. Drag the strip baits through the channels and let the undulating enticement work its magic.
#4 Bluefish (All Day Long)
| THE AUTHOR’S BAG |
| Rods: Shimano Terramar TERSES70MHB 7-foot medium to fast action spinning rod
Reels: Light spinning reel Shimano Miravel 5000, Penn Battle III 4000 Lines: 20 to 30-pound Power Pro braid Leader: 12 to 25-pound Seaguar or Yo-Zuri fluorocarbon leader Lures: 5-3/4-inch Bubble Gum Fin-S or pink Zoom grub, quarter- to half-ounce leadheads; 4-inch Tactical Angler Popper, Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow; Daiwa SP Minnow, 4-inch Storm Shad; 3/8- to half-ounce white Andrus bucktail, white/chartreuse 3- to 4-inch Berkley Gulp! Swimmin’ Mullet grub, NLBN 3.75-inch paddletails |
Now’s the time to park it and bring it all home. From sunup to sundown, bluefish can be on the move in any backwater channel, flat or expanse ravaging bait schools throughout the day. Birds will betray the telltale signs of roving packs of bluefish pushing bait up onto the flats. Grab the rod rigged with a 4- to 5-inch popper and cast to intercept the schools. Commotion is key here. Cast smack dab in the middle of the melee and create intense splashing and gurgling on the water surface at a quick pace. If a blue misses the strike, keep the popper in one place and pop it, and it will surely be smacked immediately.
Mostly “cocktail” blues of 1 to 3 pounds, as well as a few “choppers” of 3 to 5 pounds will be terrorizing the area to pounce on the popper, but leftover choppers of 7 to 10 pounds from our outstanding May bluefish run may still be hanging around.
Set a new goal this season in gunning for a back bay grand slam. Nothing is more satisfying then when you hit that last species out of the park to round the bases bringing it on home.
