A new age of fishing in an old spring hot spot.
So, what’s new? The easy answer is a lot, but that answer avoids the details. And as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” A more helpful response to the question would be, well it’s complex. Of course, that too, says nothing and is less than satisfying. An honest response must include something like this: Many things have changed over time that mold what’s new from what’s old.
This amount of double-talk is likely to cause two possible responses from the reader. One, turn the page and go to another article, or two, be intrigued to read further. Since I’ve taken some trouble to write this piece, I hope you choose door number two.
The details include changing spring weather patterns, changes in bait species composition and abundance, new technology, and a smaller population of striped bass. I believe that in the last hundred years scientists have made the point clearly that everything in Nature is involved with everything else. Therefore, all the above factors plus some we haven’t even thought of have changed the landscape of fishing everywhere, including during the early season in Little Neck Bay.
Weather Changes
Let’s start with spring weather. Spring weather is supposed to feature warmer temperatures, lighter winds, and fewer coastal storms. It turns out that these are precisely the right ingredients to facilitate successful spawns of bait and gamefish. However, in the last 6 years or so our springs have been more like extensions of winter: cold, windy, and wet. Cold and windy weather results in poor fish spawns.
Thus, when we begin the surf fishing season in Little Neck in April, we are missing a normal array of small young bait. Since there is less small bait food for gamefish, such as sand eels and young bunker, the gamefish fish spread out and become more difficult to catch. Remember, feeding competition is high in compact schools of fish and that creates the best fishing. However, the good news is that bigger fish still hunt for winter-over larger baits such as herring and adult bunker, and that increases our chances of tangling with one or two larger stripers.
My Lure Bag
Here’s what I carry in my Little Neck Bay bag: I still tote a few smaller lures in the 1/2, 3/4, and 1-ounce sizes just in case the schoolies show up in numbers. These include bucktails, leadheads with soft plastic paddletails, and a few 5-inch hard plastic tried-and-true swimming plugs such as Bombers, RedFins, and Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnows. I also carry one, 1-ounce Cordell pencil popper. Most of these lures are white, pearl, or chartreuse since, as you know, I don’t fuss about color.
With that being said, I also bring several recently introduced larger floating plugs, including the Yo-Zuri 6-3/4-inch Hydro-Minnow, the 6-inch Yo-Zuri Mag Darter, and the 6-inch Daiwa SP Minnow. Little Neck Bay is a shallow mud bottom harbor so I prefer floating models in all of these plugs. Even at that, I’m careful with the Mag Darter since it dives deeper than the others. I use the darter with a slow retrieve at higher tide and avoid casting it at lower stages of the tide.
In years gone by, a classic approach to catching Little Neck’s big stripers was to fish at night; probably still a good strategy, when fish over 20 pounds are more likely. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that in the last six years, we’ve caught 30 to 40-inch fish regularly in daylight.
Technology Advancements
Thirty or more years ago, we were just entering an era of explosive technological advances in lures and tackle. Some of the products that hit the market were not perfected, such as early braided lines that wore out quickly and split up into individual Kevlar fibers. When better braided lines arrived, they came to dominate among surf rats. Soon, the difficulties with many new products were overcome and anglers had an array of new toys and products to enrich their fishing. These included durable and powerful Van Staal reels, but early on, only in larger sizes such as the Van Staal VS 300 and 250.
Although new fish-catching hard plastic plugs exploded into the market at the end of the 20th Century, there were a few qualities lacking in many of them. These included limited casting distance, hook hangers that sometimes pulled out, and plugs that occasionally split in half where they were joined. They also developed leaks sometimes, plugs filled with water, and then they lost their wiggle.
Perhaps the most important deficiency was limited swimming action. Decades ago, an old timer told me that the best swimming plugs do two things, not one. “Yes, they wiggle,” he said, “but the best also roll side to side.” He called this the “rock and roll” effect. Back then, I found these two qualities present at the same time in only one hard plastic swimming plug: the C-10 RedFin. Anyway, because of this limitation, many surf anglers continued to use wooden darters, bottle plugs, and metal-lip plugs more often than the hard plastic models.
Over time, manufacturers refined not only the shapes of hard plastic swimmers, but also improved the manufacturing process that produced lures with very consistent action. These lures are super strong, have extremely consistent action, cast better than earlier styles, and they “rock and roll,” too.
Distance Factor
Decades past, surf rats often strained to reach feeding fish with hard plastics swimmers. However, the perfected models mentioned above cast like bullets by using a movable weight balance system that allows the lead to move to the rear of the plug on the cast. Then, when the angler retrieves the lure, the weight returns to the middle of the plug’s balancing point, so that it swims and rocks and rolls.
What does this mean to the modern surf angler, including those of us fishing early in Little Neck Bay? Simply stated, it means the lure attracts more attention from fish more often because of the life-like swimming motion. It also doesn’t hurt that tougher production techniques makes the lure more durable.
Tackle Combinations
Unless one fishes from a jetty, around bridge pilings, among moorings, or boulder strewn areas, there is no need for models with medium-heavy or heavy power ratings. Medium power combined with fast action is my favorite. Frankly, I believe that modern rod and reel technology has made 11-foot rods almost extinct. I use a 9-foot graphite ODM rod and VS 200, 20-pound-test Sufix Performance Braid, and a 30-pound leader in almost all venues. The only exception being a 7-foot rod and VS 150 when I’m fishing in shallow calm areas when distance is not required and the fish are small. Examples are, around South Shore drains, the backs of North Shore harbors, and the creeks entering Peconic and the Great South Bay.
My General Plan
Let me start with what I don’t do. I don’t fish when it’s very cold, say temperatures in the 30s or 20s. I generally don’t fish when it’s sunny and calm, except early in the month, or if there’s been a good run going on. I don’t fish in north, northwest, and northeast winds, because they turn the harbor into a mud bowl. Note I said wind, not breezes. Breezes up to 15 miles per hour are okay, but when it cranks over 20 mph, I stay home. I also avoid fishing after a few very cold nights, because the water temps fall and the bait and fish tend to retreat to deeper water.
Now, the conditions I prefer. I like mid-days at the start of an incoming tide during a new or full moon period early in April. At such times, the morning sun can heat the mud and warm the water on the flood tide: an exception to avoiding sunny days. Later in April the water is warmer, the mud warming process isn’t important, so in late in April cloudy is better.
Another strategic adjustment involves being more selective about tide and weather. In the days of abundant schoolies, we fished in sunlight and cloudy conditions and didn’t care about tides. Recently, we’ve tried to select cloudy days around the moons when tidal ranges are greatest.
Warm/Cold Approaches
| DAYS OF YORE |
| Whereas 30 years ago or so we could expect a trip to Little Neck Bay in April to entertain cold-legged anglers with 20 or 30 school bass, but in recent years the entertainment is more about fewer but larger stripers. For some, that may mean using a 9-foot rod instead of a 7-footer, also a larger reel, and 20-pound test line instead of 10 or 15. It also means we need to carry some larger lures. |
Early, when the water is colder, I work my lures as slowly as possible regardless of the lure style in order to entice lethargic fish to move towards the lure. I give plastic swimmers a quick twitch once in a while because it sometimes grabs the attention of a passing fish. I believe when the water is colder, the closer your lure is to a fish, the more likely it will strike. Also, slower retrieves give them more time to locate and swim to the lure. However, in warmer water, their natural predatory instincts play a bigger role and cause them to feed more aggressively. Therefore, I’ll retrieve plugs faster and twitch them more often and more sharply.
In colder water I retrieve bucktails and leadheads steadily with as little rod movement as possible, while later in the month I’ll twitch them or drop them for a split second because again, the fish react to sudden movement from a greater distance.
Thank Goodness for Braid
I frequently ponder how many fish hits I had when I used mono but never felt them. Braid, on the other hand, has no stretch and transmits the slightest touch of a fish to the angler. In cold water, fish often strike without enthusiasm. Sometimes with braided line, a hit feels like seaweed or something just laying on the lure. Those are hits never detected with mono. My advice, therefore, is strike everything and if it turns out to be seaweed, well, take it off and make another cast. Always keep in mind that what you think is weight might just be a cold, lethargic striper.
Some anglers bemoan the changing surf scene. True, we’d all prefer more fish and bait, yet we don’t control their reproduction. We have a choice, wince about sour lemons, or make delicious lemonade. Personally, I enjoy the challenges presented by changes because it forces me to adapt and keeps it real!
