Badges? You don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
Picture this, some dude is setting up a full on circus tent with stadium beach chair seating, a bunch of high schoolers are flailing in a spikeball tournament, designated swimming areas are filled with a mass of humanity and the scents of a thousand sunscreened beachgoers prepare to get sunburnt. And then there’s you, walking up to the surf, fishing rod in hand about to make the first cast as the lifeguard whistles to you to fish outside of the flags.
Summer is alive and kicking along the Jersey Shore. There is a way however to beat the beach blanket bingo and fish effectively; by cherry-picking your species and times, wading out to the sandbars, and timing your fishing before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m., with some mid-day exceptions.
Here’s how I go about beating the summer madness to tighten a line.
Morning Glory
Generally beach badge checkers don’t go into army mode until 9 a.m. which means you at least have until 9 a.m. to fish any beach without being harassed to show a beach badge. That leaves plenty of opportunity to fish the sunrise hours. Summertime sunrises generally pop around 6 a.m. and resident stripers will be feeding in the pre-dawn low light. Though they are mostly smaller in stature of around 22 to 28 inches, bass will eagerly hit small, slender soft baits such as Fin-S fish on light half-ounce leadheads. As well, they will chase after small poppers gurgled over the sandbar.
Once the sun pushes over the horizon, small cocktail bluefish will also be on the prowl at this time of day and small metals such as Kastmasters, Hopkins NoEQL or small Ava 007 jigs get torn up by the 1 to 3-pound tailors. You can have a full morning fishing affair and be back at home for a pork roll egg and cheese sandwich all before the crowds descend.
Afternoon Delight
The tricky part of Jersey beachgoing legislature is that during the daytime, anybody can fish or hang out inside the high tide line sans beach badge as its public domain, but you still need to walk over the beach to get there. That said, if you’re there before the badge checkers, you can stay there without harassment, but if you want to access most New Jersey beaches (except state parks) after 10 a.m., you will need to brandish a purchased badge. Once you have access to the water, the next strategic effort is figuring out where you can fish. Look for the white lifeguard stands and they will have boundary flags out to delineate swimming areas where you can fish outside of those flags.
Generally speaking, I am focusing on fluke in the cuts and sloughs during the high noon sun. A light half-ounce white Andrus bucktail, 2/0 Octopus hook teaser tied 16 inches above, both tipped with a 3- to 4-inch Berkley Gulp Swimmin’ Minnow is the setup of choice. Lighter rods and reels like the Penn Battle 4000 and St. Croix 7-6 foot Mojo rod spooled with 30-pound Power Pro and a 4-foot stretch of 20-pound shock leader of Seaguar Fluorocarbon will dial you in.
Summer Speedsters
When the tide is near its peak low, sandbars arise, giving you opportunity to wade out through the inside slough onto the bar to reach the outside ocean. You may or may not get harassed by lifeguards as even though you are outside of the flags – as in a Catch 22 twist of fate – they may consider you a “swimmer” and tell you that you can’t be outside of the flags. Anyway, if you don’t get yelled at, it’s time to hunt for Spanish mackerel, bonito and little tunny from the sandbars.
Tie on 20-pound fluorocarbon leader and tie direct a slim metal like a 1.4-gram Williamson Gomoku jig or #4 Deadly Dick to whip out and reel at a jackrabbit pace. Speedster schools run fast and furious and you can usually get visuals on them jumping clear out of the water before you make a pinpointed cast to intercept them.
Night Moves
After 5 p.m., lifeguards lay the stands down on their side and badge checkers pack up their sandwich coolers to get some rest for the next morning. That’s when evening and night shift fishing reigns supreme. First order of business is to toss out plugs such as SP Minnows or slim metals once again to see if any bluefish, stripers or Spanish macks, bonito and little tunny are hanging around. Once the sun begins to drop in the sky over the dunes, break out the bait rods for some big game type of activity. Slammer blues of 10 to 15 pounds patrol the night surf and any large ones around will eagerly grab a mullet rig or bunker chunk bait.
But bigger game abounds in the night surf as well, with a wide array of sharks and stingrays entering the surf close to the shoreline. Legal species such as hammerheads, blacktips and spinner sharks will be chomping chunk baits, as well as non-legal sharks such as sand tigers, brown and dusky sharks when if hooked, must not leave the water and be released immediately.
| SPIKE IT! |
| For those wanting to bait and wait, the afternoon surf also offers up diminutive species you can target including kingfish, spot, blowfish (photo) and even pompano. Small hi-lo rig pill float style rigs fixed with size #6 to #8 hooks are cast out with Fishbites bits of strips on the hooks. Simply put the rod in the sand spike and watch for the tap-tap-taps of the little hits then set the hook.
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You obviously can’t choose which shark is going to hit, so study up and know your species well before you post that picture, lest you will receive a call from Fish & Game wardens who patrol social media channel frequently for scofflaws; with prohibited species like sandbars and sand tigers, release quickly while in the water (posing for photos is a seriously grey area for grey-suited monsters).
Besides sharks, stingrays such as massive butterfly rays with 5-foot wingspans, southern stingrays, bull nosed and cow nosed rays and roughtail stingrays are all around. Their tails can strike and leave a bad infection, so be very wary when handling any ray species. A tall and heavy 12-foot Shimano Tiralejo rod matched with a Shimano 14000 Ultegra reel spooled with 65-pound braided Power Pro is my go-to big game chunking set up.
The warm summer months are welcomed by all beachgoers from sunup to sundown at the Jersey Shore, and you can pick and choose your strategy well to effectively fish when the tourists are in town. Plenty of opportunity abounds with stripers, blues, fluke, sharks, speedsters and stingrays on tap between the beach towels.
Make a day, and night, out of it and take advantage of the summer surf fisheries. There will always be time to get ice cream after you’re done fishing.
