There’s history in sandworms as a top local bait, which means there’s always a future.
One of the fondest eras of my lifetime was 1970 to 1978, from the time I was 6 to 14 years of age, when we kept my dad’s 23-foot Sea Ray at the original Fisherman’s Den in Belmar. It was a small dock, maybe 20 slips, with the small, but well stocked bait and tackle shop run by Dave Siegel nearby. A luncheonette called Sam and Mary’s also shared the same building.
As a kid, this was paradise. It was here I learned about the magic of sandworms.
My dad Morris, aka the Black Cloud, was a mad man fishing machine. He had his own business, so we would fish from Thursday afternoon to Sunday evening. Coming home each day to sleep, of course. There was nothing else in our house; we didn’t go to the zoo, or ball games, or Disney World. We just fished, all the time, and I wouldn’t have changed a minute of it.
Every once in a while, we would get to the dock in the morning and the sky would be a menacing grey or purple. One last listen to the crackling NOAA forecast on the VHF would let us know we were not throwing the ropes today. To me, this was not bad news; god knows, I could use a break from the tireless striper fishing. Instead, this was going to be a dock fishing day. The target would be everything that swims, and the bait was sandworms.
The Den always had flats of sandworms on hand. I remember it was $10 a flat, which was 10 dozen worms. My dad would start me out with two dozen and a few of the old style winter flounder rigs with the skinny Chestertown hooks, the perfect worm hook. Add a 1-ounce bank sinker and the world was my oyster. The dock would span out to almost meet the Route 35 drawbridge, and it offered plenty of fish habitat. I can remember catching porgies, kingfish, snapper blues, winter flounder, fluke, blowfish, eels, bergalls, sea robins, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few.
By The Flat
Everything that swims in the Northeast eats sandworms. I have used them from Cape Cod to Virginia. I would buy them locally here in New Jersey and bring them wherever we were going. I would bring them on our annual family camping trip to Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and we clobbered the sea trout and croakers on them. I dunked a couple at the ferry dock waiting to go over to Block Island, RI and caught a decent striper. Everywhere I have tried them, they work.
During May and June, I order one to two flats a week. I use these worms at the Barnegat Inlet North Jetty. I put a whole worm on a 1/0 inline circle hook tied to 30 inches of 20-pound fluorocarbon. If you agitate the worm buy probing the tip of the head, it will eventually open its mouth, exposing two hooked claws. I like to insert the hook in here, thread the worm about a half-inch, and let the rest hang naturally. If the worms are running small, sometimes, I will use two. Fish it 20 feet under a float and drift it right into the jetty rocks.
Keep in mind with this much line under the float, it is best to use a slip bobber, or I prefer a release bobber, such as the RediRig Release Float that will release on the hookset or during the fight and slide all the way down to the hooked fish. If you use a traditional float, you will have to remove it once it gets close enough, although that can get a little dicey with a fish on the other end. All of your hookups will come right at the rocks; the bobber rarely goes down in open water. If it does, it’s most likely a bluefish.
Bobber Down!
As soon as the float gets to the rock, it will go down. Either because of the suction of turbulence or a fish just ate it. In either case, keep the tip of your rod low to the water and reel like crazy. This is the only way to set the hook with this extremely awkward rig. Our target is always stripers but we catch way too many blackfish using this technique, mainly at a time in the season when we can’t keep them. They are almost all lip hooked, so they make for a good release.
But, there are worse problems to have than catching too many fish. The stripers usually range from 22 to 34 inches, with most in the 24- to 28-inch size. They almost always run you over the jetty, so it’s a delicate balance to keep good pressure on the fish without breaking him off. As soon as we are tight, I like to put the boat in gear with no gas and try to pull the fish gradually off the rocks. Once it is out of the jetty, you can usually slug it out to victory in the open water.
| BOX ‘EM UP |
| If you invest in these worms, you can get some mileage out of them if you do the maintenance. No matter what they sell you the worms in, you have to keep them in a cardboard box. If they came in a plastic bag, the clock is already ticking on their expiration. Move them to a cardboard box lined with newspaper. Keep them in a cooler with ice, making sure the bottom of the box never hits the freshwater thaw. This means constant draining and re-icing the cooler. You could also keep them in a refrigerator but I prefer the wet environment of a cooler rather than the drier mechanical air.
Every day, flip the box over. They come with a good amount of grass to help keep them alive, and they’ll work their way through the grass to create a ball of worms; flipping the box allows them to work through the grass again. Every three days you need to transfer the worms and grass to a bucket of bay water. This will cleanse all the waste out. Change the newspaper and after a 10-minute soak, put the worms and grass back in the cardboard box. It’s fine if the grass is wet, it’s actually beneficial. |
During the summer months, I like to tip a 3/8-ounce shad dart with a 2-inch piece of worm. That small piece will stretch out as you fish it. You don’t want to use big pieces, but you do need to maintain that small piece to make sure it always has a little life in it. Just rest the jig in the palm of your hand and if the little legs on the fringe of the worm have some movement, that means the juices, scent, and all that goodness, are still intact.
Any color dart works as long as it’s chartreuse. Also, the jig needs to be bald, no hair. It improves the presentation tremendously. Find 8 to 12 feet of water, go on the drift, and drop it to the bottom and vertical jig it with long sweeps. You are now fishing for every species of fish in the bay, especially weakfish, fluke, kingfish, blowfish, spots, croaker, and more. We’ve also used this technique in the past when tight to the sod banks and catch half pint stripers on 10-pound spinning rods. This would also work best on the outgoing tide when you get a drift right down the bank, and if there are any weakfish in there they will crush it!
While many bait and tackle shops carry bloodworms in the spring, few stock sandworms much any longer; however, the folks at the shop usually can order the sands for you. Yes, they are a pain in a neck to find, they’re high maintenance to keep, and then can be messy to handle (with a good chance you will be grabbed by their claws at the top of the head at some point). But they catch everything that swims, so they are so worth the effort.
