The simple casting egg can carry tiny offerings a long distance to finicky fish.
When small bait is around, the wooden egg float paired with a small artificial can be one of your best weapons in the surf!
The concept here is simple. You have a wooden egg with a line tie at each end; tie the narrower end to your braid and then a leader to the wider end where a small artificial offering completes the rig at the terminal end of your leader. The wooden egg float becomes a casting weight that casts like a bullet even with a wind in your face, and can deliver a long cast when needed. The buoyant egg can also work wonders in a rough and rocky surf as it keeps your lure just above the snags on the retrieve.
Many fishermen make their own wooden egg floats. They are also sold in many tackle shops. I buy my wooden eggs from craft stores, and I often buy them already painted. A good source of eggs is an online store called Craftparts. I like their 2.5-inch white wooden hen egg with a flat bottom. This is made from hard maple and weighs about 1.5 ounces.
I like to thru-wire my eggs; some fishermen make them with screw eyes at each end. Start by drilling the egg with an extra-long 1/8-inch drill bit. I do this on a drill press. Then run plug wire through it and loop it off at the end and clip the excess. I might bang a small nail into the side of the egg at an angle and then clip off the nail head. This will form a jig holder that will secure my jig on the cast. When the jig is placed on the nail, it prevents it from ‘helicoptering’ on the cast. The float hits the water and the jig now falls off and it ready to be fished. Hooking your jig onto the nail will result in a much longer cast.
The most important component of your egg float rig is what you tie onto the end of your leader trailing behind the float. I like using fluorocarbon here (I use Varivas 35-pound test fluoro) with leaders running 30 to 36 inches. In most cases I use some type of small jig at the end of my float rig. Bucktail jigs of a half-ounce or smaller are ideal. I make my own jigs and really like the H-style jig that I make from Do-It molds. This jig has a slim fish-like head and when spiced with a three-inch plastic curly tail is super effective when baitfish with a thin profile like bay anchovies are around. When wider profile baitfish, such as peanut bunker, are around, I tend to go to go with a white, small paddletail lure such as an NLBN 3-inch mounted on an NLBN half-ounce jighead.
Another neat trick is to mount a fly onto the end of the float rig. When micro bait is around the fly can be super effective. I like to use various colors of homemade Deceiver flies although my pink tailed Deceivers have been the best in recent years. While the float and fly will often fool fussy stripers, it can also be very effective for fooling albies. Over the years I have caught loads of albies on this setup, especially when they’re feeding on or near the surface on small bait. I have also had success with other small lures on my float rigs such as small fluke bodies on jigheads, and teasers – such as Red Gills – can also work, especially when sand eels are around.
In all the applications above, the float is cast and reeled in slowly with occasional twitches of the rod tip. In rough water, you can simply reel in as the wave action will impart action on the lure or fly. I consider the egg float rig one of the prime lures in my plug bag for late-summer and fall fishing. While it can work in calm water, it is most deadly in a stormy, charged up surf where fish are feeding on small bait. And, when you have the right lure tied to the end of your float rig that imitates the prevalent bait, it can really deliver when fish such as stripers, blues and albies might be keyed in on baits that would be too small to mimic with more typical surf bag offerings.
