Speed can be the key to unlocking the true potential of a competitive bite in the surf.
“It’s been dead for hours,” an older gentleman told me as I set up near him on a late-spring morning earlier this year. “We had fish at the top of the outgoing, but it died off after that,” he continued.
“That’s Ok,” I replied, “I already walked all the way down here. I might as well make a few casts.”
Perhaps reenergized by my unfazed enthusiasm, he clipped on a popper and started working his plug through the quickening tide. I was fishing with a Banana Plug, something I had been working on building all winter with my friend Anthony and now I was working out the kinks in the presentation. Friends who had more experience with these plugs told me that they worked best fished very fast, but I was skeptical. Yet, in my trial runs, I have to admit, the Banana looked really alive when fished with a herky-jerky retrieve and reeled so quickly I’d work up a sweat.
On my second cast, I saw a fish rush up behind the plug and roll, I didn’t say anything and the man didn’t notice. On my third cast a teen-class fish ate it, with the fish throwing water, the man quipped, “I guess there’s at least one out there!” In the following 45 minutes, I landed five fish up to 20 pounds and by the end of the two-hour casting session I had landed 13 to his zero and I lost 30-pound class fish mere feet from the sand.
The entire time I was insisting that it wasn’t the plug, it was the presentation and I practically begged the guy to try and mimic my retrieve with a different offering, but he just wouldn’t! Some people might enjoy a lopsided score like that, but I don’t. I like the ‘high-five’ experience, I want to enjoy great fishing with someone else and I honestly start to feel badly when someone near me isn’t having the same luck that I am.
The secret was, 100%, in the presentation and I will readily admit that I wouldn’t have figured it out if I wasn’t experimenting with that plug. Surfcasters are taught that slow is better, think of the mantra of the needlefish, ‘reel as slow as you can…and then go slower’. Think about Danny Plugs and Darters and plastic swimmers… it’s all about slow and methodical.
But I want to drive home an important point here, there are times and scenarios when surfcasters need to recognize that there is a need for speed, and the further I drive into this life of fishing that I’m living, the more I see the value in it. High-speed retrieves find their place in a different scenario than the more ‘classic’ low and slow. You’re recognizing a situation and then letting the game dictate your strategy… that’s just good angling. Speed retrieves will vastly outfish traditional presentations when the bite is competitive. If there is a lot of bait being pursued by a ton of bass, go fast. If there’s a pile of bait up in the shallows and a gang of stripers keeping them pinned in tight, go fast. You will be amazed by the murderous hits that follow.
I recognize that not everyone has a Banana Plug in their bag, but there are many other options that slay at high speeds. The Magic Swimmer is probably the lead dog, but you can do this with large soft plastics like an 8-inch NLBN paddletail, or a SuperSnax on a leadhead. Another Sebile creation, the Stick Shadd, is another excellent high-speed option. The Savage Gear Freestyler, made famous by my friend Jerry Audet, is another high-octane offering that crushes stripers.
You can do it with more traditional lures, too. Try zipping a needlefish right along the surface for massive blowups during a mullet blitz. Try giving a pencil popper the action of bottle rocket with the stick broken off, when casting to schools of bunker or mackerel and make sure you have a good grip on the rod! Try bombing a Super Strike Bottle Plug to a distant blitz and fishing it with long, hard sweeps of the rod with short pauses while you regain line, it looks like an escaping baitfish and the bass are programmed not to let that happen. Or, get yourself Banana Plug and go through the same process of reconfirmation that I did, it’s all worthy and it’s all a ton of fun!
