Type of fishin poll

[Monty]

Two options for a fishing day:


Option 1
Ready to fish at 5:00 AM .You fish till 11:00 AM pluging a mile of beach with a few rock piles, white water, overcast, slight east wind. You land 8 stripers between 22 inches and 29 inches. Miss a couple hits. Catch 4 blue fish (10 pounds in quick blitz situation). A good morning fishing, saw no one else, lots of action.

Option 2.
You are ready to fish at 5:00. You drive around checking beaches for pods of bunker. Up 1 street, down the next. Town to town.
You see a bunker pod at 6:30, run down to the beach, hang for three hours, the fish stay out there. You go back to the truck, more driving and looking. Lunch at a diner, More driving, phone call at 1:30, head to the area, run to the jetty, join 25 others, hook up and land two fish, one 25 pounds, the other 42 pounds. Loose another big fish in the lines of others. You are done fishing at 3:00 PM.

I thought about this as I was hitting the beach Monday morning and 3 trucks come flying down the side street, guys jump out, look up and down the beach, jump back in their trucks and speed away.

[Stripercoast1]

Option 3;
Get to the water at 8 PM, fish the sunset, while rock hopping 4 miles of rocky coastline until 7 AM. You have the whole place to yourself, until the daywalkers show up at Sunrise. Pour a cup of coffee when you get to your truck and laugh about all the fish you released while everyone was sleeping. Get to work and tell your boss you were up all night with a sick kid, to explain the bags under your eyes.

[JakeF]

Option 3. Plus a few hours of swimming mixed in.

Several times a week. My boss thinks I have the sickest kids in the world.

[jimbob]

I like option 1. it describes most of my fishing. option 3 is good once and a while, but I wont be at work the next day.

[Monty]

jimbob
I am somewhere between 1 and 3. I can only get out 1x per week (usually) and fish from 1:00 AM till between 7:00 and 9:00 AM. When I can get out more it tends to be getting on the water at 4:30 AM and off whenever I feel like it.
What I was trying to get at in this thread is the difference in the options 1 and 2. Giving up the big fish to enjoy working the beach for fish. That driving around and waiting (although this is a style of fishing) is vastly different than plugging a beach. The times I chose were arbitrary.
Honestly I would rather plug a beach and not catch anything than go out on a crowded jetty and catch a 40 pound fish. I guess to each there own.
We each fish for different reasons.

I like option 1. it describes most of my fishing. option 3 is good once and a while, but I wont be at work the next day.

[albiealert]

Monty, I have never caught a bass as big as you guys are talking about but have read the crazy things that happen on these and other forums. I don't think I would like that kind of fishing, my fishing helps me to get away from it all, not to rejoin the rat race during my quiet time. I would pick option #1. My .02.

[surfwalker]

I'm like Monty. I enjoy my walking and seeking out Bass. I don't care for the muggings and am usually solo, even when I meet up with the regulars my distance is far from them. I'm happy to catch as long as I see stripes, big or small. There is no right or wrong, it's whatever style you choose, doesn't matter to me. Some plug strickly for big, some for quantity, some for bragging rights, I guess I plug just for personal satisfaction. Like Monty said "We each fish for different reasons". Im usually walking off the beach when the hoardes are just coming on, I prefer the dark into first light. I guess I'm just a plugger that's waiting for the Bass to come to me.

[Rip-Plugger]

I'll go for option #1,great time,fish caught and just me!


R-P

[jimbob]

My seniments exactly Surfwalker

[wish4fish]

imma take the bunker, door #2, there's no other way to get a 40 from the sand or jetties, i wont stop until i get one, all u other guys can walk alone, i slam with the bunker!

[DarkSkies]

Monty I don't know if the guys further up in the Northeast striper migration realize the hassles we have to deal with in NJ because bunker have exploded here with the bunker reduction boats banned. This creates the insanity we see from Sandy Hook through LBI in the spring, with most of the craziness centered around 5 miles of jetties.

The way they described it up there, you can fish alone as long as you are willing to walk a few miles out of the way. We only have that luxury here at a few key NJ/NY areas, and most of those don't have bunker blitzes going off every 3rd day.

I was talking to a good friend and great fisherman the other day. He's fortunate to fish almost 7 days/nights a week, Although he's got more skills than most guys I know, his biggest fish this season came and were released 3 in a row one day last week, after chasing the fish for the last 3 weeks and missing them, sometimes by minutes.

Does that seem rational? No!

I would rather be alone away from the crowds, that's my objective every time I set out to fish.

But would I walk away from a chance to catch a 50 or better, or the fish of a lifetime, by bein close enough to another dude on the rocks to know if he used deodorant or not?

I have to be honest and say No, I wouldn't walk away from that.

I've been there when that carnage is happening, even to see a majority of the guys put them back. Seeing that number of big fish caught at one time, and seeing the activity on the surface, changes you forever, at least IMO.

Like Surfwalker and some of the others said, to each his own, everyone has different preferences, c'est la vie.

[JakeF]

Poll: A nice day fishing with action (no big fish) or bunker chasing

there's no other way to get a 40 from the sand or jetties, i wont stop until i get one, all u other guys can walk alone

But would I walk away from a chance to catch a 50 or better, or the fish of a lifetime, by bein close enough to another dude on the rocks to know if he used deodorant or not?

Wait a minute..... are you guys really saying that the only way to catch big fish where you are is to chase a bunker blitz in the daytime with hoards of other people? And that your only other option is to play with schoolies?

[DarkSkies]

Here's part of my report from the other night:

"Back at it again at 4:30 am, fishin the ocean. We started fishin at 4:55, throwin swimmers until sunrise, nothing. Switched to pencil poppers, and other poppers. Finally got a bass to follow the plug when I saw it swirl about 5 feet from the rocks as I lifted the Ace spook out of the water. Bass was small, sub 28".

That gave me the motivation to ramp it up a bit, got another fish at 5:45, small bluefish. By that time, the binocular brigade had not arrived and there was solitude on the rocks, beautiful sunrise and white water."




Let me try to paint a better picture for ya, Jake...

I fish 8-10 hours at a clip, and have been fishin hard deep into the night, tips of rockpiles, places with current, all juicy places that might hold a decent fish or 2.

I got a 20 on a rockpile 2 weeks ago at 2am, after pluggin for 2 straight hours without so much as a tap, but I persisted, and got that one fish. That was it for the night. My best for the season so far, and there was no bait around when I caught it.

I have friends that have been doing well on the rocks deep in the night, but it's a slow pick for the big ones at night, one here, another there, 2-3 days of nothing, then it's on again.

Meahwhile, you have some guys who go down to "look" at the fishermen. They won't even pull the rod off the truck unless they see 2 or more guys hooked up, and then it's a mad dash to play King of the Hill. Guys get so keyed into the success they have in bunker blitzes that they tend to focus entirely on those signs and behaviors during this time.

As I said, there are still some nice fish being taken at night, slow pick. We find when the fish gorge themselves heavily on bunker during the day, the bite tends to shut down at night.

If you're a bait guy, and are serious about it (I know that's not you, Jake) you can always pull a fish from somewhere, current, narrow places where there is a lot of bait, areas like that. Or you can always fish inlets and areas of extreme current, fish the bottom with bucktails or rubber, just like the old timers did 50 years ago.

But as a generalization, around the NJ area for the late Spring run many of the big girls are caught in the bunker blitzes. So if ya want one, ya gotta suck it up and get the football helmet on. Get ready to fight the guy next to ya for that front rock, or "almost" get a treble in your hand or head by someone throwing a wild cast.

More fun than a Black Flag /Slayer show!

That's why I think our interpretation of "combat fishing" is entirely different from the thread you put up.

Hope this explained it a little better.

[Monty]

Choosing option 1 was not settling for schoolies. It was to choose NOT being part of the bunker chasing brigade and not being on the overcrowded jetties.
A style of fishing that is popular in Jersey with bunker around (nothing wrong with it, just not for me).

Wait a minute..... are you guys really saying that the only way to catch big fish where you are is to chase a bunker blitz in the daytime with hoards of other people? And that your only other option is to play with schoolies?

[Stripercoast1]

I love the way a thread can turn into a direction all its own.
Here in the North east, you can chase the blitzes, get shoulder to shoulder and throw hockey hip checks to get the piece of shore you want. If thats what you want to do.
we tend to hold some of the baits like squid, that have moved out of Joisey, and New York, weeks ago. I'm not talking about a few here and there, the jiggers are still hammering buckets of squid at night from the marina docks here. The Bass seem to have a bigger selection, with the variety of forage in close to shore right now. One thing I have found and truly believe the reason we get numbers of large fish at night here, is Lobster. Yup. Some of the places we fish, and catch high numbers of larger fish, the shore is littered with pieces of small to mid sized lobster. There is one area, full of reefs and boulder fields, with hundreds of small claws and carrapice shells all over the rocky beach. When I was younger the old man ran 25 pots, not so much for the money and free bugs, but for the shorts. He never threw a bug back, the sub legals were put in a bucket and used for bait later that night.
Night forage brings night feeding.

[DarkSkies]

I got a 20 on a rockpile 2 weeks ago at 2am, after pluggin for 2 straight hours without so much as a tap, but I persisted, and got that one fish. That was it for the night. My best for the season so far, and there was no bait around when I caught it.

Hope this explained it a little better.

we tend to hold some of the baits like squid, that have moved out of Joisey, and New York, weeks ago. I'm not talking about a few here and there, the jiggers are still hammering buckets of squid at night from the marina docks here. The Bass seem to have a bigger selection, with the variety of forage in close to shore right now. One thing I have found and truly believe the reason we get numbers of large fish at night here, is Lobster. Yup. Some of the places we fish, and catch high numbers of larger fish, the shore is littered with pieces of small to mid sized lobster. There is one area, full of reefs and boulder fields, with hundreds of small claws and carrapice shells all over the rocky beach..
Night forage brings night feeding.

I think ya nailed the essence of what and why here, Gunny, fish want to be where the bait is. It seems for us, once the peanuts are around in the summer and into the fall, and the spearing have spawned a few times so they are everywhere, and the sandeels are thick enough to snag on every cast, bait is more widely distributed along all parts of the shore here.

Leaving bunker out of the equation, whenever I have run into an unusually high concentration of bait, there are fish somewhere in that mix.

[JakeF]

Gotcha. I see where you're coming from. I've been in the line-ups at Montauk, and really did enjoy myself. But personally, a few hours of that is all I can stand, and I have to take a walk away from the crowds. True blitzes of the magnitude you guys get down there are not all that common here, and when they do happen there are usually few people fishing them. Up here, night is when the bait typically comes in closer and the big girls are more active in the surf.

[DarkSkies]

Choosing option 1 was not settling for schoolies. It was to choose NOT being part of the bunker chasing brigade and not being on the overcrowded jetties.
A style of fishing that is popular in Jersey with bunker around (nothing wrong with it, just not for me).

You guys should see Monty in action, if there are fish around he can smell 'em. Guy's a casting machine, specially in snotty weather! I'm thinkin he decided to put up this post because every year the jetty fever gets worse and worse.

The OFFC who are members here get out almost all the time in prime season. They're retired and can get into fish while a lot of guys are at work. Even with that advantage, so many times I have heard stories of them having fish for 10 minutes, then the cell phone call is made by another fisherman and the Mongol Hordes show up.

They have gotten so disillusioned with the behavior and poor sportsmen attitudes they see, they avoid these slugfests whenever possible.

[clamchucker]

Like Surfwalker and some of the others said, to each his own, everyone has different preferences, c'est la vie.

I voted for the nice day of fishing. At my age you take all the nice days you can get. I might not have the physical strength to get into a jetty jockeying argument. Even if I did, extreme crowds get boring after awhile. At least for me they do.

[Monty]

Well the other day when I saw the 3 trucks barrel down the road and the guys jump out and scan the beach, then speed away, then hearing about the ordeals on the jetties and seeing a few pics, I kind of see a pattern for certain fisherman. Maybe a lot of these guys are new at striper fishing and all they want to do is get into big fish. It seems (I have limited experience in this area, so its JMHO) that this is a specific technique (the way a person fishes).
It includes the following:
1. Locating bunker schools
2. Standing around jetties
3. Cell phones (networking)

Nothing wrong with it, I was just bringing it up for conversation. And then the next thing you know us Joisey guys can't catch a big fish without fishing this way (LOL).

.Great posts!!

So Rich, I was out this AM, reminded me of the time we fished, great weather!!!!

I'm thinkin he decided to put up this post because every year the jetty fever gets worse and worse.
: