The Case For Big Wooden Plugs

In early November 2024, Frank Daignault passed away at the age of 87. Frank authored eight books on surfcasting for striped bass, and his articles appeared in a variety of publications, including On The Water, over a span of 50 years. His writing inspires surfcasters to this day, with his tales of living and fishing on the Cape Cod beaches showing us just how good the good ol’ days were. This story originally appeared in the August 2001 Issue of On The Water, at a time when large stripers and large bunker were returning to the surf in greater numbers. While the lures and tackle have changed, the lessons still hold true. – Jimmy Fee

Fishers of the striper surf date themselves by the size of the plugs they are likely to use. The continuum falls neatly into line with age and time; the further back you go, the bigger the plugs get. I’m convinced that the choices are based more upon equipment demands and perhaps fishing trends than effective surf casting. Today’s young Turks crack on the old guard with their big plugs and what they use to fish them, but in the back of their minds they either know or have a gnawing suspicion that there could be something to it.

All you have to do is look at all the 1-ounce or lighter Rebels or Yo-Zuris and the like of today and rummage through my buggy, and you’ll get a powerful feel for what is now and what was then. Yes, in the minds of many, I and those with whom I once fished, are anachronisms. Still, our old wooden plugs continue to catch fish. More importantly, the big stuff is more likely to catch the right ones. Big plugs demand heavy tackle, and it is pretty tough to fish the small stuff with our pool-cue surf rods.

What kind of plug sizes are we talking about? Springing from the days when only big reels could be used to fish 50-pound-test lines, we threw wooden swimmers and poppers weighing up to 4 ounces with stout sticks capable of delivering the plugs into the teeth of a gale. It was not simply that the stuff was that heavy, but it was often also aerodynamically poor. We weren’t in casting contests; our lures were chosen because the stripers liked them, a fact that has not changed. Even today, with a strong onshore wind, side by side, your little 3/4-ounce floating swimmer is going 50 feet and my 3-ounce monster wooden plug of yore will land beside it. These are not great casts to be sure, but let’s look at the other numbers.

Because break-offs are a big factor in winning over dream stripers, big tackle allays that concern. With line considerations out of the way, everything else in the tackle and gear equation has to match the forces. What I mean by that is, if you have chosen one of the new, nearly unbreakable lines, chances are your reel will not have a suitable drag. It does no good to have a 50-pound line on a reel designed for use with 20-pound tackle. Similarly, you can neither swing hard nor heavy with the rods that would balance with popular though inadequate reels. Much of today’s tackle is out of harmony because of ongoing changes.

Moreover, once a caster moves into this level of equipment, everything is put to the test. Snap-swivels and barrels begin to fail, through wires can break, hooks open and in smaller plugs designed for much less rigorous use even the plugs themselves can be broken at times. Everything from the bottom of the spool to the hook in a striper’s jaw has to be of suitable strength.

It often makes sense to use big plugs. Linesides over 20 pounds feed on the same size baits as those over 50 pounds do. Never forget that the length difference between them is only 10 inches. People in boats commonly live-line 3-pound pollock and mackerel. Thus an imitation of those live baits by artificials would follow comfortably.

Some would argue that the big plugs are only worthwhile when bass are on big baits. I view it as simplistic to adhere too closely to that. Too little is known. You can be on a beach that is awash with sand eels and make the natural observation that stripers are eating them. The sense is in it, I admit, but I have seen them gorge themselves on sand eels and mackerel at the same time. You’ll often see mackerel or even dabs and immature weakfish getting into the act and falling prey to linesides in the process. Even then, I don’t think that a bass is going to pass up your mackerel plug because the sea is full of sperling or other small stuff. Bass might just take it in spite of it being wrong. They can be selective by instinct or habit, but I have never viewed any fish as intelligent. I cite sand eels in contrast with mackerel in this discussion only because they conveniently illustrate diversity in size.
The mix of plug choice and performance, conditions and caster idiosyncrasies, when combined, spawn a myriad of variables that can influence results. Rod action in the last wave is highly individualized, where some anglers sprinkle in a patternless bunch of jumps and jiggles. Because they know that stripers sometimes follow a long distance without hitting, some anglers pause in the strike zone, while others rush it out to impart the notion of an escaping bait. Many big plugs display a more frantic swim because of larger swim plates, while jointed models exhibit exaggerated motion. A fast-receding wave or hard-flowing rip is best dealt with by a slower retrieve or even a change in plug choices to compensate for water action. Still, in most respects the problems with big wood are the same as those with smaller offers.

I’ve often thought that getting the attention of stripers is more likely with big swimmers. When there is action–wild water from windswept waves, current, lots of bait and even shoulder-to-shoulder surfcasters–the bass are lunging and pumping all around you, looking for something to take. Certainly this is not a picky situation and it never hurts to make it easy for the moby linesides to see your offering. All fish are influenced by other factors besides what the angler might observe. When there are bass, or even a mix of bass and blues, competitive behavior speeds up the take because each seems to be trying to get the prey first, a logical assumption that could be true. The frenzy or blitz where the food chain is stacking–squid eating sand eels while bass eat the squid–gets frantic, and often the fish get quite careless as a result. When it is like that, it matters little what is chosen for a lure, as it will likely be taken anyway. The advantages of heavy gear in the big stuff are strength, reliability and speed.

Some striper fishers are convinced that the big plugs cull out the larger linesides because of the belief that the small bass won’t take a big plug. It is true to some degree, but the notion remains unreliable because you can hook surprisingly small fish with huge plugs. I once fished with a surfcaster who thought that a large plug was perceived by quarry as a school of small baitfish swimming together. Many surfmen are a little dippy in their observations, but his logic could be used to explain a 16-inch striper on a 9-inch plug. Who knows?

The swimmer plates of most big plugs ruin their casting aerodynamics. Because of these poor casting qualities, people new to surf fishing are often tempted to utilize other choices. So often fishers prefer distance over effectiveness and throw the wrong lure 300 feet rather than the right one 75.

Over the years we have seen surfcasters frustrated by the selective behavior of stripers. Often a solution to big bass wallowing in the surf but not hitting has been to go ever smaller, to the point where little balsa wood swimmers used as a last resort were too small to cast and too weak for use on such cows. One time, and I doubt this would work that often, we had such fish in front of us on the Cape; they were so particular that most had given up fishing. Out of frustration I tossed the biggest plug in my buggy into them and a 40-pounder ate it. The trap seems to be in being too sure something is going to happen.
Big plugs have been disappearing from the surfcasting shelves since the advent of striper surf spinning over 40 years ago. Plug builders logically saw a bigger future in lures for spinning at about the same time that injection molding’s production advantages became evident in manufacturing. With the exception of the larger Atom swimmers, which were victims of the transition in manufacturing methods and the use of spinning gear, the cost and low demand about killed the big wooden plugs and never permitted their manufacture in plastic castings. Why would anyone spend money tooling up to build plugs for such anachronistic applications as heavy conventional tackle? Who would buy them?

A consequence of these two developments was that spinning got the high-production molded-plastic plugs, while pool-cue conventional fishing utilized the more expensive handcrafted wood. With the exception of a nice line of production Dannys, Trolling Swimmers and monster poppers by Gibbs Lures, today’s old guard gets their “Dannys” from small garage operations, crafted by romantics from New Jersey to Maine and even some in California.

Go shopping for big plugs in the catalogs and see if you can find Giant Pikie Minnows, Goo-Goo Eyes, Nils Masters or Atom 40s. (The discussion makes me feel old.) Some of the old-timers, who I know are going to enjoy reading this because they could have written it themselves, are fanatics about big plugs. Time and money have rendered the plugs irreplaceable. They thus face the enigma of choosing between their plugs and their fishing. You can’t replace some of these “big mommas” and they know they are going to end up crying when they lose a collectable.

Until now, conventional reels, long thought of as the tackle of experts, were the first choice in fishing these big plugs. The nuances of conventional tackle were mired somewhere between voodoo and witchcraft for any contemporary angler painfully struggling to master their use, however. Revolving-spool reels backlash and the popular braids cut grooves in retrieving thumbs. Each retrieve has to be spooled evenly, often with some salt-induced pain, for the next cast. The “traditional” tackle is not only difficult to learn, it is hard to use and hard to stay with, knowing there is an easier alternative provided by spinning.

However, the development and introduction of the new, fine-diameter, high-pound-test lines that are starting to appear on the market could give rise to profound changes in surf tackle. Once people begin spinning with rods that match their 50-pound spinning lines, justification for conventional tackle use will weaken, if not fade altogether. More people could be fishing heavier and some of those little plugs will never stand up to the rigors of truly heavy surf tackle. Heavy lines, stiff rods and huge, high-capacity reels with stout drags have to be in harmony with the plugs they throw and that could only come with bigger plugs. Of course, if tackle goes that way, the market will respond.

Because our fishing solutions often spring from what seems to be working, and that regularly changes, those who use heavy tackle should be armed with the lighter plugs as surely as the light-tackle users should be ready to move up. Greater care and experience are needed, but gorilla revolving-spool equipment casts lures as light as 1 ounce and probably as far as that which is cast with spinning. A surprising mix of old standards–poppers, darters, bottle plugs, needlefish and Junior Atoms–fall into the 2-ounce range, which makes them suitable to both medium spinning and heavy conventional. Sharp manufacturers seem to be after the best of both worlds.
Fish haven’t changed, we have. Yet, much of what used to be done remains popular and viable. We admit that time has thinned the ranks of old-guard surfcasters, but many of the new kids like the feel of heavy gear. And while light-tackle fishing has been touted as more sporting and therefore more difficult, those of us who have fished the beach for years never thought heavy tackle was easy. Most of all, it is the charm and purpose of the huge wooden plugs and the stuff we use to deliver them that keeps the old guard coming back and the young eager for a part. Sound reasoning in tackle choices and the execution of effective surfcasting would have to include your father’s tackle. When has having more choices ever been bad for us?

Source: https://onthewater.com/the-case-for-big-wood

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