3 Old School Striper Techniques that Still Catch Fish

One hot summer day when I was seven, my father took me to the 8th Avenue Jetty in Belmar, New Jersey. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I used an 8-foot Calcutta bamboo fishing rod match with a Penn 155 conventional reel spooled with Ashaway 36-pound Dacron line. The rod was made by George Scheider, a local rod builder from Belmar. This handmade rod was custom in both its length and action, and cost $3.50—boy, how things have changed!

We fished next to the south side of the jetty during the outgoing tide. My father had raked about a dozen calico crabs the day before and stored them in an old cigar box. They were covered in a piece of moist newspaper to keep them fresh. My dad picked a crab out of the box and said, “This should be a fish.” In other words, if there was a fish around, I was going to catch it.

The crab he pulled out was very soft. “Stripers love the softies,” he said as he attached the crab to a 5/0 hook using a piece of cotton sewing machine thread. With several wraps, he attached the crab, giving it a very natural presentation. When he finished, he made a cast with my rod and said, “Hold on tight.”

Within minutes, I felt a tremendous tug, and hooked, fought and landed my first striper, a sweet 7-pounder. I will never forget it. I was hooked for life.

A shedder calico crab attached to a hook with the help of elastic thread.
*To comply with current regulations, all bait fishing for striped bass must be done with inline circle hooks.

Calico Crabs

Calico crabs are caught by combing the surf with a calico rake. When raking, you are looking for calico crabs in specific stages of their life cycle. The crabs you want to gather are softies, “shedders” and “tin backs.”

Soft-shell crabs are easy to identify—their bodies are totally limp and soft as they have shed their old shells in order to grow. Shedders, also called “peelers” can be identified by their color. As molting occurs, the new shell will form beneath the old one. Male shedders have a pronounced lavender color on the undersides of their claws.

The last stage of the peeler is identified by the physical condition of the hard shell. A split develops under the lateral spines and along the posterior edge of the shell. At this stage, the crab is called a “buster”—and will fully molt by backing out of its shell.  This is a prime bait for striped bass.

As the calico’s soft shell begins to harden, it is called a tin back. They, too, are very productive baits.

To procure your own calico crabs, begin raking two hours before low tide. Rake through pockets of soft sand along the beach as well as on the north and south sides of jetties. The best times for raking calico crabs is during the new and full moon phases.

To fish calicoes, I prefer to use conventional tackle and a 9-foot medium-action rod. This outfit is spooled with 40-pound-test braided line or 20-pound test monofilament. The most popular rig for using calico crabs is the fish-finder rig. I recommend using a number 02017 octopus-style 7/0 or 9/0 Gamakatsu hook.

Lay the hook along the underside of the crab and tie the hook to its body with elastic thread or Spider Thread, which is almost invisible. Tying the crab’s legs along the leader will make the presentation more natural.

Calico crabs are one of the finest baits for striped bass during the summer “doldrums” of late June, July and August. Give them a try and you won’t be disappointed.

Eel-Skin Plugs

One of the earliest lures used to catch striped bass in the Northeast was a cedar jig covered with an eel skin. During the late 1800s, Buzzards Bay fishermen used these lethal cedar jig eel skins to catch monster 50-pound striped bass.

My first experience with eel-skin plugs was in the 1960s. Fishing the 8th Avenue Jetty in Belmar, I saw an angler catching striped bass after striped bass using a lure that I had never seen before. I was amazed at the lure’s life-like action. I had to ask the angler what he was using and where I could buy one. After a short conversation, he told me, “You can’t buy one, you have to make one.”

Seeing my interest, the angler walked me through each step in the process of making one of the most fascinating baits I have ever seen.

The eel-skin plug is best suited for beach or jetty fishing. In the early days, I would rig eel skins over metal-lip swimming plugs like the Creek Chub Pikie and Surfster. Now, I collect these plugs, preserving the wood from rotting in a Kosher Salt Solution.

Today, I generally use eel skins on an Atom Junior plug. This plug is plastic, and, after the skin is applied, can be kept in the freezer between trips to the beach.

Eel skins are generally fished at night, but I have had tremendous success with them during the daylight hours. The most productive time to fish these plugs was at the bottom of the outgoing. When fishing an eel-skin plug from the beach or jetty at night, it should be retrieved very slowly, letting the plug work in the current.

One of the key factors in using the eel-skin plug is its ability to adapt to different situations. By bending the lip, you can alter the action to meet your needs. If you bend the lip down, the plug will ride on or near the surface, depending on how far the lip is bent. By bending the lip up, the plug will run deeper.

Turning an eel skin inside out will reveal a light blue color which is closer to a baitfish than an eel. The inside-out eel skin works well during daylight hours.

Making an eel skin plug may seem like a lot of work, but it is really quite simple and the lure’s effectiveness is well worth the effort. There is nothing like a real live eel, but with the eel-skin plug’s realistic appearance, it should be a major part of your striped bass arsenal.

Rigged Eels

Rigged eels have been a secret weapon of striper sharpies for more than 100 years. The eels are rigged on a swimming head that has a fixed 7/0 Mustad hook embedded in the tin. Eel “squids” come in various sizes and weights, which will determine how high or deep the eel will ride in the water column. The head gives the dead eel a swimming motion that is needed to fool the most wary gamefish.

It is very important to test the swimming action of your rigged eels prior to fishing. I am looking for a rigged eels with the proper “S” swimming motion of a living eel. This action can be achieved by bending and tuning the tin squid.

I make my eel squids out of tin; generally pure tin or 95-percent tin and 5-percent lead. Block tin is lighter than lead and has unique fish-attracting qualities.

Tin squids come in a few different shapes and sizes. A long slender tin squid with a deep keel will get the rigged eel down and stay down, where the bass are feeding.

I read an article in Sports Afield in the 1960s about an angler fishing rigged eels. The angler spelled out all the steps for using food coloring to dye rigged eels. Dyeing the eels would create colors that would be beneficial under certain conditions. The method interested me so much I had to give it a try.

Although rigged eels are generally fished at night from jetties, the newer soft-plastic eel baits have become popular during daylight hours as well. In the early 1960s, the ALOU Shoestring Eels were very popular. Created by Al Reinfelder and Lou Palma, ALOU Eels were used by all of the striper sharpies. The Alou Shoestring Eel accounted for tons of stripers season after season.

“New-school” versions of these lures include the Femlee Eel and Tsunami Holographic Sand Eel which is super realistic. Hogy Lures introduced a hard-to-beat soft-plastic sand-eel imitation that is ideal for rigging on an eel squid.

Success with rigged eels comes with practice. Once you master this method, it will be a potent weapon for taking large striped bass.

There have been monumental changes in surf-fishing methods over the last 30 years. Even with all the new and latest equipment available, I still go to my old-school methods when the time is right. Try these proven methods, and you just might get an A+ in fishing old school.

From the June 2013 Issue of On The Water Magazine.

Source: https://onthewater.com/3-old-school-striper-techniques-that-still-catch-fish

$post[‘post_content’] .= ‘Source‘;