Try These Live-Bait Replacing Soft-Plastics for Stripers
I pull back the throttles briefly to admire the early-summer sun rising over Monomoy before motoring the Skeeter SX2550 toward the building rips extending off the tip of the island. Once upon a time, I would have never made this trip without buckets of eels tucked into a stern corner but, today, no eels will be harmed in the making of this episode of On The Water’s Angling Adventures. Instead, the rods are rigged with a variety of soft plastics, baits designed to fish everywhere from the surface to the bottom.
I’ve gained a new appreciation for soft plastics over the last few seasons, especially while fishing with some of the striper coast’s sharpest captains and seeing how they make the most of these versatile striper lures.
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Running and Gunning with Paddletails
Bait Replaced: Live Bunker
Lures: Al Gag’s Whip-It Fish, Z-Man DieZel Minnow
Boston’s best big-striper fishing is fueled by an abundance of Atlantic menhaden. I’ve had many memorable trips in that “dirty water,” and almost all of them began with making bait. That was not so on my first time fishing with Captain Brian Coombs of Get Tight Sportfishing Charters. We set out past the harbor islands, with Brian locked on his electronics, looking for schools of what he calls “pelagic stripers.” These groups of big fish roam through the middle of the water column, hunting bait over water as deep as 100 feet. They move quickly, and getting on them requires coordination between the captain at the helm and the angler on the bow.
His preferred bait is the Al Gags Whip-It fish, a deep-bodied soft-plastic paddletail rigged on a jighead. To add action and bulk to the lure, Coombs adds a silicone skirt to the jighead.
I was surprised at the jighead’s weight, considering the bass could be within 10 feet of the surface. The reason Brian opts for 2- and 3-ounce heads is for casting distance and so that the lure sinks quickly to get in front of fast-moving fish before they are gone.
Once an accurate cast has been made, the retrieve is aggressive. Brian wants the paddletail to look like a panicked bunker fleeing from the striper school. He adjusts the retrieve speed based on how the fish react, but a moderate-fast retrieve often gets the bite. When a 30-pound bass hits one of those quick-moving paddletails, it nearly wrenches the rod out of my hands.
In a morning of running and gunning with the heavy paddletails, Brian and I caught fish to 40 pounds, and I began thinking of all the other places where this approach would work. Anywhere schools of stripers cruise through open water in search of bunker, such as Cape Cod Bay, Narragansett Bay, the South Shore of Long Island, and off New Jersey, the combination of side-scanning sonar and fast-sinking soft-plastic paddletails means an exciting day of fishing.
Deep Drifting with Long, Slender Stickbaits
Bait Replaced: Live Eels
Lures: JoeBaggs Block Island Eel, JoeBaggs Block Island Patriot Fish, Gravity Tackle GT Eel
I’d never been to the legendary big-striper grounds off Block Island without eels until last summer with my good friend Captain Joe Diorio. Years before, Joe and I had fished Block Island from the middle of the night to late morning, during which we caught bass to 48 pounds while drifting eels over fish-holding structure. For last summer’s trip, Joe left the eels at the dock to show me the tactic he’s been developing the past few seasons that uses 11- to 14-inch-straight or paddletail plastics instead of live bait.
As with Brian in Boston Harbor, Joe leans on his electronics to find the fish, but that’s where the similarities end. While the Boston Harbor fish chased bunker through the middle of the water column, at Block Island, they were hugging the bottom. Rather than run and gun, Joe motored ahead of the bass and drifted down on them, using long casts to keep the lure in the strike zone longer.
The retrieves were subtle and slow, with the occasional twitch. Joe didn’t bounce or drag the bait along the bottom, but hovered it, dangling it in front of the bass long enough to trigger a strike. The long soft plastic, a JoeBaggs Block Island Patriot Fish on a 1-ounce jighead, undulated and kicked on the slow retrieve, and the stripers couldn’t resist. While it took me a few drifts to adjust to this finesse approach, once I got the hang of it, I joined Joe in hooking stripers to 40-plus-pounds.
The ability to control where the plastics are in the water column and what they are doing can often make them even more effective than live eels. The key is finding the right size jighead for the drift speed, which usually ends up being between 3/4 and 2 ounces.
The same tactics Joe showed me at Block Island have potential in Long Island Sound, at Race Point, around Raritan Bay, and anywhere that stripers set up over structure in 10 to 50 feet of water.
Back to that morning at Monomoy, I pull up to the rip and keep the boat barely in gear, holding its position so I can cast out a 7-inch fluke-style plastic on a ½-ounce jighead behind the boat. With one hand on the wheel and another holding the rod, I twitch the bait in place, just ahead of the curl of the rip. Within seconds, a 32-inch pot-bellied striper strikes, the force of the attack sending the fish halfway out of the water. The rod bends and I release the throttle, allowing the boat to drift back as I fight the fish, marveling at the versatility of these lures. While I don’t think I’ll ever totally give up my eels or live bunker, I’ll certainly use them less often, replacing them with a growing arsenal of soft-plastic tactics for big striped bass.
Watch new episodes of On The Water’s Angling Adventures on OTW’s YouTube Channel starting in February.
Related Content
Soft-Plastic Eels for Big Striped Bass
Weightless Soft-Plastics for Backwater Stripers
Source: https://onthewater.com/soft-plastic-replacements-for-live-striper-baits
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