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Column: Techniques Come and Go
Like any pastime, fishing is a lifelong learning process that creates one's identity as an angler. If you pay attention, tidbits of knowledge are gained from every fishing trip (both successful and skunking) that, when they are combined with facts and tricks gained from reading and talking to other anglers, helps us all catch more and larger fish when we are on the water.
Just like with fashion trends, fishing gear, lures and methods come and go.
Every few years I come across some lure or angling technique that dominates my fishing activities for a given species, for a few months or even seasons, until something better comes along. Ironically, its old classic lures or methods that are recycled, rather than some brand-new innovation that captures the angling spotlight, so to speak, most of the time in my angling experience.
I began hard-core striper fishing in the Race, drifting live eels on three-way rigs and slinging live eels to the rocks along the perimeter of Fishers Island with Gil Leopold, one of my longtime friends who died last fall. That was back in the 1960s when we were in high school at NFA. Today, these are still two of the methods that produce the lion's share of the jumbo stripers that are reported each season.
As age has begun to take its toll on my beat-up carcass, I began to move away from those pool cue rods rigged, with three-way rigs and a pound or more of lead, that are required to drift and hold bottom in the strong currents that create "The Race".
Now its super lines (Fireline specifically) on light, nimble, but powerful spinning rods that are used to cast or drift eels along the shore and around the edges of reefs.
When Captain Jack Balint of the Fish Connection took me out "tube and worming," an older even more "classic" method of catching stripers that had a resurgence a decade or so ago, I started "tubing" most of the time, rather than "eeling" for big-striped bass.
Trolling tube and worm rigs is so simple and effective it should be illegal, a Bonobo Chimpanzee can catch stripers, big ones by dragging a tube and worm behind a boat.
I'm not knocking this technique or those who do it, because that group include yours truly. I like it because it is "dirt simple," very effective any time of day and under every tidal condition. Tubes have caught me "deskunking" stripers when eels and my arsenal of artificials have failed to draw a strike. We've caught 30-pound plus stripers midday in August at dead low tide when you're not supposed to be able to do such things.
Tube trolling is a great way to catch fish, often quality fish with people who may not be experienced casters. A great way to combine techniques is to tube and worm troll while looking for working terns.
I became so enamored with this combination technique that I'd often release the eels I brought with me without sinking a hook into any of them, because we'd often catch our fill of stripers long before the sun set and the eels were slated for use. I called this habit, my "eel release program" as a rationale for being so wasteful with such expensive bait.
As a result of my "eel release program" I had almost forgotten how much fun slinging eels for big stripers is, until last week when I fished the lower Connecticut River using live hickory shad and live eels, with Captain John Planetta of Frank's Tackle in Marlborough.
Winds and tide were at odds, so the trip started off on the slow side. At one point, we were drifting near some rocks. I had a live hickory shad swimming off the back of the boat, John was casting eels tight to the rocks.
I decided to see if I could catch a "deskunking" schoolie with a spinning rod and a small Salt Shaker swim jig.
Within two casts, a 14-inch schoolie grabbed the lure. Just as it was reeled in close enough to lift out of the water for dehooking, a huge striper swam up and tried to eat it.
We decided to try to catch that monster and worked the area hard for the next hour.
The last of the shad were knocked off the hook by a medium-sized bass or chopped up by bluefish. About that time, John began catching some stripers in the 30-inch class by casting and retrieving live eels, almost like working a fake worm in shallow water, so I switched over to this tried-and-true method as well.
About the fifth time through the zone where that big striper chaser was holding, John's eel disappeared in a huge boil off the corner of a big rock and the battle was on.
Using a largemouth bass class, bait casting rig with 20-pound test Fireline, he subdued and lip-grabbed a 45-inch, 40-pound class striper within a few exciting minutes.
Last summer, with a case of Lyme disease and numerous trips to Canada, I don't recall making a serious eel fishing trip then or so far this season (which has been dominated by fluke fishing for me so far). This experience reintroduced my to an "old friend" of sorts, fishing with live eels. I'm already planning a nighttime "eel slinging mission" for the upcoming week. Winds and tides will determine exactly where those eels will "go swimming".
Bob Sampson Jr. writes an outdoors column that appears each Thursday. Reach him at sports@norwichbulletin.com
Originally published August 17, 2006
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