Article by Sue Foster
When I sit at my desk and decide what to write about, I often think about the most asked question in my tackle store that week. Well, this week has got to be, “What’s the best bait and rig to use off the surf?”
Vacationers come to Ocean City and they are staying in one of the condos or hotels that are facing the ocean. The kids play on the beach all day, and Dad wants to try his hand at fishing without driving somewhere, so he decides to fish “out front.” Usually he wants to get his family involved in the action as well.
The first thing to know is that it’s summertime! There are all kinds of pan fish out in the surf for anglers to catch if they don’t go overboard on the hook size. The best rig to start out with is a kingfish rig for the surf, which is a high/low rig made with two size #6 hooks with two small Styrofoam or cork surf floats. At the bottom of this rig will be either a snap or a loop to attach a pyramid or hurricane style of sinker. Sea Striker makes a dozen different variations of this rig. Assateague Tackle Company makes a regular kingfish rig and a Magnum Kingfish Rig which has slightly larger hooks.
Bait up the kingfish rig with either a real bloodworm or an Artificial Fishbite Bloodworm. The artificial bloodworms are great for the surf. It’s like hooking on a little piece of dried bubble gum tape. Once it hits the water it becomes real red and gooey and lets out some secret ingredient that smells just like a real bloodworm. I like to combine this bait with a little tiny strip of box squid or a little strip of fresh or frozen bunker, finger mullet, or spot. Some anglers use just plain box squid, the least expensive of all the baits ($4 or $5), and they catch OK. Personally, I’d invest the $8.00 and buy the Artificial Bloodworm and combine those baits. The artificial bloods don’t go bad and you can save the package and fish later, or even next year!
The thing we hear the most in the tackle store is: “I didn’t catch anything!”
Well, what size hook were you using?, we ask. “A number 4/0!”
That’s OK if you want to fish strictly for sharks and big rays, and that 1 in a 100 chance of a striper swimming by or the 1 in 1,000 chance of catching a cobia or a big drum. But if you have your kids out there and you just want to catch something, at least try the kingfish rig for a while and see what you come up with. Fish one rod with a big hook and cast out as far as you can throw it, but fish another rod or two with the smaller rigs in close.
“How far do I have to cast?”
Now this is a question that can only be answered by looking at the beach where you are fishing. At low tide, the angler generally can walk far out into the water and cast out as far as he can. You want the bait to be just slightly beyond the crest of the wave (the dark water), just before it hits the shallower water and breaks that create the white, foamy water.
When you are on the beach swimming with the kids, you can really see the contours of the beach at low tide and you can decide where to fish later that afternoon and evening when the lifeguards go off duty. Fishing the beach at the higher tide is always productive as long as you are fishing in a good “hole.” At low tide look for pools of deeper water close to shore. Anglers call these troughs. These troughs may only be 3 feet at low tide, but at high tide, they will be deep enough to hold fish. In this instance, you only need to flip out your baited rig a little ways, to “fish in close” to the beach. If you are fishing on a beach where there is a rock jetty, there will usually be a “deeper” side. Note where this is at low tide; then fish the deeper side at high tide. Look for “rips” where the water sucks out quickly on the outgoing tide and making a strip of “dirty water” (backwash) further out past the “breakers.” Fish each side of this “back wash” early in the morning before the lifeguards come on duty (around 10:00 AM) or later after the lifeguards go off duty (around 5:30 PM).
Here’s an e-mail I got last week, telling me about a trough that suddenly had fish in it as the tide came in. The fishermen didn’t catch keepers, but they didn’t care! The angler just wanted his son to catch his first fish! Dave Jermellaro e-mailed in this Assateague report: "I went down to Assateague with my son Max on Saturday. We arrived around 8:30 on the falling tide. I caught a small flounder early and then there was nothing for quite a while. There were some crabs stealing our bait though. When the tide started coming back in, we got into a school of small flounder. They were in a trough inside the bar...fairly close in. We ended up catching 7 more, including Max's first ever, between 11 and 15 inches. We lost 4 more in the wash and had some other strikes where we couldn't hook up. No keepers, but a fun time."
“What kind of fish will we be catching?”
Kingfish (whiting), spot, croaker, sand perch, snapper blues, blowfish, flounder, sea trout, sand sharks, and maybe even a pompano can be caught on small hooks in the summer. With the larger hooks on the extra rod, you can bait up some of the fresh spot you catch or a kingfish head, and go for bigger sharks, big rays, or the lonesome striper that just might be cruising by. Buy a pack of finger mullet and cut it into one inch chunks for snapper bluefish or croaker at night.
Surf fishing is always fun.
Good fishing….
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.
