Article by Capt. Lance Smith
Welcome to the 2015 fishing season everyone! As a new columnist for the Coastal Fisherman, let me introduce myself.
I, along with my father, have captained/mated aboard our boat the “Longfin” for the past 20 years or so. In addition to offshore fishing, if you ever see a white and green pontoon in the bay, with a big headed chocolate lab onboard, that's me fishing for dinner.
Don't get me wrong, I live for the explosion of a yellowfin on the flatline, or a white marlin’s fin that magically appears behind a perfectly skipping ballyhoo on the short rigger, but I get my greatest enjoyment in life from teaching people who are interested in learning about fishing.
Offshore fishing, in a way, has brought me full circle back to my roots, fishing in.the bay and on ocean wrecks. I still have the task of preparing everything for a day’s fishing, which sometimes includes my parents, three sisters, eight nieces and nephews and three dogs, but I actually do get to wind in fish! Sure, I still have to tie on hooks, untangle backlashes and occasionally pull errant hooks from human flesh, but there is just something about setting the hook on your own fish and bringing it to the net.
So as I plan to follow our fishing season's progression, both inshore and offshore through the summer, passing along to reader every tip and tactic I can think of, let us begin with tautog.
These hard fighting, delicious, structure oriented monsters will put your tackle, and your patience to the ultimate test. As I write this, the inshore artificial wrecks and reefs have been welcoming the first of these bucktooth beauties. They will invade the inlet and the bay and can be caught from the shore at places such as the Bulkhead that runs from 2nd to 4th Street, the Eastern span of the Rt. 50 Bridge and around the North Jetty. If you have a boat that is capable of reaching the inshore reefs such as Russell's, Purnell’s or the Bass Grounds, and you have a depthfinder, an anchor, a “must have” chart from the Ocean City Reef Foundation (www.ocreeffoundation.com), and the desire to brave the chilly spring winds, you are soon to be addicted.
Location is the most important factor when it comes to consistently catching tautog. If you aren’t directly over top of a wreck or reef, or directly adjacent to a bulkhead or jetty, you might as well not bother dropping a line. When you drop your baited rig (we will discuss this shortly) to the bottom, lift it up a foot or two and let it drop again. Do this in a circular motion with your rod until you feel something other than sand. If you are just pounding sand and you can’t really feel any minor depth changes or hard substrate, move to another part of the boat or bulkhead. If you feel your sinker drop into a hole that is significantly deeper than the surrounding area, you are almost guaranteed to get a bite if the fish are feeding.
If you must cast out, such as off the North Jetty or from the bulkheads downtown, try to keep your casts as short as possible. Casting for tautog is the easiest way to get snagged. At the bulkheads, there is a drop-off of twenty feet or more just a few yards from where you will be standing and it can be a difficult location to master. When fishing these locations, I prefer to use a heavier weight than usual so the current will not drag my rig into a snag. Cast out and let your rig sink to the bottom in free spool. Now, holding your rod as high above your head as possible, begin to slowly wind in until you feel the sinker touch rock or you feel the taut line of a snag beginning to form. Keep your line tight and leave it there until you get a bite. If you don’t manage a bite within 5 minutes or so, it is possible to effectively “jump” your rig over the structure by using a hard hook setting action and winding like mad!
When it comes to anchoring, most professional “toggers” prefer a double anchor setup that allows them to more accurately position themselves over an area of hard bottom, and keeps the boat from drifting off of that exact spot. There are various anchors and anchoring methods out there but the simplest one I have found is a single anchor setup and a marker buoy. Wreck anchors can be used as well but should only be employed when the seas are mild. I like to cruise around in circles once my GPS has indicated that I have arrived at my destination and I drop a marker buoy on the highest looking spot. I’ll then circle around and drop another buoy on structure that I can find within 20 yards or so of the first marker. This allows for some error in my anchoring scheme.
Once you have deployed your marker buoys, position the boat on top of them and allow yourself to drift off a hundred yards or so. By noting the direction of your drift you can then run up-current of the markers and set your anchor (length of rope, chain, scope, etc. determined by current and wind). Allow yourself to drift back toward your markers until you are able to come tight on the anchor and are sitting in a spot you believe is on top of hard bottom. This may take several attempts and can be frustrating at times, but if you are sitting over sand or have to cast any distance to reach structure, you are going to have a very long day. Sometimes simply letting some line out, tying the anchor off to a different cleat, or even turning the boats wheel over in one direction can change your entire fishing day.
Besides accurate anchoring, tautog require stout tackle. When I first started tog fishing in the bay I used my flounder rod. That setup was fine for the cooperative, sub-legal to legal size tog, but even with the heaviest line I could fill my reel with, I lost tautog that still haunt me. It was then that I purchased musky rods with conventional reels to add to my arsenal. Overkill? No. A 14" tautog can bend a stiff musky rod in half, hang you up in the rocks and leave you telling stories of the 15 pounder that got away.
Conventional levelwind or other open-faced reels, spooled with 30 to 50 lb. braid are the go to set-ups for tog. Spinning gear will work, but when fighting current/tide, the ability to thumb the spool and keep your bait in the strike zone with a baitcaster is the way to go.
Bait consists of crabs, crabs, and crabs. You can use clams but this will often attract unwanted species such as dogfish sharks. Any species of crabs that you can catch locally will work with green crabs being the most available type for purchase in local tackle shops. Sand fleas are also and excellent bait for tog when fishing from the Inlet and north within the bay. Always purchase twice the amount of crabs that you think you will need. As you are about to find out, tautog are notorious bait thieves.
Once you have located structure and successfully anchored over it, whether it is an inshore reef, the South Jetty or the rocks off of Martha’s Landing, put your patience and trigger finger on hold. Connect a 3 to 5-foot leader of 50 lb. mono to your braid utilizing a line-to-line knot or a swivel. At the bottom of the leader, attach a 4 to 8 oz. bank sinker (depending on current) using any knot with which you are comfortable. Approximately 12 to 16-inches above the sinker, tie a surgeon's loop (a VERY simple knot you can find anywhere on the internet) or another comparable knot to form a loop. At this point you can use a loop-to-loop connection to attach a #3 to #5 blackfish hook (sold at every local tackle shop by Shur Strike) with an extra long shank to your leader. You can also use short shanked, octopus style hooks in the same size range by cutting one end of the surgeon's loop and snelling the hook on to the remaining tag end. Basically, any bottom rig, with any knots you know, with sufficient weight, a properly sized hook and a leader that will withstand constant abrasion will do.
So, if anchoring correctly or finding a suitable location to fish from shore seemed difficult, you may find hooking your first tog to be on the verge of impossible! When tog feed on mussels and crabs, they first crush the bait with their front teeth; suck the whole mess in and attempt to spit out the shells (and your hook). The correct time to set the hook on a tog is somewhere in the middle of this jumble of taps, tugs and pulls. Some larger tog will simply thump the bait and take off, almost ripping the rod from your hands, but typically, the bite is much like that of a sunfish or bluegill pecking at a worm. You may miss him a few times, but keep re-baiting and dropping your rig back into the same hole until you get a hook up. I typically wait until the third tap on my line at which point I engage my reel, wind in any slack until my rod tip almost touches the water, feel for a bit of weight on my line, and then swing up hard for the hook set. If the fish is there you must begin reeling immediately. If you attempt to engage your reel after the hook set, or drop your rod tip any without winding, the fish will either hang you up in the rocky bottom or spit the hook. You must win the first 10 seconds of the fight or be prepared to re-bait or re-rig if the fish drags you back into its lair.
Tide, current and water temperature also play an important role in catching tautog. In the early spring, look for fish in the bay to be near structure such as the jetties which are dark in color and retain the suns heat. Also, try to fish during the outgoing tide as the waters flushing from the muddy flats of the bay will be warmer this time of year. Current, whether fishing from shore or anchored ten miles off the coast, can put tog either on or off the bite. Too much or too little current and they may not bite at all in the same place that you caught a hundred the day before. Perhaps most importantly, regardless of these other variables, is water clarity. Although not nearly as dependent on sight for feeding as flounder are, when the tide changes one way or the other and the weeds in the current disappear, the bite can become fast and furious for a short period of time.
If you don’t have access to your own boat or a friend’s, or you don’t want to fish from the shoreline, you can try one of Ocean City’s many headboats. The “Morning Star”, “Judith M” and the “Angler” all fish for tautog at one point or another during the season. Just call ahead and ask if they have any tog-specific trips lined up. If you already have some knowledge of this fishery and you are looking to gain some more experience or target some larger fish, there are some smaller charter boats such as the “Fish Bound” and the “Reef Chief” that specifically target these fish on ocean structure.
Whether you are dropping your crab next to a barnacle encrusted piling or a coral covered railway car 100 feet down, once you land one of these incredible fish you will be back for more. So keep your knots tight and your green crabs juicy, and just maybe we’ll see your smiling mug in the next issue.
Lance Smith is an outdoor writer and Captain of his family’s boat, the “Longfin”.
