Article by Sue Foster
“I’m going fishing in the surf. What size hook should I use? Should I use a big hook, or scale down to a smaller hook?”
It’s the later part of June and it’s been quite a year in the surf. We’ve had a good run of stripers, but that action is slowing way down. There’s always the chance of catching a nice striper, but May was the best month to try your luck at that. Since the striper run, we have had a really good run of sharks. In 2009, we saw shark action all summer, so if you like catching sharks, go big and go wire!
Anglers use a pretty good-size hook from size #10/0 (for serious big shark fishing) to #2/0 (just a general sand-sharking hook.) Small sand sharks are in the surf all summer and believe me, you can catch them on any size or style of hook whether you want them or not!
You can use a surf float to keep your bait off the bottom slightly, or just use a plain hook if you don’t mind checking your bait pretty often. Using a whole head of a small fish or a bunker head will let you leave your bait out there longer on a plain hook when shark fishing. If you are a novice, I would use a rig with the surf floats and a chunk of bunker, bluefish, box squid, or filleted and salted mackerel or bunker.
There’s a lot of talk out there about what sharks you can keep and what to throw back in the surf. If you are not up on your shark ID, I would release anything with teeth. Three sharks with teeth that are common to our waters are prohibited. Dusky, Sand Tiger, and Sandbar sharks must all be released.
Anglers are allowed to keep two smooth dogfish (sand sharks) of any size. These fish do not have teeth. Larger smooth dogfish sharks are quite good to eat if you skin and steak the meat. Even though sand sharks do not have teeth, they have a sandpaper like skin that can chafe through your line, so wire leadered hooks for larger sand sharks are a good idea. Small sand sharks are pretty easy to reel in and get off the hook. Grab them securely with a rag when de-hooking a small sand shark. Always look and make sure your shark on the end of the line doesn’t have teeth before getting too close to its mouth. If it has teeth, use long handled pliers, roll the shark on its back to make it more docile, or simply cut the hook off if it’s really big and nasty! Carefully drag the shark by the tail back into the surf.
“I don’t want to catch sharks!”
Use smaller hooks and different bait! Kingfish, or whiting, are starting to show up in the surf. They are fine eating and lots of fun on lighter tackle. A 7 to 9 foot-medium action rod with a reel spooled with 12 to 17 pound test line is the surf combination of choice.
There are lots of kingfish rigs out there made with size #8 or #6 hooks and small surf floats. Bait up with bloodworm, night crawler, or artificial Fishbite Bloodworm baits and sandwich this worm bait with clam, a little strip of box squid, or fresh or frozen cut bait. Cut bait such as bunker, mullet or spot is good. You can catch the fish with either worm or cut bait, but if you put a little of each together on the hook, it gives you an even better chance. Sandwich baits are often the key to successful fishing.
If you fish towards the evening hours, you may catch other fish such as croaker and snapper bluefish. If you want to be able to catch kingfish and these other slightly larger fish as well, fish a medium size #4 hook. You can buy a small Sea Striker Bluefish Rig (DT34 or DT34S), or one of Dale Timmons’ Assateague rigs called the Magnum Kingfish Rig. This rig is one of my favorites because it’s small enough for kingfish, but big enough to handle snapper blues, flounder, or croaker! Croaker are often nocturnal, which means they bite after dark. Most of our runs of croaker we had last year were caught after dark. You can also catch red hake (often called ling cod) at night.
In the heat of the summer, bluefish will often bite at night. For some reason, we haven’t had many blues in the surf this year. The few “mini-blitzes” that I heard of were caught late in the afternoon and towards the evening. If you start catching bluefish on your cut bait, you may want to switch over to a finger mullet rig baited with a whole finger mullet. These rigs are so neat because you can thread the entire finger mullet on the rig without cutting the bait. A double hook sits close to the mullet’s anal canal so when the bluefish comes up to grab the bait, it can bite right into the hook! Some people use these rigs exclusively because they are so easy to use. They will also catch stripers, sharks, skates and flounder, but rarely will you catch a kingfish, croaker, trout, or other pan fish. I sometimes cut off the float and use the mullet rig bare for flounder. Cast out, and slowly retrieve in along the bottom floor. The crabs will be after your bait, but if the flounder are out there, it really works.
Choosing a large, medium, or a small hook is the choice you have to make. Do you want to catch anything? Go smaller. If you want to only catch larger fish like sharks or a chance at a striper, go with larger hooks. If you want a variety, go medium. Besides your choice of fish, a lot depends on your bait! If you use worms, pretty much stick with the small hooks. If you use a big chunk of bait, go larger. If you are using medium strips of bait, go medium. If you want to fish a whole finger mullet, use a mullet rig. Match the hook with your size of bait. Match the fish of your desires with the size of your hook and…
Go fishing!
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.
