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Q: What separates an exceptional tautog fisherman from an average tautog fisherman?
Keith Bradley
Monmouth Beach, NJ
A: Tautog fishing can be the most frustrating and addictive fishing there is. Why is that, you ask?
Every scientist I know who has personally worked with tog in tanks thinks they're smarter than most species. Therefore, exceptional tautog fishermen need two things - patience and practice. Having the right equipment doesn't hurt either.
Motor past 2 miles of diving gannets with 30-pound striper swirls all around to get to your favorite tog reef before the tide slacks and it won't matter if you're average or exceptional - you're done. You've got the tog bug bad!
Good baits, good rigs & any artificial reef, wreck or rock pile in our local waters will get you into tog. It’s a fishery where fisheries management in combination with artificial reef construction is making this fishing better and better.
Angling techniques vary from place to place and over different habitats. Best baits vary from season to season and also over different habitats. I've seen one angler outfish all aboard with (whiteleg) rock crabs, another with stinking dead frozen sand fleas and even watched a lady outfish dyed-in-the-wool toggers with Gulp! crab ...plastic!
Can't predict everything, especially genetically impure plastic-eating tog, but live hard baits generally work best.
Rods: Where fishers in DE & Chesapeake Bays seem to prefer shorter, even 5 1/2 foot rods, at sea we'll often have to compensate for wave action. Length then becomes an asset as anglers raise & lower rod tips to avoid bouncing sinker & bait. While I prefer 7 1/2 to 8-foot St. Croix fast action musky sticks, among the anglers I know who have caught tog over 20 lbs. (and a few anguished souls just beneath that benchmark) many prefer a much softer tip. The classic "blackfish stick" will be a traditional glass blank that's very soft, but sturdy enough to rarely need a net.
Your rod must be able to handle whatever sinker conditions call for. On Ocean City's reefs we often fish with 10 and 12 oz. leads.
A handful of anglers favor spinning tackle. They too win the pool and can be high-hook for the day. However, far more tog sharpies favor conventional tackle.
Stand-up tuna tackle is never perfect, but if that's all there is handy, go ahead and use it.
Reels: American made Avet reels in MXJ & SX are very popular as are similar sized Diawa’s, new Penns and Shimano’s. If you see a strange looking over-grown sort of fly fishing reel, they're called sidewinders and are almost always mounted on soft, traditional glass blanks that can flip big fish over the rail.
Line: For line selection I offer Capstick's instruction on elephant hunting: "Use Enough Gun."
I advise clients to use at least 50 lb. spectra micro-braid (with 65 pound better) and top-shot the braid with 40 to 80 lb. clear mono or fluorocarbon.
Leaders are important. One trip, we were enjoying a nice, steady bite of keeper tog when an angler commented that he'd caught all his fish on 30 lb. leader and none were breaking him off or getting back into the wreck.
You have to know what happened next. A good fish broke off and he went to a heavier top-shot. Use enough gun!
Hooks: We were double-anchored over a small wreck near the Bass Grounds around 7 or 8 years ago and my clients were into good fish with an occasional 10 or 12 pounder coming up. I lowered my rig with a whole blue crab for bait and never felt so strong a pull on a bottom rig. Unfortunately, it turns out you need strong hooks too.
Nowadays "octopus" style hooks in 3/0 to 6/0 are favored by exceptional tautog fishermen along my partyboat's rail. We allow "J" hooks with tog because deep hooking is very rare. Strangely, going to 3X strength wire seems counter productive.
Conservation: Exceptional tautog fisherman take an interest in conservation of the species.
Support the Ocean City Reef Foundation & the Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative. Tell the people you buy your fishing license from you'd like to see some of those revenues go toward building reef.
I've looked at underwater video for years trying to create a real picture of productive reef habitat. The single greatest assemblage of large tog I've witnessed was on a barge where the walls had fallen away, leaving 'bookshelfed' reinforcing cubicles we call “tog condos”.
If you don’t believe that tautog are a man-made fishery along coastal Maryland then picture barren sand where all of our artificial reefs, wrecks, jetties, bridge pilings & rip-rap are. Do you see any tog on all that sand? How about sea bass?
Learn to tell male tautog from female tautog. Take fewer females if you can. When you're tossing back 10 pound females without a care, you're no longer average.
Meanwhile, enjoy our tog fishery -- right through doing the dishes.
Do you have a question for a local pro? Email your question to [email protected]. Don’t forget to include your name, town and phone number.
