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Mike Kuznic caught this 13-pound tog on a glow belly Tall Tailz tog jig dropped onto a wreck. Whether you’re a seasoned tog pro or a beginning blackfisherman, the words “tog jig” have undoubtedly been drilled into your brain. This relatively simple method of fishing has exploded in popularity over the past 10 to 15 […]

(Photo by Tom Lynch) Surfcasters often operate by maxim.  These so-called “rules of the game” continue to influence salty veterans and offer those new to the sport the basic fundamentals to help them connect to a striped bass from the beach.  Whether it’s “fish the tides, not the times of the day,” “throw dark-colored plugs […]

During the fall run, the waters of the New Jersey surf undergo a change. As water temperatures begin cooling in the second half of September, mullet, anchovies, spearing, and juvenile bunker leave the bays, rivers, and estuaries, while sand eels and adult bunker move in from north and offshore, flooding the coastal waters with a […]

The other guy is not old, but he is old school. Forties maybe. I see him multiple nights a week because we fish the same stretch of coast and park our trucks semi-legally on the same narrow spit of road. I don’t know his name and he certainly doesn’t know mine. A true surf rat, […]

Jon Rogers of Niantic, CT poses with a 19-pound barracuda he and two friends caught 25 miles south of Montauk. Last week, Jon Rogers of Niantic, Connecticut, caught quite the surprise when he and two friends headed offshore for a routine tuna trip south of Long Island. Joined by his brother-in-law, Paul Lavezzoli, and his […]

Daytime fishing for stripers has changed greatly over the last few decades. On my trips to Cuttyhunk Island in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was easy to keep occupied catching stripers in the 20- to 36-inch range on pencil poppers throughout the daylight hours. An afternoon’s catch of 25 fish or so wasn’t out […]

Recently, I was thinking about an article I read a long time ago. It was sometime in the early 70s, when I was a youngster learning to fish in Southern California.  Eager for information, I read as many fishing magazines as I could. The article that stuck with me was about which month was the […]

On the back end of the dreaded “dog days of summer”, and before the fall run gates open, comes (arguably) the most exciting time of year for inshore anglers. It’s the season between seasons, a few weeks that are referred to by watermen of the northeast as albie season. When hardtails like false albacore, bonito […]

Last week, I ate a piece of bigeye tuna that had lurked in my refrigerator for 10 days. Normally, I get sketched out about eating even 5-day-old fish. This steak was different. It was my first attempt at dry-aging fish. Most of us are familiar with dry-aged beef, a highly acclaimed process in the culinary […]

Besides the obvious jetties and rock piles, most inlets have nearby shoals, flats, deep holes, and channels that hold abundant bait and fly-fishing opportunities. There are no guarantees in fishing and that’s partly what makes fly fishing so appealing. Its great attraction lies in the combination of anticipating what might happen and then what actually […]