“That’s not our lunch coming down the steps. What the hell is he carrying?” The just lately inducted member was carrying what regarded like an alternative-styled toolbox product of shiny plastic, which was a novelty in that period of steel and wood sort out containers. It positively wasn’t a lunch pail, and when he stopped on the workbench and opened it, I held my breath. I had seen quite a few lures, primarily freshwater artificials within the large show case at Cornell’s Sporting Items, nevertheless it appeared this angler had just lately purchased all of them. It was the primary time that I had heard of anybody striper fishing with spoons.
The overwhelming majority of the membership fished with bait, with the best lures being the Cape Cod and Niantic Bay spinners trailed by two hand-excavated seaworms. Two of the older gents constructed what was known as the beads and blades. These consisted of half-inch coloured beads strung on linen and, finally, mono line. There was a small chrome blade each six beads, relying on the size from the connecting major line loop to the 6/0 or 7/0 hook on the enterprise finish, the place the worm was rigorously threaded on to permit it to swim naturally. These hand-brewed enticements had been a lot sturdier than the Cape Cod or Niantic Bays, which tended to open up underneath stress from a decided teen-sized (or bigger) striper.
This gent was clearly not a worm or bait fisherman; he trolled lures, a lot of them larger-sized ones that had been widespread for largemouth bass on the time. The membership’s caretaker referred to as them wobble spoons and mentioned he as soon as noticed a person jigging one from the deck of the bridge, 32 ft above the high-water mark. He famous that the angler had two faculty bass of about 4 kilos protruding from the burlap bag alongside him. The brand new member had a white and inexperienced fiberglass rod with a late-model Penn level-wind reel full of newly spooled white linen line.
Many of the locations we fished had been fairly shallow. Our spinners and beads had been gentle and capable of transfer by means of the water column with out hitting the underside and choosing up weeds. Nonetheless, the spoon man seldom fished these shallow areas, preferring to troll alongside and underneath the bridges along with his dependable and really quiet 4.5 Evinrude outboard. I had already realized that it was not how briskly you went however how silently and dependably, as lots of the outboards of that day had been fickle and wouldn’t idle down slowly sufficient to troll with out flooding out or coughing up a smoke cloud.
At that entry-level part of my fishing profession, the time period and understanding of “construction” was not in my consciousness or vocabulary. I surf-fished and trolled the shoreline rocks as a result of that was the place my mentors had been catching stripers at a time when a 16-inch fish with no bag restrict was the regulation. The spoon angler virtually at all times fished construction within the type of bridges, breakwaters, and artifical piers the place bass hid and foraged within the pilings and discarded slabs of damaged granite that offered extra cowl alongside the underside.
One afternoon, I used to be heading up the boathouse stairs because the spoon man was arriving. He observed my cardboard errand field and requested if I’d get him a espresso and a sandwich. He additionally steered I get one thing for myself. It was quiet on the membership, and whereas we had been consuming our lunch, he requested if I wish to be part of him and present him just a few of the spots the place I had caught bass with different members. It was troublesome restraining my pleasure. I gulped down my milk and pastry, then retrieved my rod and a container of sand worms in damp seaweed from the caretaker’s locker. I had seven or eight worms however figured that was sufficient as a result of I used to be actually fascinated with studying extra concerning the spoons. The standard inshore spots had been pretty shallow, and I caught two authorized schoolies whereas my new good friend hung up twice and misplaced one in all his spoons.
We stop trolling and he started drifting his chrome Accetta Pet Spoon alongside the center of the channel on the heart span, catching a five-pound striper virtually instantly. My jaw was on my chest as he caught a number of extra bass, however misplaced two extra spoons on the cables and foul backside that created a spider internet of damaged fishing strains underneath the construction. We then moved to the few deeper holes alongside the state piers the place the ships docked, the place he caught the primary teen-sized striper and misplaced one other of comparable measurement. These had been the most important stripers I had seen extracted from that space. We left simply earlier than sundown since he was all the way down to his final Accetta pet spoon. That journey was fairly a revelation.
Right this moment, spoon fishing has seen a revived curiosity, notably the flutter spoon method that has taken quite a few massive stripers over the previous few seasons. Immediately, it appeared that just a few anglers started taking credit score for the “discovery” of fishing with spoons. Not so. It’s been occurring in contemporary water for ages and within the salt for properly over 70 or extra years, in keeping with my private recollections.
Someday within the early Sixties, I used to be promoting a blended bag of fish at a New Bedford waterfront vendor when an aged gentleman, wearing a three-piece swimsuit and looking out misplaced in that moist and malodourous loading dock, approached me. He had such a real air about him that when he requested me the place my catch got here from, I advised him they had been caught lower than 5 miles from the place we had been standing. He smiled and advised me he owned a 23-foot bass boat, however as a health care provider, he didn’t have the time to proceed making lengthy runs to Cuttyhunk. He mentioned he can be completely satisfied to pay me to point out him just a few spots nearer to his slip on the Concordia boat yard in close by Padanaram village. He invited me to lunch at a close-by eatery, the place we made plans to satisfy at his boat the next Wednesday afternoon. I defined that he can be placing us at a drawback by beginning so late within the day, however his supply was so beneficiant that I agreed. I introduced two tube-and-worm rods and two dozen trolling worms. The doc had two customized rods with a pair of like-new Penn 3/0 Senators, every with a shiny chrome Luhr Jensen spoon connected to the reel’s chrome bars. I took him to the ledge the place these fish had come from—a boulder subject with a excessive spot that may tickle the underside of the skeg that protected his prop and shaft on the dropping tide. I steered he shorten his line and level his rod tip larger to maintain his spoon above the quite a few rocks scattered all through this space. I had barely paid out three colours of lead line and locked up after I started getting hits. It wasn’t the strong hook-up of a head-striking striper however the tail-docking snips of a bluefish that chewed all however the head of the worm, stopping simply wanting the barb.
I instructed the doc to crank in just a few extra ft of line as I went across the massive ledge. As quickly as I started to circle it, he had a jolting strike that resulted in line tearing off his reel. I turned the boat into deeper water whereas he fought the husky blue that made a number of head-shaking jumps earlier than he introduced it inside vary of my lengthy, lethal gaff. He was smiling from ear to ear and mentioned he had a affected person who made the very best smoked bluefish pate he had ever tasted. That bluefish got here up and bit the tip of that spoon and was solidly hooked on the massive single hook on the enterprise finish of the glimmering lure. After a dozen passes, I managed one blue and a authorized 30-inch striper on my tube whereas the doc caught a half-dozen blues and a 15-pound bass that engulfed the spoon as much as the ahead cut up ring. Over lunch, he talked me into taking his boat to Cuttyhunk at a later date, after I confirmed him the place to float and jig contained in the deeper waters of Quicks Gap and the robust tidal currents between Nashawena and Naushon Island exterior Robinsons. The doc caught a 31-pound bass on a 7-inch Sea Satan spoon. I knew that Sow and Pigs was too shallow for trolling spoons, however on a low tide, casting them into the west-running rip on the Dry Pigs produced some nice motion. On our first journey to the islands, I moved over to Devils Bridge, the place we trolled two of my heavy bunker spoons on wire line and caught three extra stripers earlier than the tide let go and the chew died.
The physician was so happy that he grew to become my good friend for all times. Through the “Wild West” days of the early constitution and party-boat fishing off Jersey, a few of these boats, drifting with Ava and Crocodile jigs, put as many as 200 bass on deck in the midst of an evening. My good friend. Nick, an old-school waterman, constitution skipper, and angling historian advised me a couple of New Jersey captain named Whitey Morantz, skipper of the Miss-Take II out of Highlands, New Jersey. Morantz started fishing spoons such because the 7-inch Luhr Jenson Crocodile properly over 50 years in the past. It seems he prevented utilizing a lot in the way in which of bait, wire strains, and trolling or casting as a result of his strategies primarily concerned drifting and jigging. That boat normally carried a full complement of anglers as a result of Captain Whitey had his spoon-jigging operation all the way down to a lethal science. His strategies had been easy and profitable, however I’m wondering if he ever used scent, as in bunker or herring.
Again within the Sixties, the Russelure was the worst-kept secret on Cuttyhunk island. The truth is, Charlie Cinto and Russ Keane—common fares of competing captains, Charlie Hague and Frank Sabatowski— had been warned by no means to disclose the place they fished or what they had been utilizing. Hague threatened them with expulsion in the event that they ever shared any details about his lures and strategies. Each time these two boats handed within the night time, Cinto and Keane would pull their foul-weather hoods over their faces and look the opposite approach. The truth was that each captains had been utilizing Russelures with nice success and getting extra fish to the boats than pulling the bigger, heavier eel-skin plugs that offered stripers rather more leverage for scrubbing off a lure.
It was Captain Roland Coulombe who gave me my first Russelure. They had been troublesome to return by in 1960, and that lure was a veteran of many battles on the rocks and rips of Sow and Pigs reef. The lures had been made and launched within the US in 1947, and whereas we don’t know who introduced the primary ones to Cuttyhunk, I’m actually glad they did. I put new hooks on mine, and normally had a fresh-killed herring or pogy to rub on the lure earlier than I deployed it. I fished that lure from Westport to Jamestown with nice success and nonetheless carry just a few on my boat to this very day.
What labored within the Sixties hasn’t misplaced any of its magic 63 years later. Within the spring of 2023, the Russell lure out-fished reside bait on quite a few events as sharpies had been live-lining or trolling reside bunker round large colleges of pogies. That day, the air was thick with the pungent scent of pogies holding in a balled-up security sample as over-nourished stripers rested under and alongside them. The splashes and crashes of feeding stripers had been absent as a result of that they had taken up a holding sample. The display screen on our Humminbird Helix 12 marked these targets at varied depths throughout one notably massive faculty. I waited for the fisherman to maneuver off earlier than I eliminated a tube and snapped a chrome Russelure on the 15-foot fluorocarbon chief and started a move across the pod of baitfish. Protecting the shadow of the boat and the prop wash away from the middle of the bait, the lure was slammed as quickly as I started to make a flip. That late afternoon, I launched three fish from 20 to 25 kilos with a twist of my pliers. I’m assured that throbbing and shimmering lure didn’t induce their starvation, nevertheless it performed to their pure instincts to assault any animated object that invaded their area. The stripers that assaulted that lure had been removed from hungry, and two of them had been adopted to the boat by cohorts that had been equally provoked. Russell lures have since gone on to change into a scorching merchandise for big-game kingfish tournaments off the Louisiana shoreline and neighboring waters.
Some fishermen may not imagine that stripers would ignore reside pogies, however they do, notably once they have gorged and there are a number of massive colleges throughout them to snack on. Right this moment, there’s a large number of spoons available on the market, from the Little Cleos and Krocodiles to the high-yellow Tsunami flutter spoons and dozens extra in between. Don’t overlook to stay in contact together with your spoons as a result of stripers have an affinity for grabbing them on the drop. Spoons caught stripers within the Sixties and properly earlier than, and bass are nonetheless smacking them as we speak.
Ideas for Fishing Flutter Spoons
By Brian Weiss
In recent times, a “new” lure has taken the striped bass fishery by storm, a kind of super-sized steel spoon referred to as the flutter spoon.
These lures first grew to become widespread in freshwater bass fishing as a strategy to imitate extra-large baitfish like gizzard shad. Their reflective steel and erratic motion had been a lethal tactic for jumbo largemouth bass.
As phrase received out, this lure made its approach into the striped-bass world. Right this moment, you’d be hard-pressed to discover a Northeast sort out store that doesn’t carry flutter spoons.
A flutter spoon is an ideal illustration of one of many striper’s favourite meals sources, grownup menhaden. In addition to the profile and alluring glimmer of sunshine solid off the spoon, the motion is what actually makes this bait shine. As a result of large profile and weight distribution, a flutter spoon has a wildly erratic movement within the water, each because it swims and because it falls. This motion is what triggers a response strike from close by bass. Whereas I’ve caught fish by merely retrieving the spoon, jigging it’s the best technique.
Let it Free-Fall for the Greatest Motion
Once you sweep the spoon, it wobbles and shimmers because it darts upward. On the way in which down, with out pressure on the road, it would fall erratically in varied instructions, like a falling leaf. That is when you’re going to get the vast majority of bites, feeling the bass as you raise the rod for the subsequent sweep.
Let it Scope when Bass are Choosy
Jigging and retrieving a flutter spoon with scope within the line will change the falling motion of the spoon because of added resistance out of your line. The spoon will not fall as erratically; as an alternative, it would sink tail first at an angle and wobble aspect to aspect. This enables the fish extra time to eat it on the descent versus aggressively chasing it down. It may be very efficient when the fish are somewhat pickier and aren’t stacked up beneath you.
Strive it on the Troll
In case you are unable to pinpoint a concentrated faculty of bait or bass, a flutter spoon is a superb search bait. Sooner or later final spring, my good friend Geoff and I had been fishing a location that had been scorching all week, with massive lots of bunker coming and going with the tide. We knew there have been fish within the space however weren’t capable of establish a constant feeding zone. After we gave up jigging and casting our spoons, we determined to go looking for fish. As we pedaled our kayaks round, we despatched our spoons again behind our kayaks and jigged them alongside the way in which. We had been each capable of hook and land a number of bass whereas on the transfer, which helped us finally discover an space with constant motion, so we stopped trolling and began jigging.
Fish it Shallow
From a ship, I’ve not had a lot success jigging flutter spoons any shallower than 10 ft of water. I imagine each the sound from the boat in addition to the scale of its shadow spook the fish. Nonetheless, I’ve caught fish jigging flutter spoons from a kayak in water as shallow as 5 ft. An indignant bass hooked under you in 5 ft of water will be as thrilling because it will get in a kayak. Hooking one so near the boat can carry superb visible motion in addition to some difficult angler maneuvers to keep away from dropping the fish. Once you discover fish in shallower water, don’t overlook the spoon.
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