Above: Casting right into a dawn sand eel blitz on 11/12/24. Photograph by Liam O’Neill
I had redemption on my thoughts after a “shoulda-been-here-yesterday” nightmare through the best-in-memory New Jersey fall run of 2023. I managed to time my journey for the attention of the striper and bunker hurricane that pummeled the Monmouth County coast from mid-October to Thanksgiving, lacking the blitzes by in the future on both aspect of my arrival.
Early studies confirmed the 2024 Fall Run shaping as much as be an identical, if not fairly as intense, expertise. A yr older and presumably wiser, I attempted to time this journey based mostly on the situations fairly than the latest studies. With some favorable west winds and a cooling development within the forecast, I left Massachusetts on November 11, sure for the Backyard State.
I’d packed for bunker blitzes. Final yr’s movies and photographs posted on Instagram by the surfcasters with superior timing aremained recent in my thoughts as I loaded my lug bag with pencil poppers, steel lips, and soft-plastic paddletails.
Following a tip from Mike Pinto of Giglio’s Sort out, I instantly discovered the fish— or extra precisely, I discovered the place different fishermen had been catching the fish. Redemption appeared imminent, till I observed that each different surfcaster was throwing Ava Jigs, the slender steel diamond jigs fitted with a kinked, long-shank hook coated in a tube tail. The fish had been consuming sand eels proper on the underside, and people sand eels had been farther off the seashore than I might attain with my paddle tails and metal-lips.
Inside two casts of bumming a diamond jig off my good buddy and former OTW common supervisor, Neal Larsson (who was down from Massachusetts on an annual week-long surf-fishing journey), I used to be tight to a frisky, fall run striper. I caught yet another earlier than shedding the jig, and reserving it again to Giglio’s for a full restock. The bass had been nonetheless there once I returned, and the catching went on till sunset.
The next day, in the identical location, the bass had been on the identical stretch of seashore, feeding on sand eels. The wind had picked up and swung a bit north, necessitating a change from the Ava A17 to the heavier A27 to chop by means of the crosswind. Fish bit each different solid till the tide slacked, principally schoolies and slots, however with sufficient bigger fish within the combine to maintain you in your toes.
Protecting surfcasters on their toes is what the autumn run does greatest. Totally different situations and totally different baitfish create totally different patterns, ones that will ship you working to the sort out store to restock on diamond jigs for the primary time in 5 years.
And, my packing all my bunker lures was not fully misguided. Whereas I used to be catching stripers that had been spitting up sand eels, different surfcasters farther south had bass herding bunker into the seashore. A fall run with each baits offering totally different approaches to catch stripers would possibly make this even higher than final yr’s.
Take a look at these posts from the Fall Run:
Fall Cow on the Fly
Sand Eel Madness
Bucktail Bass
Dawn Stripes
