Above: Casting into a sunrise sand eel blitz on 11/12/24. Photo by Liam O’Neill

I had redemption on my mind after a “shoulda-been-here-yesterday” nightmare during the best-in-memory New Jersey fall run of 2023. I managed to time my trip for the eye of the striper and bunker hurricane that pummeled the Monmouth County coast from mid-October to Thanksgiving, missing the blitzes by one day on either side of my arrival and    up golf.

Early reports showed the 2024 Fall Run shaping up to be a similar, if not quite as intense, experience. A year older and a little wiser (though not much as you’ll soon see), I tried to time this trip based on the conditions rather than the recent reports. with some favorable west winds and a cooling trend in the forecast, I left Massachusetts on November 11, bound for the Garden State.

I’d packed for bunker blitzes. Last year’s videos and photos posted by Instagram accounts of TAK Waterman, Mike DeMarco, and Kyle Arc remained fresh in my mind as I loaded my lug bag with pencil poppers, metal lips, and soft-plastic paddletails.

Following a tip from Mike Pinto of Giglio’s Tackle, I immediately found the fish— or more accurately, I found where other fishermen were catching the fish. Redemption seemed imminent, until I noticed that every other surfcaster was throwing Avas, the slender metal diamond jigs fitted with a kinked, long-shank hook covered in a tube tail. The fish were eating sand eels right on the bottom, and those sand eels were farther off the beach than I could reach with my paddle tails and metal-lips.

Within two casts of bumming a diamond jig off my good friend and former OTW general manager, Neal Larsson, I was tight to a frisky, fall run striper. I caught one more before losing the jig, and booking it back to Giglio’s for a full restock. The bass were still there when I returned, and bit well until sundown.

The following day, in the same location, the bass were still there, 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 cut through the crosswind. Fish bit every other cast until the tide slacked, mostly schoolies and slots, but with enough larger fish in the mix to keep you on your toes.

Keeping surfcasters on their toes is what the fall run does best. Different conditions and different baitfish create different patterns, ones that may send you running to the tackle shop to restock on diamond jigs for the first time in five years.

And, my stocking up on bunker lures was not entirely misguided. While I was catching stripers that were spitting up sand eels, other surfcasters farther south had bass herding bunker into the beach. A fall run with both baits providing different approaches to catch stripers might make this even better than last year’s.

Check out these posts from the Fall Run:

Fall Cow on the Fly

Sand Eel Insanity

Bucktail Bass