“We were just a bunch of surf guys who found ourselves on boats, so we didn’t know any better,” says Captain Rob Radlof, smiling as he unhooks the giant bunker-sized hunk of wood from his reel handle. The light south wind made a small ripple on the surface as we drift over Shrewsbury Rocks in Radlof’s 27 Conch. A school of large stripers had arrived a couple days earlier, making their first pit stop since exiting the Chesapeake. Radlof, Shawn Matthews, and I hope to briefly interrupt their migration by offering them big metal lip swimmers.
The use of giant wood plugs made specifically for stripers goes back to the 1940s. In the decades since, its flourished into its own little cottage industry in the Northeast, which individual plug builders creating the lures one at a time in their basements and garages. Like Radlof and his crew, many of the plugs started out in the surf, but eventually found their way onto boats.
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One such lure was the Goo Goo Eyes swimmer, made by Connecticut-based surfcaster and machinist Leo Cooper, who couldn’t find a large enough swimming plug to buy, so he made his own. A prototype of the lure nabbed a 52-pounder for his friend, and several years later a blue-over-white “Big Daddy” Goo Goo Eyes vaulted the plug into striper-fishing infamy. As the legend goes, on a June night in 1967, Charlie Cinto, nose bloodied from a rough ride across Vineyard Sound, had a crushing strike on his plug as he trolled it on wire line behind Frank Sabatowski’s June Bug. That fish, at 73 pounds turned out to be the largest striped bass caught in more than 50 years, and remains tied for the state record in Massachusetts.
Radlof’s gear is substantially lighter in hand than the cumbersome wire-line rigs used on the June Bug. He relies on the cranking power of a souped-up, saltwater-capable baitcaster for getting the big metal lips to dig in and get down. His preferred rod, the St. Croix Mojo Inshore 7’9” extra-heavy model, was designed with his input, specifically for this fishery and technique. The moderate action absorbs the pulsing of the big plug, allowing it to wobble the way its builder intended. When a big bass takes the bait, the rod loads up and allows the angler to punch back and drive the hooks home. Rods built for muskie fishing, which Radlof used when he first started pitching big plugs from his boat, get the job done but tend to have faster actions, so they are not as well suited for saltwater fishing.
My friend, Dave Torrick, graciously lent me his St. Croix Mojo Inshore and Shimano TranX 400 combo for the day. The setup is spooled with 65-pound braid and finished with 5 feet of 80-pound-test leader attached with an FG knot. At the end of the leader is a 175-pound-test Tactical Angler’s Power Clip, an integral part of the connection because it’s large enough to provide big plugs with a full range of motion. Smaller clips or direct knots can choke off a plug’s action, preventing it from swimming freely. The whole setup is light in hand, comfortable to cast, and sensitive enough to stay in close contact with the plug—so much so that I could feel when a big bass swiped at it without making contact.
When live bait is tough to catch and big bass are unwilling to take surface lures, casting large, deep-diving metal lips is an effective and exciting way to target cow stripers.
While Captain Rob Radlof successfully fishes large wooden swimmers for super-sized stripers in Raritan Bay, off Monmouth County, New Jersey, and off the South Shore of Long Island, this tactic can be effective in just about any big-bass water with depths between 15 and 30 feet.
Most larger trollers weigh between 3 and 6 ounces, so you’ll need a rod between 7 and 8 feet that’s capable of throwing these weights. Moderate or moderate-fast action is better for easier casting of a large lure and working it effectively.
Given the heavy resistance of big plugs, conventional or baitcasting gear is preferred over spinning tackle. Large, saltwater baitcasters like the Abu Garcia Revo Toro Beast, Daiwa Lexa TWS 400 or Shimano Tranx 400 have the right mix of easy casting and dependable cranking power to make them ideal for this technique.
The lures are the most difficult part of the gear to acquire. Many are offered in “lure drops” through the plug maker’s websites, at fishing flea markets and winter shows, or second-hand through eBay or other online marketplaces (usually at a mark-up). Some of the lures to be on the lookout for include Time and Tide Lure Co. Troller, Big Water Pikes Troller, Voorhies Customs Troller, and Back Bay Plugs Troller. Following the lure builders on social media is the best way to learn when new plugs become available.
The fishfinder shows a few deep-red slashes, indicative of a scattered school of bass. A hundred yards away, a massive school of bunker ripple the surface, with individual baitfish occasionally flipping their tails in the way that “happy,” unbothered bunker often do. I settle into the routine of cast-crank-repeat, but keep an eye on Radlof and Matthews to make sure my retrieve speed and cadence match up.
Radlof’s retrieve speed for the plugs is more aggressive than you’d expect, especially if you’re used to fishing the surf where the go-to speeds are slow and slower. Several fast cranks of the handle when the plug lands are necessary to get it to dig in, but even after it’s down, Radlof retrieves at a moderate pace, occasionally pausing, sweeping, or popping the rod to fire up any following bass—and bass frequently follow the plugs without striking. Often, Radlof says, his hits come toward the end of the retrieve as the plug begins to rise toward the boat. The sound of scuffling deck boots on the bow breaks me out of the trance induced by the rhythmic thumping of the big plug. A bass has just pummeled Matthew’s lure but missed the hooks. The strike puts all of us on alert, though. The striper’s feeding window has opened.
The plugs we’re throwing share DNA with the striper classics of old, but feature improved designs, hardware, and color patterns. Radlof is casting a Big Water Pikes troller, made by Gary Soldati, in a black-over-white color pattern, while Matthews and I cast Time and Tide Lure Company trollers made by Kevin Brennan.
As a surfcaster on the North Shore of Long Island, Kevin Brennan’s plug building began with a build-your-own lure kit that came with a pre-shaped body and hardware for an angler to assemble and paint. While he caught fish with the kit plugs, he wanted to shape his own—specifically larger metal lips and pikies—so he started buying tools. Before he knew it, he had a full-fledged plug-building operation in his garage.
Brennan began building for himself, but as he refined his craft, he put them out to the striper fishing public. The response among surf fishermen for his pikies was fantastic, though Brennan said the bulk of his business now comes from boat fishermen. The demand for his work grew exponentially after a friend asked him to make a “troller.”
Trollers are metal-lip swimmers designed to swim deep and with minimal roll at higher speeds, allowing them to be used effectively while trolling from boats. A troller has a pitched, sloped head and a harder angle to the metal lip that helps the plug get down 8 to 10 feet (or more) and stay down. The body also tends to be slimmer, so it cuts through the water better.
For a troller to fish effectively while cast and retrieved, it must get down to depth quickly to maximize its time in the strike zone during the retrieve. To help with that, Brennan adds extra lead to his troller and gives it a sleeker shape, rounding off all the edges, which makes each individual lure a time-consuming labor of love.
At 8½ inches—not including the 4-inch custom-tied hookless flag adorning the rear hook hanger—and 6 ounces, the plug on the end of my line is a meal fit for a cow. However, an hour of casting and cranking such a large payload has strained my winter-atrophied fishing muscles so much that I begin to wonder if I will have any strength left to fight the fish. But when the hit comes—a punishing strike just as the plug begins rising toward the boat—those thoughts quickly vanish.
At least some of the appeal of fishing the big wood is the strike. A bass, recognizing the plug as a large meal that might get away, attacks with a decisive blow. That energy carries over into a savage battle that leaves Radlof with mangled hooks, broken leaders, and disemboweled plugs. The ice-breaking 30-some-pounder wages a heroic fight, but one I’d forget entirely an hour later.
Radlof’s striper season begins in March inside the Raritan Bay, where stripers bound for the Hudson River feast on bunker for several weeks. While these Hudson-stock stripers have been growing in size (and seemingly in number), the main event of Radlof’s spring run happens in May, when post-spawn stripers from the Chesapeake pull up off New Jersey’s ocean front.
While the Chesapeake striped bass stock is facing mounting challenges in the forms of invasive species, pollution and, most daunting, unfavorable river conditions during the spawning season, that population still contains the largest numbers of large striped bass on the planet. When these schools of northbound Chesapeake Bay cows reach New Jersey, the reports can read like something out of Sabatowski’s logbook from a half-century ago. Just the day before our trip, Radlof texted two photos of massive bass, metal lip swimmers hanging from their maws, with the accompanying words: 8 Over 40 this morning.
That’s pounds, not inches.
While the 30-pounder is a wonderful fish, the tune of “shoulda been here yesterday” begins to play its too-familiar chorus over the boat as next several drifts fail to produce any more bass. Radlof has a fallback plan of Raritan Bay, where plentiful 15- to 25-pounders are greedily attacking topwater plugs, but he isn’t yet ready to abandon his hunt for giants. He instructs us to rack the rods for a short “swizzle”—that is, a change of location.
Finding fish, without fresh reports or intel, is a skill born of equal parts experience and instinct. For the best captains, the ability to locate fish borders on extrasensory perception as they follow cues that the rest of us just can’t seem to see. I’ve seen it at work in Radlof on the tuna grounds, and when he throttles back a short ride from the Shrewsbury Rocks, far away from any other boats, I’d soon see it again.
Radlof instructs Matthews and I to cast out the plugs and work them with long sweeps and pauses while he putts around the area looking for a reason to stay put. He quickly finds that reason in a lone, enormous mark on the fishfinder.
Just as the mark is about to scroll off edge of the screen, my plug gets pummeled on the pause. It’s immediately clear that this is bigger than the 30-pounder, but when its first run just keeps on going, I begin wondering if I’d accidentally loosened the drag. After the fish takes what seems like an impossible amount of line for a striped bass, I begin to thumb the spool and put more pressure on the fish.
“Don’t do it,” Radlof says, calmly but firmly, while watching the fight unfold.
I listen, and the fish eventually stops … and then starts again.
I’ve caught good striped bass from the surf, and, like too many surfcasters, have assumed that battling a big bass from the boat would be somehow less exciting, less challenging. But there, minutes into this fight, with the fish still further away than it was when I hooked it, I’m feeling less in control than I’ve ever felt on shore. As my feelings of helplessness grow, I look at the substantially diminished spool and then over at the Conch’s throttles.
Matthews, getting my drift, laughs and says, “Robbie doesn’t chase bass,” recounting a story when Matthews had hooked a wayward giant tuna on a metal lip and had to convince Radlof to follow the fish.
The story makes me wonder if I’d also hooked a tuna, but then the fish stops and shakes its head in that furious way only a big striper can. It turns, and inch by inch, I store line on the large baitcasting reel. The fight settles into a strained pump and reel as the fish slowly but steadily yields ground. All’s good until I see the outline of the bass through the green water. I try to speak but can’t find the words. Everyone on board is quiet.
It’s the biggest striped bass I’ve ever seen in person. Seeing the boat, the fish seems recharged and again takes line. My stomach is in my throat, the stakes being raised after getting a look at the fish. I go slow, heeding advice from Radlof, and eventually the big stripers slides alongside the boat, close enough to grab. Of the 8½-inch plug, only the metal lip is showing, the rest of its length concealed within the striper’s cavernous mouth.
Rob lifts the fish aboard to extract the hooks, which I’m relieved to see had planted in the top of the striper’s mouth, away from the fragile gills. When we pose for a couple quick photos, I’m struck by the fish’s immense length as it stretches across both our laps with enough head and tail extending beyond us to cover at least one more angler.
The fish is big in every way, except its eye, which seems somehow small in the watermelon-sized head. It gives the fish a mean, aged look, one befitting a bass that’s likely in its third decade of migrating between the Chesapeake, New Jersey, and an unknown New England summering ground.
Then it’s back in the water, kicking steadily and clamping down on Radlof’s hand as he lets the fish rest for a moment with water flowing over its gills. Four haymaker tailbeats send the bass back to the bottom, and that’s when I begin to process that I’d just held the biggest striped bass of my life. It’s a shock that hasn’t fully left the system more than six months later.
The credit for the catch, of course, belongs to Radlof, whose experience and instincts put my plug in the right place at exactly the right time, a skill that’s earned him the reputation as one of New Jersey’s (and the Northeast’s) top striped bass and tuna captains. On the way to the dock, I realize that I’m just another surf guy on a boat who doesn’t know any better—what incredible company to be in.
Captain Rob Radlof
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