It has been a long night in the water and it’s almost time to swim back. I’ve been fishing “the outside” since the surf is finally flat enough. With dawn approaching, I realize I’m so far out that I can only see the bluffs. Every few waves, the trough is big enough that I can just make out the shore, where I can see a couple of surfcasters approaching. The sunrise crowd has shown up, but they’re just standing by the bluffs watching me and pointing. They’ll never believe the fish I caught earlier tonight, so I just backstroke in, smile, and hike back to the truck.
That’s the magic of fishing a tide on the “outer rocks.” The ones you can’t see, the ones that seem almost impossible to reach. When onlookers see you fishing them, see you standing, seemingly on the water, with the swell parting around you. It raises a lot of questions.
“How did you know there was a rock out there?”
“How did you find it?”
“How do you get back to shore?”
I learned the craft of rock-hopping in a wetsuit in Montauk, New York. It’s south side is made up of several consecutive rocky points with deep coves in between. Some of the reefs there are shallow enough that a wetsuit-clad angler can venture out quite far before swimming is necessary. The outer boulders are usually in the vicinity of the tips of these reefs.
The north side of Montauk also has its fair share of deep rocks, but the faster rips that set up there can make it difficult to go exploring for rocks without some guidance. With its strong current, you get one shot at climbing on the rock, so if you miss, you have to swim back in and start over.
Areas like these are commonplace from the boulder fields of Maine to the deep drop-offs of Block Island and Massachusetts, so surfcasters throughout the Northeast use specific techniques to find and fish outer rocks. It takes a certain degree of technique, physical ability, and determination just to locate them. I’ll go over the basics to help get you further out.
Before you can actually fish one of these outer rocks, you need to find it first. With conditions looking good, the best way to start exploring is to just try it. Most of the time, these submerged boulders are off the tips of reefs. They also occur in the middle of coves, but that’s not where I would start. Instead, think about those far rocks you always see—the ones sometimes exposed but rarely fished. Now, think about what’s in front of them. I pick a point, push out until I can barely feel the bottom, and start “poling” my way around. I use the butt of my rod to maintain contact with the bottom and help me push off so I can move around, which is possible in water up to about 8 feet deep. Any deeper than that and you won’t get the leverage or force you need off the bottom. Incidentally, for anglers serious about fishing deep-water rocks, this is one of the reasons you need a stout, one-piece rod. You can’t push off the bottom with a flimsy two-piece setup. My go-to is a Lamiglas GSB 11MH.
Past 8 feet, I have to swim. If the current is mild enough, I can move back and forth in either direction, but if it’s too strong to swim against, I go with the current. To locate rocks, I grab the top half of my rod and swing it in slow circles under the water, waiting for the butt to make contact. Since I use an 11-foot rod, that’s roughly an 11-foot radius I can cover. I frequently use this approach to find rocks I already know are there.
Looking for rocks with your eyes alone is ineffective. If it’s nighttime, a light will compromise your vision and reflect off the water’s surface. In daytime, you won’t see much even if a rock is actually there. The aquatic growth makes them hard to see in normal water visibility, unless a rock is heavily fished and has been scraped clean of vegetation by other fishermen’s spikes, leaving its whitish surface easily visible. Instead, identify the “swirl.”
When first exploring new waters for rocks, go during the day because it’s safer and easier. Also, time the trip around a half moon, when currents are at their weakest, and head out around slack tide for the same reason. You might think a dead, flat-calm surf day would be ideal, but I prefer light chop and very small swell in the water—maybe a 1-foot onshore wind swell—enough that there is some semblance of a peak-and-trough cycle in the swell where the “boil” or swirl of a rock might be exposed.
The swirl, as I call it, is the way the water acts when there’s a large, submerged piece of structure somewhat close to the surface. Look for a spot in the water that deviates from the water around it. It’s sometimes very subtle, but with a tiny bit of a swell, you can make out a possible piece of structure. If the current is minimal, float or pole in the same spot for a few minutes, waiting for it to show again.
Another method of finding a boulder for the first time is seeing other anglers fishing it. For instance, if you fish a popular area, you may frequently see some anglers on certain rocks. Don’t “mug” anyone, by crowding them on the rock, but take note of where they are on the reef and use that to your advantage at a later date. When I was new to Montauk and fishing tournaments there, I saw a particular rock at a certain reef where other competitors fished quite often. Before that, I never knew it existed; I’ve since won tournaments from that rock.
Another effective way of searching for new rocks is going out during a storm when the surf is heaving with 6- to 10-foot waves. This method helped me find a few of my rocks on the north side of Montauk. Go out around low tide, when the water level is at its lowest, and walk the beach. The extreme troughs of storm-driven waves reveal distant rocks that are never exposed under normal conditions.
I remember fishing one of my first Montauk nor’easters on the north side. I was there early and claimed a coveted “storm rock.” I was hitting fish consistently as my bucktail swung from 11 to 1 o’clock. When the sun had fully risen, I could see why. There was a big boulder straight out at the end of my cast that I’d never seen before, but I saw it that day in the trough of a 10-foot wave. Fishing it would have been impossible in those conditions, but I noted it in my logbook, and returned there under calmer surf to cash in big.
So, you’ve found a good rock and are amped up, so you fish it for the night and swim back in. Now, how do you find it again on your next outing, and how do you eventually get to it easily and consistently. There are some rocks in Montauk that are always be a pain to get to, no matter how many times I’ve fished them, but there are some tricks I use to make it easier to locate and climb atop rocks in the dark.
If you know of a rock in an area of generally weak current and you can freely float around, use the landscape above the beach to your advantage. When you’re on that rock, note exactly what is behind you. For Montauk, there are mainly clay bluffs with some trees and shrubs, so look for a distinct cut in the bluffs or an extra-large tree. Next time you’re poking around, you know to be in line with that shoreline feature.
I also like to use what I call “staging rocks.” Instead of blindly going straight out to the rock I want to fish, I begin by hopping around on closer rocks, using them like steps until I get to the last rock, where I know I’ll have to start swimming. Here, I usually stage, observing what the current is really doing out there, waiting for a lull between wave sets or just waiting for the rock to reveal itself with that signature boil.
If I’m fishing an area near a rip or during a moon tide, it’s a bit of a different game. I need to start on the beach a good distance up-current and time it so that when I get out far enough, I’m passing the vicinity of that rock. Poling won’t help in a nasty rip, so it’s better to swing the rod to try and locate the rock.
Don’t underestimate the speed and power of a rip. You never realize how fast water can move until you miss your rock and are getting dragged down the beach. Once, I was on an epic sunrise bite during a week of calm seas and even fished a new rock that I’d never seen anyone fish before—the furthest rock I’d found. Standing on top of it, the water was all the way up to my chest, with the surrounding water about 15 feet deep.
I was anticipating a large crowd of casters the following morning, so I got there three hours before first light. There were one or two guys on the outer rocks already, so I decided to go deeper. It was toward the end of the outgoing tide, so I felt comfortable going for the new rock I’d found. I greeted the guys on the outer rocks, and proceeded to swim out further, seemingly toward nothing. I hadn’t realized the flood tide had just started, and it was pitch dark, so I couldn’t use the casters behind me as a reference point. I just swam in the direction of the rock, worried that I might lose my bearings very quickly that far out at night. The current wasn’t ripping, so I was swinging my rod around, poking around in every direction, trying to find the rock. Eventually, I gave up and decided to swim back before I lost a spot in the lineup. When I finally returned to the surf zone and could start walking my way in, I had a brief “Where the heck am I?!” moment. I’d been taken east with the incoming current and ended up in the next cove and reef down.
A big part of the rock hopping game, aside from finding rocks to fish from, is holding onto them. Many times, I’ve been far out and into large fish, only to be forcibly put out of the zone by factors I couldn’t control or overcome. There are many different conditions that make holding a rock difficult, requiring stamina and some technique.
If there’s a decent swell with a long period, the best approach is to “duck dive” as the wave approaches, putting your head and body forward and pushing off the rock in such a way that the swell lands you right back onto the rock. This takes a good bit of experience as you have to time it right, though it’s a wild feeling and a sight to see … launching yourself forward into a 6-foot wave and getting placed right back on top of your rock standing upright, still reeling in like nothing happened. On the flip side, however, it’s not so glorious if it’s just one of those nights when every other wave is sweeping you off the rock. My buddies and I joke about how frustrated and angry we get at the waves themselves, especially after getting pummeled time after time, only to get right back up and get Ric Flair slapped in the face by some white water.
After you get wiped off a rock, jump right back up, even if a wave is going to slam you again right away. If you’re still in the wash and another wave hits, you’ll be pushed even further back, making it more difficult to get back onto the rock. However, don’t let white water or close-in waves discourage you from pushing out. Often, once you’re past the breakers, you only have to deal with swell, and you can actually keep your footing better than the casters closer to shore.
Current can also make holding a rock difficult. With a moon tide or strong current, if you are more than waist-deep on top of your rock, it starts getting dicey. Unlike in normal conditions when you can jump right back up, as soon as you fall off into heavy current, you’ll be swept away. If fishing a large rock under these conditions, position yourself on its most up-current portion. This way, with any small swell or a fish that makes you lose contact with the surface for even a second, you’ll have a buffer to catch a piece of the other side of the rock. And, if it’s one of those pointy, just barely fishable rocks where you have to stand like a flamingo—good luck.
Not all conditions favor exploring for or fishing these rocks, so it’s important to make the most of swimming conditions when you have them. Start with the basics of beach structure—points and coves. Choose a point and see what you can find. Use tactics like poling, swinging your rod, and staging. Take detailed notes of everything you learn and what landmarks you can use for assistance. Observe more experienced casters or take a scouting mission during the next storm. Once you’ve got your deep rock, fishing it with consistency and success is going to require stamina, technique, and lots of dedication. There’s just no way around it when it comes to this type of fishing.
Don’t get discouraged because spending a tide or two on these deep rocks, duck diving and fighting current is going to be exhausting nearly every time. Whether you’re new to surfcasting in a wetsuit or just looking to take your surf fishing to the next level, try it out.
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