Weakfish strategies: Grass shrimp
by
Zeno Hromin
Teasers tied in front of your plug are an effective way to match the hatch
and increase your weakfish success.
You are standing at the water’s edge, casting your lure into the quiet surf. You have been at it for a while, and the only thing that is keeping you from calling it a night are the swirls you notice on the surface of the water in close proximity to your casts, indicating the presence of game fish. After going through every lure in your bag you decide to pack it in, realizing your lure will go untouched. Out of frustration and curiosity you shine your light in the water only to discover an amazing sight happening right at your feet. Large weakfish are darting through the rip, gorging on thousands of tiny grass shrimp that are floating in the current. At this point you are frantically looking through your bag for something that would “match the hatch”, in this case, a small grass shrimp imitation but to no avail. Your lures are too large, and your teasers are hanging on your garage wall. The closest thing you have is a bucktail, but it’s far too large and heavy to resemble the bait at hand.
I can safely say that some of my most frustrating nights while fishing have come when weakfish were feeding on grass shrimp. Floating in the current and numbering in the thousands, these tiny creatures become such an abundant food source for weaks that at times, it’s impossible to get them to even acknowledge your offering. Unless you take up fly-fishing, it is difficult to “match the hatch”, except perhaps with a small teaser tied in front of your lure. But difficult as it may be, there are a few things that you can do to greatly improve your chances of success when tiderunners are zoning in on this smallest of small baits.
Early in the spring once the waters warm up, grass shrimp can be found in large numbers floating in the currents of our back bays. One sure giveaway of their presence, are diving terns popping out of he water with seemingly empty mouths. Grass shrimp’s small size and their almost translucent color make them impossible to see in a terns’ mouth, especially from a distance. When you come across these seemingly empty mouth spring terns you can be sure grass shrimp are present.
Weakfish tend to spend their daytime hours in deep holes in the back bays, congregating in large schools away from the reach of surfcasters. But once the sunsets they move under the cover of darkness into the shallow waters looking to feed. On night tides when grass shrimp are present in the water, you will hear “sucking” or “slurping” sounds, or you might observe swirls on or just below surface. However these motions are not violent in nature, and are not followed by an explosion in the water as is commonly seen in the fall when gamefish are fattening up for their migration along the oceanfront beaches. The abundance of shrimp makes weakfish feeding patterns more of a leisure activity as compared the aggressive behavior they display when they are attacking baitfish. Weaks use their “fangs” to clamp down on baitfish before sucking them down the throat, but when weaks feed on grass shrimp they use their mouth like a giant vacuum sucking in any shrimp in the vicinity of their jaws. Once they close their mouth water is forced through their gills and the shrimp down their throats. This explains why our lures get ignored even when cast accurately into the area the fish are visibly feeding in. Think of it this way, they are so “zoned” into sucking their food down that striking your lure would required them to use their fangs and change their feeding approach. Often enough they would rather ignore your lure than do that. You have no choice but to give them what they want, a lure that appears as if it is floating along with the shrimp. A lure which can be sucked down by vacuum instead of bitten. Definitely easier said than done but not impossible.
A small teaser in white or pink fished ahead of the lure would be my first choice. Besides the fact that your teaser is close in size and appearance to the shrimp, you get an added benefit because it appears that your lure is chasing your teaser. At times this will encourage weakfish to hit your lure or the teaser. They will hit it out of curiosity or because they might think that another fish will get it before they will. Don’t forget that competition for food is an ever-present instinct even when food is abundant. Considering the size of a grass shrimp, the teaser you use should be small. My first choice of teaser material is bucktail. I also have had good success using D.O.A lures as teasers. Their tiny plastic shrimps are dead ringers for real ones, but you need to back off on your drag when using them, because I have found that heir hooks are brittle. Keep in mind that your lure is used as a delivery method for your teaser, and you want your teaser to be in the same water column as where grass shrimp are present. If shrimp are floating on the top I might elect to go with a small Redfin or a floating Rebel. For probing a little deeper Bombers, and sinking Rebels might get the nod. The strength of the current will greatly affect your selection of lures, and if the water is moving along at a nice clip don’t forget to pack few Yo-Zuri darters in your bag.
Seems counterproductive to cast a bucktail when you want our presentation to “float” high in the water column, doesn’t it? This technique of getting the bucktail high in the water column is not new. It was explained to me by one of the legends of surfcasting, William “Doc” Muller. The proper way to accomplish this theoretically contradictory, but highly successful technique is to use a very small bucktail dressed up with a trailer that is buoyant enough to keep your leadhead from heading for the bottom. Good choice for a trailer would be a small strip of Uncle Josh Pork rind, creating the illusion of a small shrimp drifting just under the surface with a fluttering attraction provided by the pork rind. Remember, we want the bucktail to be carried with the current so the retrieve can at times be painstakingly slow, just enough to keep in contact with your lure while the trailer provides all the action. Over the last few years, I have grown partial to Blue Frog bucktails when targeting weaks. Besides their awesome color combinations which match just about any baitfish found in our waters, I feel the swinging hook on these bucktails give trailers better fluttering action. White, pink and chartreuse are my favorite colors; with red over white a good producer as well. The swinging hook of a blue frog also prevents a fish from gaining leverage and popping the hook out of its mouth. After you spend some time chasing after weakfish, you will agree that this is a big plus due to their remarkable ability to “shake” their heads when hooked.
I know, I know. After spending the whole article writing about “matching the hatch” I switch gears to jelly worms! Those who know me are aware that I don’t go anywhere without my trusted jellies. Although worms are not a match for grass shrimp, they are a favorite entrée for weakfish. Since they can be presented in the manner that weakfish can “suck” them into their cavernous mouths, they are often productive in the above-mentioned situations. If the weaks are feeding on the top, I prefer to use a Gamakatsu 4/0 worm hook and an 8 to 10” Mann’s strawberry jelly worm with no added weight. Although these worms seem large, they are swallowed with ease even by the smaller tiderunners. I use a small leadhead when I want to probe a little deeper in the water column. Cast it up current and reel slowly, just enough to stay in contact with your worm, twitching your wrist slightly every few turns. Twitching will make a worm more appealing, and draw the attention of a curious fish. A fair warning! With little or no weight used on the terminal end, hits can feel vicious, as there is nothing between you and the hook to soften the blow. With this in mind, given the weakfish’s thin jaw structure, your drag should be set lighter than for bass and blues. Since most of this fishing is done in the back bays using small lures, rods should not exceed nine feet. Casting small lures with big sticks is impractical and uncomfortable. I switch between two rods when going after weaks depending on conditions and the area I fish .On nights when I feel I might need an extra few feet of casting distance I use a Lamiglass one piece GSB 108 1L rod with a VS 150 loaded up with 20lb Fireline and a 40lb leader. But most of the time you will find me casting my trusty two piece 7 ½ foot St.Croix Premier PS70HF2 fast action stick, rated for 10 to 20lb.This one-handed stick gets a lot of play around jetties, groins or any other areas where prime underwater real estate can be reached with a short cast. It is short enough to be used in tight quarters yet it has enough backbone achieve a good hook set even on a medium size bass.
Targeting weakfish requires a little forward thinking when considering location, and which techniques to use. But in all honesty there is no big difference in the approach to weaks compared to striped bass (other than the fact that light tackle makes weakfishing more pleasurable). So when you notice the grass shrimp in the water give weakfish a try. I know I always do.
Copyright, March 2004
by
Zeno Hromin
Teasers tied in front of your plug are an effective way to match the hatch
and increase your weakfish success.
You are standing at the water’s edge, casting your lure into the quiet surf. You have been at it for a while, and the only thing that is keeping you from calling it a night are the swirls you notice on the surface of the water in close proximity to your casts, indicating the presence of game fish. After going through every lure in your bag you decide to pack it in, realizing your lure will go untouched. Out of frustration and curiosity you shine your light in the water only to discover an amazing sight happening right at your feet. Large weakfish are darting through the rip, gorging on thousands of tiny grass shrimp that are floating in the current. At this point you are frantically looking through your bag for something that would “match the hatch”, in this case, a small grass shrimp imitation but to no avail. Your lures are too large, and your teasers are hanging on your garage wall. The closest thing you have is a bucktail, but it’s far too large and heavy to resemble the bait at hand.
I can safely say that some of my most frustrating nights while fishing have come when weakfish were feeding on grass shrimp. Floating in the current and numbering in the thousands, these tiny creatures become such an abundant food source for weaks that at times, it’s impossible to get them to even acknowledge your offering. Unless you take up fly-fishing, it is difficult to “match the hatch”, except perhaps with a small teaser tied in front of your lure. But difficult as it may be, there are a few things that you can do to greatly improve your chances of success when tiderunners are zoning in on this smallest of small baits.
Early in the spring once the waters warm up, grass shrimp can be found in large numbers floating in the currents of our back bays. One sure giveaway of their presence, are diving terns popping out of he water with seemingly empty mouths. Grass shrimp’s small size and their almost translucent color make them impossible to see in a terns’ mouth, especially from a distance. When you come across these seemingly empty mouth spring terns you can be sure grass shrimp are present.
Weakfish tend to spend their daytime hours in deep holes in the back bays, congregating in large schools away from the reach of surfcasters. But once the sunsets they move under the cover of darkness into the shallow waters looking to feed. On night tides when grass shrimp are present in the water, you will hear “sucking” or “slurping” sounds, or you might observe swirls on or just below surface. However these motions are not violent in nature, and are not followed by an explosion in the water as is commonly seen in the fall when gamefish are fattening up for their migration along the oceanfront beaches. The abundance of shrimp makes weakfish feeding patterns more of a leisure activity as compared the aggressive behavior they display when they are attacking baitfish. Weaks use their “fangs” to clamp down on baitfish before sucking them down the throat, but when weaks feed on grass shrimp they use their mouth like a giant vacuum sucking in any shrimp in the vicinity of their jaws. Once they close their mouth water is forced through their gills and the shrimp down their throats. This explains why our lures get ignored even when cast accurately into the area the fish are visibly feeding in. Think of it this way, they are so “zoned” into sucking their food down that striking your lure would required them to use their fangs and change their feeding approach. Often enough they would rather ignore your lure than do that. You have no choice but to give them what they want, a lure that appears as if it is floating along with the shrimp. A lure which can be sucked down by vacuum instead of bitten. Definitely easier said than done but not impossible.
A small teaser in white or pink fished ahead of the lure would be my first choice. Besides the fact that your teaser is close in size and appearance to the shrimp, you get an added benefit because it appears that your lure is chasing your teaser. At times this will encourage weakfish to hit your lure or the teaser. They will hit it out of curiosity or because they might think that another fish will get it before they will. Don’t forget that competition for food is an ever-present instinct even when food is abundant. Considering the size of a grass shrimp, the teaser you use should be small. My first choice of teaser material is bucktail. I also have had good success using D.O.A lures as teasers. Their tiny plastic shrimps are dead ringers for real ones, but you need to back off on your drag when using them, because I have found that heir hooks are brittle. Keep in mind that your lure is used as a delivery method for your teaser, and you want your teaser to be in the same water column as where grass shrimp are present. If shrimp are floating on the top I might elect to go with a small Redfin or a floating Rebel. For probing a little deeper Bombers, and sinking Rebels might get the nod. The strength of the current will greatly affect your selection of lures, and if the water is moving along at a nice clip don’t forget to pack few Yo-Zuri darters in your bag.
Seems counterproductive to cast a bucktail when you want our presentation to “float” high in the water column, doesn’t it? This technique of getting the bucktail high in the water column is not new. It was explained to me by one of the legends of surfcasting, William “Doc” Muller. The proper way to accomplish this theoretically contradictory, but highly successful technique is to use a very small bucktail dressed up with a trailer that is buoyant enough to keep your leadhead from heading for the bottom. Good choice for a trailer would be a small strip of Uncle Josh Pork rind, creating the illusion of a small shrimp drifting just under the surface with a fluttering attraction provided by the pork rind. Remember, we want the bucktail to be carried with the current so the retrieve can at times be painstakingly slow, just enough to keep in contact with your lure while the trailer provides all the action. Over the last few years, I have grown partial to Blue Frog bucktails when targeting weaks. Besides their awesome color combinations which match just about any baitfish found in our waters, I feel the swinging hook on these bucktails give trailers better fluttering action. White, pink and chartreuse are my favorite colors; with red over white a good producer as well. The swinging hook of a blue frog also prevents a fish from gaining leverage and popping the hook out of its mouth. After you spend some time chasing after weakfish, you will agree that this is a big plus due to their remarkable ability to “shake” their heads when hooked.
I know, I know. After spending the whole article writing about “matching the hatch” I switch gears to jelly worms! Those who know me are aware that I don’t go anywhere without my trusted jellies. Although worms are not a match for grass shrimp, they are a favorite entrée for weakfish. Since they can be presented in the manner that weakfish can “suck” them into their cavernous mouths, they are often productive in the above-mentioned situations. If the weaks are feeding on the top, I prefer to use a Gamakatsu 4/0 worm hook and an 8 to 10” Mann’s strawberry jelly worm with no added weight. Although these worms seem large, they are swallowed with ease even by the smaller tiderunners. I use a small leadhead when I want to probe a little deeper in the water column. Cast it up current and reel slowly, just enough to stay in contact with your worm, twitching your wrist slightly every few turns. Twitching will make a worm more appealing, and draw the attention of a curious fish. A fair warning! With little or no weight used on the terminal end, hits can feel vicious, as there is nothing between you and the hook to soften the blow. With this in mind, given the weakfish’s thin jaw structure, your drag should be set lighter than for bass and blues. Since most of this fishing is done in the back bays using small lures, rods should not exceed nine feet. Casting small lures with big sticks is impractical and uncomfortable. I switch between two rods when going after weaks depending on conditions and the area I fish .On nights when I feel I might need an extra few feet of casting distance I use a Lamiglass one piece GSB 108 1L rod with a VS 150 loaded up with 20lb Fireline and a 40lb leader. But most of the time you will find me casting my trusty two piece 7 ½ foot St.Croix Premier PS70HF2 fast action stick, rated for 10 to 20lb.This one-handed stick gets a lot of play around jetties, groins or any other areas where prime underwater real estate can be reached with a short cast. It is short enough to be used in tight quarters yet it has enough backbone achieve a good hook set even on a medium size bass.
Targeting weakfish requires a little forward thinking when considering location, and which techniques to use. But in all honesty there is no big difference in the approach to weaks compared to striped bass (other than the fact that light tackle makes weakfishing more pleasurable). So when you notice the grass shrimp in the water give weakfish a try. I know I always do.
Copyright, March 2004