Keyport Seahawk - Tog jigging and late striper surprise

[Chrisper4694]

Headed out Saturday with Tog as the target. Day started out with a nice flat ocean, but it wouldn't last. Late morning brought a pretty bad swell which made fishing the SH reef pretty difficult, but we made a decent day of it i think considering the conditions there and the fact that we're pretty new at the tog game.

Tried togging with a jig for the first time and i have to say...i'm sold! really cool way to target these fish! Anyone thinking about trying it, i'd highly recommend it. Like anything else, i'm sure it doesn't fit in every situation, but on Saturday where we were fishing it highly dominated the bait rig technique in keeper sized fish (4 for the jig - 0 for the classic bait rig). It was much easier to control the jig in and around the structure and really work the spot over. got snagged many times still, obviously, but only lost 1 jig all day while over a dozen bait rigs/sinkers were broken off.

On the way in, John saw birds and so we couldn't pass it up even though we didn't really have much time. I hook up after a few casts and after a few powerful tugs the line is cut. bluefish...we keept fishing the pods in hopes of stripers under, but boom i hook up a gain, cut. John hooks up and gets it in, gator bluefish...ok let's get the hell out of here i said.

So we head back but John sees some more birds. I have to be honest, i just assumed they were more blues and i would've passed them up at that point of the day...but John noticed they birds were moving different and he thought they might be stripers, good call! Turned out to be a school of nice 25-29" stripers so we played with them for a while catching our keepers and c&r on a few more. nice way to end the day, especially since our togging left a little to be desired.