Tough Day Togging by Ed Valitutto

Posted on December 18, 2019 by kelli

For our last trip of 2019, Bill Dabney, Dave Spendiff, Alan Goracy and I booked an afternoon tog / striper trip on Captain Brett Taylor’s Reel Reaction charters. Weather conditions were great despite several days of blowout tides, very strong winds and rain. Our plan was to hit the blackfish first and then look for birds for some stripers.
We started out on the Barnegat reef and after fishing several spots with just a few shorts and keepers, the dreaded feeling that this was going to be a slow day was on all our minds. Fortunately, Brett’s boat has a trolling motor that makes it real easy to move on a wreck or go to a new one.

After several spots without any better catching, Brett decided to move south to the Garden State North reef and see if the action was better there. Unfortunately that was not the case. Fish were small, not in a feeding mood and tough to hook! Since the waves were light, late in the trip we decided to try using tog jigs that are now very popular. None of us had ever fished with them and it does take some adjustment but immediately we were getting more frequent hits. I am absolutely sold on them if conditions permit using lighter weights.

Despite Brett keeping us out a few hours longer, white legger crabs and use of the jigs, we ended up with 8 hard earned keepers. The high point for me was a personal best 11.25 lb tog caught on the jig. We stayed so long on the reef that we had no time left for stripers.

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Fishing Facts

Of the fifty United States, thirty-eight have a striped-bass record. New Jersey has the largest striped-bass record—a 78-pound 8·ounce whopper that was caught in 1982. The state with the smallest striped-bass record is Iowa. That landlocked striper weighed only 9 pounds 4 ounces and was caught in 1983.

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