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    The Complete Book of Surf Fishing
    The Complete Book of Surf Fishing
    The Complete Book of Surf Fishing
    Ebook297 pages2 hours

    The Complete Book of Surf Fishing

    By Al Ristori

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    About this ebook

    A comprehensive full-color guide to catching more and bigger fish.

    Fishing from beach or rocky coastline presents challenges not faced by anglers who head out to sea. Whether you seek striped bass along the rocky shorelines of the Northeast, bluefish on the Jersey shore, pompano in warm Southern waters, or exotics around the world, this is the indispensable guide to the world of surf fishing.

    Written to open new frontiers to the old hand and provide advice to novice surf fishermen, The Complete Book of Surf Fishing will be a boon to all coastline anglers. Surf veteran and expert Al Ristori covers the basics of traditional surfcasting, with well-illustrated instruction on casting big rods and big water. You’ll learn about:

    Choosing the best tackle
    Effective casting techniques
    Selecting and fishing artificial lures
    Best bait techniques
    Knots and rigs
    Surf buggy basics
    Fish-finding strategies
    Accessories for fishing afoot

    Most importantly, Ristori shows you how to make the best use of your time on the water to catch more and bigger fish!

    Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateMay 5, 2015
    ISBN9781634500388
    The Complete Book of Surf Fishing
    Author

    Al Ristori

    Captain Al Ristori is a Coast Guard–licensed charter captain. He wrote for Salt Water Sportsman for more than forty years and was the saltwater fishing editor for the Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. He has fished for more than half a century for everything from sunfish to thousand-pound tuna, and still puts in more than two hundred days a year at sea or on the beach!

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      Book preview

      The Complete Book of Surf Fishing - Al Ristori

      Cover Page of Complete Book of Surf FishingHalf Title of Complete Book of Surf FishingTitle Page of Complete Book of Surf Fishing

      Copyright © 2008 by Al Ristori

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

      Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

      Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

      Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      The hardcover edition was cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

      Ristori, Al.

      The complete book of surf fishing / Al Ristori.

      p.cm.

      ISBN-13:978-1-60239-247-2 (pbk.:alk.paper)

      ISBN-10:1-60239-247-1 (pbk.:alk.paper) 1. Surf fishing. 2. Surfcasting.

      I.Title.

      SH457.2.R57 2008

      799.16–dc22

      2007042892

      Cover design by Adam Bozarth

      Photos by Al Ristori

      Additional photography copyright © Alberto Knie and copyright © Joe Blaze, except where otherwise credited.

      Paperback Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-537-7

      Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-038-8

      Printed in China

      To Joe Blaze, without whose help in photography, downloading and conversion of my old slides to a digital format this book never would have been completed.

      Contents

      Introduction: The Lure of the Surf

      Chapter 1: The Development of Surfcasting

      Chapter 2: The Surfcaster’s Favorite Species

      Chapter 3: Tackle

      Chapter 4: Casting

      Chapter 5: Lures for the Surf

      Chapter 6: Bait Fishing

      Chapter 7: Surf Accessories

      Chapter 8: Beach Buggies

      Chapter 9: Reading the Surf

      Chapter 10: The Thrill of the Blitz

      Chapter 11: Surfcasting Strategies

      Chapter 12: Extreme Surfcasting

      Chapter 13: Surfcasting Pioneers and Classics

      Chapter 14: A World of Surf and Shore Casting

      Chapter 15: Toward the Future

      Appendix 1: Surf-Fishing Meccas in the U.S.

      Appendix 2: A Selection of Fishing Knots

      Introduction

      THE LURE OF THE SURF

      Anglers who fish from the shore are a different breed. As difficult as it often is to catch fish from a boat, being restricted to a relatively small area and having to cast just to reach fishable water is a big disadvantage. It always amazes me when I’m successful, especially on those red-letter days when fish are stacked up in front of me and the fishing is actually better than could ordinarily be expected from a boat.

      Indeed, the completion of this book was delayed by a call that bluefish had been blitzing the beach. I’d been boat fishing earlier in the day with Capt. Terry Sullivan, casting small plugs for mostly small striped bass in New Jersey’s Navesink River (the original source of West Coast stripers) and cursing the big bluefish that were eating those plugs while interfering with our striper quest. Yet, bluefish in the surf are something else altogether—and I raced to the beach in hopes they might still be there.

      A few birds were working offshore of Manasquan, along the northern New Jersey Shore, and I raced to the surf in front of them even though they were out of range. Since I’d forgotten to grab my pliers or a dehooker, I decided for safety’s sake to fish only with the single hook lures I’d thrown into the chest pocket of my waders. The first cast with a 2-ounce diamond jig resulted in a hook-up with an 8-pound blue, and so did every other cast until the single hook broke as I was removing it from a bigger blue for another release. The two Tsunami shads I next utilized were sacrifices to the toothy critters, but they produced a few more blues and even a 23-inch striper that hit alongside a jetty. That left me only with a large Yo-Zuri Surface Cruiser that’s a favorite lure though I didn’t want to deal with the big treble hooks without pliers. Yet, every cast that late afternoon raised a bluefish from 7 to 13 pounds, and I was lucky enough to be able to remove them safely before one engulfed it and I had to conclude the evening by walking off the beach with that 12-pounder for the next night’s dinner. Thirteen large bluefish in less than an hour, and without having to move more than a few yards, is good fishing anywhere, and quite possible if you’re in the surf at the right time.

      Joe Brooks, as fishing editor for Outdoor Life introduced a generation of anglers to the joys of surfcasting. (courtesy IGFA)

      Surf fishing is a solitary pursuit. The angler, a seemingly endless shoreline, and the cycles of nature must come together for success. (Alberto Knie photo)

      A fisherman who expects that to happen on a regular basis is bound to be a disappointed angler. Those of us dedicated to the sport put in countless hours trying to be at the right place at the right time, but only put it all together occasionally. Yet, there’s a very special feeling of accomplishment when we do so. Even though I spend much of my time running a charter boat, I fish the surf as often as possible and have to agree with those who work the beach exclusively that one fish from the surf is worth ten from a boat!

      My fascination with the surf started over a half-century ago when Mr. Kern, a kindly neighbor in Merrick, Long Island, took me to Jones Beach one Saturday morning to fish bloodworms in the surf. Though I didn’t actually catch anything, a striped bass that was probably short of even the 16-inch minimum in effect at that time flipped off the hook in the wash before I could get to it. The bass got unhooked, but I was hooked on the surf.

      Mr. Kern had real conventional (revolving spool) surfcasting tackle and could cast pretty well. It was another story when Billy McGuiness and I tried surfcasting on our own. We had started fishing by bicycling to Camman’s Pond with bamboo poles to catch stunted sunfish. Our nonfishing fathers eventually bought us rods and reels, but they were short, stout boat outfits unsuited for casting even by an expert. We’d join my mother on her trips to Jones Beach for sunbathing and walk to the surffishing area where we waded out as far as possible in bathing suits before casting a sinker and baited hook, probably no more than 20 feet. Every cast with the revolving spool reels produced a backlash that we picked out while walking back to the beach.

      Fortunately, there were a lot of blowfish and some northern kingfish in the surf those days, and we actually managed to catch an occasional fish, a thrill at any size for grammar school kids. Anything larger than a pound was unheard of for us though we’d heard that experienced fishermen caught much larger fish such as striped bass at night. I did beach a sea monster, a 10-pound skate, while fishing one morning with Mr. Kern. That was by far my largest fish, and I remember proudly showing pictures of the ugly skate to my friends during eighth grade graduation from St. Barnabus in Bellmore.

      Eventually, another neighbor built me a real 9-foot bamboo surf rod with just two guides and a Penn reel held on with clamps. My casts went a bit farther, but the backlashes became even larger.

      It wasn’t until spinning tackle became more common that my surfcasting significantly improved. What a difference there is now when a youngster can get started casting with an inexpensive spinning outfit and achieve success right away with relatively foolproof gear!

      To be able to throw bait out into waters that all looked the same and actually catch something proved fascinating to this youngster, and I’ve never lost that awe even after learning more about cuts, sloughs and other aspects of the surf we knew nothing about at the time. It was a very simple experience in those days; just cast as far as possible over the first breaker!

      Rocky shorelines or expansive beaches, where the sea meets the shore is the realm of the surfcaster. Striped bass are the trophy quest in the northeast United States. (Charlie Fornabio photo)

      Jetty rocks adjacent to the deep water of shipping channels are time honored producers for surf fishermen. (Joe Blaze photo)

      This surfcaster briefly shares his water with a migrating whale.

      Artificial lures weren’t even a consideration then, as striped bass were unavailable when we could surf cast in the summer—and there were virtually no adult bluefish, even for boaters, at that time.

      The first fish I caught casting a lure from a beach came years later after Naval Officer Candidate School, when I was transferred from a destroyer to serve as War Plans Officer at the United States Naval Station in Trinidad, in the West Indies. The base dentist and I bought a pirogue cut from a tree by local craftsmen and powered by a 12-horsepower West Bend outboard. For lack of any better place to keep it, we attached it to a mooring just off the beach at the Officer’s Club, located on a cove off the open Caribbean. I had to swim out to the boat to use it, and one morning I walked down to the beach with my gear and saw a school of jack crevalle pushing bait into the wash. I had a spinning reel by that time and managed to get a metal lure out to the boiling jacks in time to catch one from shore.

      An angler plies the surf as birds work the schools of bait at the end of the day. (Joe Blaze photo)

      My real introduction to lure fishing in the surf came after being discharged during the Cuban Crises. I passed up an opportunity to join the CIA in order to take a dream job for an angler, a sales position with the Harry C. Miller Co. manufacturer’s representative for the Garcia Corporation. It was my good fortune to land a job selling the most popular fishing tackle in the country at the time, and during trips to New England I was able to learn about casting lures with such legends as wooden-lure craftsman Stan Gibbs, and Bob Pond of Atom Lures fame.

      Most of my casting was still done from boats, but what I’d learned was put to good use from shore whenever possible, both there and at Montauk on the east end of Long Island. During the last few decades I’ve been living in New Jersey and doing most of my surfcasting there, though there have also been trips to North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Florida’s central eastern coast, plus such foreign areas as Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, and Australia. Wherever there’s a shore I can get to for casting, I’ll be giving it a try.

      Strictly speaking, surf implies ocean swell breaking on a beach. Yet, the scope of this book is much broader. The angler casting in Cape Cod Canal considers himself a surfcaster even though there’s no swell and he may not even need waders. Other surfcastersfish from the shores of large bays where the only waves are wind-driven rather than the result of swells, and they too will be represented here.

      That also applies to those rugged anglers in South Africa, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, and other areas throughout the world who seize their opportunity to fish from shore while perched on rocks well above the sea and only get wet from the spray when a large swell crashes below them.

      CHAPTER 1

      The Development of Surfcasting

      It’s unlikely there’s any record of when man first started surfcasting, but it probably began soon after line and hooks were developed. Those, plus a weight of some sort and bait, are basically all that’s required to catch a fish from the surf. Tie on a stone for weight, twirl the rig above your head to gain momentum, and let it go at the right moment to send the crude rig to sea. Though very basic, that would prove effective even today when fish are within range. Merely

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