From the beach or jetty or bulkhead.
By Walter Felton
Ok. Here is the situation. There are schools of adult Bunker roaming up and down the beach, in casting distance from the beach like they were last spring. You want to fish a whole live bunker, but you can’t cast a whole bunker far enough to get it out of the foam, without it flying off of the hook, the hook pulling out, or having to cut it up and “chunk” it.
You know that if you could get a swimming bunker out past the breakers, that your chances of hooking up are real good.
What are you going to do?
How would you like to have that bunker be able to swim as far as you can cast a 5 ounce sinker, with no rig or bait attached to it? Sound good? How can you do this?
You are going to use a Breeches Buoy rig!
This was taught to me by Crazy Joe, when we used to fish off of the bulkheads in Liberty State Park, in Jersey City, N.J., 25 years ago and it works very well, but is the most hair raising way to catch a fish that I know of. You will have to have a great deal of patience and it looks like I pulled my fair share of hair out during the excitement and wait until I knew that I could start to reel in the fish..
You will need two rods, one for casting a bunker snagger and bringing the snagged bunker in, and one for fishing the bunker with a breeches buoy rig.
First, tie up a Breeches buoy rig, using a connecting link attached to a 3-foot fluorocarbon leader, which is tied to a circle hook. (see Figure A)
Figure A:
Next:
Set up one rod in a “rod holder” or spike. Cast out a sinker of a weight of sufficient amount to hold a line taught from your rod tip to wherever you cast your weight, while having a bunker or herring swim up and down it, without pulling your sinker all over the place. (Just enough so that the current doesn’t pull your weight all over the beach).
When the bunker come by, snag one with the bunker snagger and reel it in. Then transfer the bunker over to the Breeches buoy rig, inserting the hook under the Dorsal fin, but not down far enough to hit the backbone. Attach the breeches buoy rig with the fish on one end, to the line between your rod tip and the water, with the connecting link and then make sure that the connecting link is closed tight.
Lift up the rod tip up, and the whole bunker and rig slide down the line until they hit the water. Then the bunker can swim from the beach to wherever your weight landed. (Like putting your dog on a dog run).
The trick is learning when to set the hook after the fish has picked up the bunker.
When the fish picks up the bunker it will start swimming with it, and the rig will pull down the line heading for the weight, and the weight will be moving over the bottom as the fish moves away with the bait, stops and turns the bait around to swallow it, and then starts moving off again.
The rod tip will be dancing like crazy, and you will want to start reeling, but don’t! You will have to wait until the rod bends over and stays down. (That is when the fish has dragged the line all the way down to the snap, weight and breeches buoy rig, and all three have come together giving you a straight line between you and your circle hook, and the circle hook has pulled up tight and sunk into the fishes mouth.)
The time between when the fish picks up the bunker, and the time you start reeling in, is when you will want to pull your hair out, because it is so hard to wait! I suggest that you don’t even lift the rod out of the holder until that rod has doubled over and stayed that way.
If there are bluefish in the area, and all of a sudden the rod stops dancing, don’t reel it in, thinking that it is over! Bluefish will bite the fish off up to the head of the bunker and the bunker head will float to the bottom and stay there bleeding. What better bait for the Bass following those blues around? If there is no action after 5 minutes, then pull it in and see if you need to put a new bunker on.
Back in the day that we used to fish in Jersey City using this rig, we used baitholder hooks and had to set the hook. Today, using circle hooks. You will just need to start reeling and don’t let off the pressure until the fish has been landed.
SO, next timer you have these situations – remember that a breeches buoy rig can be your ticket to fishing a adult bunker over that sand bar!
N J Fisher - Walter Felton