NOCTURNAL ADMISSIONS: NIGHT FISHING THE JERSEY SURF

Clams fished on the bottom just beyond the outer break after dark seems today's ticket, and all fish are monsters until they shrink in the shore foam under the light of your headlamp. For while it's been 20 years since Al McReynolds took his world record 78 pound 8 ounce IGFA all-tackle record on a dark and stormy night casting a 5 ½ inch broken back Rebel® off the slippery Vermont Ave. Jetty in Atlantic City, if there's a bigger striper out there it'll probably be taken after dark and, most likely, from the beach.

Big Hopkins® and other spoons suit nights when the winds blow hard, and spots where the deeper water just inside or outside the shore break are a long cast away. Large plugs such as Rapalas® or Striper Swipers® and an assortment of jigs, plastics and other lures work too. Besides clams, sandworms, bloodworms --- for those who can keep them on the hook - and chunks of bunker or herring work best.

Read the beach in the daylight for safer wading - waders belted at the waist or wet suits and quick inflation life vests make sense - and to see where and when to cast where at different tide and surf stages. Watch for terns or gulls and check the shore for stranded bait fish. The usual stop at tackle shops for last minute information, bait and the odd lure improves results too. Come nightfall, look for parked vehicles with empty rod racks too.

Why not start on the Absecon Inlet side of Vermont Avenue where McReynolds took his fish? Lights from the string of beaches south past the Hilton Hotel and Casino attract bait that draws stripers or blues, but the essence of nocturnal surf fishing waits south on dark beaches off Ocean City, the Wildwoods and Cape May.

The beach on the ocean side of Herfford Inlet Lighthouse is another good spot on incoming tides: check for working birds in the afternoon all the way down the North Wildwood beaches to Morey's Piers. Further south in the Wildwoods the Diamond Beach shore between Seapointe Village at the end of Atlantic Avenue and the Ocean Drive Bridge offers solid action too. Cape May Point is the prime spot at the south end of the Jersey Shore to reach stripers, blues and reds as they pass in and out of Delaware Bay.

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