Destination: Woods Hole, Massachusetts

By Gene Bourque

Like many a striper addict in the Northeast, I’ve spent plenty of hours tossing live eels to hungry bass. I’m not a huge fan of anchoring up and fishing chunk bait or sitting on a beach with a spiked rod, hoping some fish comes along and discovers my offering. Active fishing – that’s what I like – and using eels is as close to tossing a plug as you can get with live bait. However, as the years have passed I’ve grown less fond of the effort that’s required to use eels. Procuring the bait, keeping it healthy until it’s time to grab one of the slimy critters with a rag, then pushing a hook through its jaw and eye, which often resulted in an eel pretzel wrapped around my leader. Then there was the expense of these baits, which has been getting larger every year. Could there be a reasonable alternative, something that could be fished like an eel and get the same amount of attention for the stripers I love to catch?

I’m happy to report that the answer is yes. Soft plastic baits are exploding in popularity for good reason. They’re easy to use in a wide variety of ways, for just about every species of gamefish that swims. The action of a good quality soft plastic is remarkable. With only a little practice, an angler can imitate the movement of just about anything on a striper’s menu. And to a frugal Yankee like me, the low price is hard to beat.

I learned just how remarkable Mike Hogan’s Hogy soft plastics really are while fishing with Mike in one of our favorite spots, Woods Hole passage, off the coast of Cape Cod. This place is not for the weak of heart – the current rips through the narrow passage between the mainland and the eastern-most of the Elizabeth Islands, and the channel divides at a crucial point with barely submerged reefs and huge boulders everywhere. A boater’s nightmare but heaven to stripers and bluefish, which stage on the down-tide side of the obstructions, waiting for the huge current to deliver them dinner.

Mike has been fishing these waters since he was old enough to take out a boat by himself and he quickly had us stemming the tide near one of the reefs. The rip was fierce and it was just before dark. Huge swirls were everywhere just over the lip of the reef, some caused by boulders below, but the schools of baitfish that would suddenly spray into the air told us that many of the swirls were caused by very large bass or bluefish driving the terrified bait to the surface.

Mike expertly kept us in position as I clipped on a rigged 10-inch bubble gum colored Hogy and let it fly toward the reef. I knew from fishing live eels that the key was to cast up-current, immediately take in any slack in the line, then allow the bait to be pulled over the edge into the deeper water. No added action was needed or even desirable – the amazingly natural swimming action of the Hogy would do all the work.

It only took a few seconds before that work paid off. The fish hit solidly and no hook set was needed. I’m sure this was because of Mike’s two-hook rigging system, which uses two heavy wire, razor sharp Owner hooks, crimped together with heavy, offshore quality crimps and 80-pound test monofilament. A tail the size of a small broom came up and slapped the surface as the fish moved down current, thankfully, away from the rocks. In a few minutes I was reaching into the jaw of a fat striper to work loose the Hogy. A quick length measurement and an educated guess put its weight at about 25 pounds. Not bad for the first cast.

As I was fighting the fish, Mike’s boat had drifted a hundred yards down the channel so we motored back into position. This time it was Mike’s turn. I watched him cast his Hogy over the reef into the shallow water and saw that he was using a slight variation on my controlled drift technique. Instead of just letting the big soft plastic drift, he would reel steadily to take up slack line but at the same time gave the rod small bounces with two fingers on his other hand. He told me this made the Hogy dance just a bit as it rode along a foot or so below the surface – not enough to look unnatural, but enough to subtly enhance the serpentine, eel-like movement of the lure. When the Hogy cleared the edge of shallow reef the results were instantaneous. The rod tip went down hard, Mike pulled back with a firm but steady lift and thirty feet away the water exploded. This fish was clearly bigger than mine so we quickly traded positions in the boat as I reeled as fast as I could to avoid crossed lines. This proved to be happy mistake because before I had gained ten feet of line I felt a rapid tap-tap and a microsecond later the rod was just about pulled out of my hands. No doubt about who had come calling – it was Mr. Bluefish!

Mike’s fish was very close to mine and both were running in the same direction, more or less parallel to the reef. The boat was being pulled down current, so with each passing moment the angle to the fish was more severe in relation to our drift. No choice now, time to tighten the drag a half-turn and take away the advantage that was clearly with the fish – and it worked. Both fish turned toward us and we both reeled hard. In a minute or so Mike had his striper beside the boat and subdued my bluefish kept trying short bursts away from the boat but I knew it was mine. I grabbed its tail lifted it into the boat. Very little of the Hogy was left but it was a small sacrifice. That blue turned out to be the biggest one I’ve caught in a few years, and I conservatively guessed it went close to 15 pounds. Mike’s striper measured just under 45 inches and had to have weighed at least 30 pounds. Both fish were revived and released but we were in no rush to return to position and try for some others. It was enough to continue drifting out of Woods Hole passage, sit down and smile, and try to think of something to say besides. “Oh my God.”

It’s been said that for a lure to work you must have total confidence in it. I can say without hesitation that every time I clip on a Hogy, I fully expect the next cast to bring me the fish of a lifetime. That’s how much I believe in it.