New Jersey is famous for many things - tomatoes, fine sand beaches, traffic, taxes, and Barnegat Ridge bluefish! For many anglers, a trip to “the Ridge” to do battle with the biggest, meanest kind of choppers is a rite of summer. This fishery is a staple of the Central Jersey party and charter boat fleet, and continues to attract patrons from far and wide. Private boaters get in on this fishery, as well. In fact, just a short half-hour ride can put small boaters into some serious rod bending, tackle testing action.

 

Barnegat Ridge is located approximately 14 nautical miles east of Barnegat Inlet, and holds fish consistently throughout the season. The bluefish show up in late May, and their numbers seem to peak in June. These early run fish are long and skinny; many anglers refer to them as “racers”. They are also ravenous, and will usually attack anything that moves. This time of year, finding the fish is the only challenge. Catching them is the easy part.

 

 

Although trolling can put plenty of fish in the boat, most anglers pursuing early-run bluefish opt to create a chum slick to pull the fish toward the boat and keep them there. We like to hang a chum bucket upside down in an old plastic milk crate, and let the natural movement of the boat help to disperse the chum. The chum slick is supplemented by some bunker or butterfish chunks, which helps to bring the fish closer to the boat and keep them in the slick.

 

Bunker chunks are impaled on 6/0 or 7/0 hook with a short trace of wire, and drifted back with the chunks. On some days a small rubber-core sinker rigged ahead of the leader is necessary to achieve the proper depth penetration and ensure a natural drift. On other days no weight is necessary. We also rig a few feet of 60-pound mono ahead of the wire. This allows us to leader the fish more easily, and to lift them into the boat with the need for a net or gaff. Avoiding wrapping Power Pro around our hands is something we learned the hard way!

 

This is pretty simple fishing, and it’s an approach to which most saltwater anglers are accustomed. It is also some of the most fun fishing imaginable.

 

 

Whenever we have a chum slick going, we always make sure we bring along a few jigging rods. There are times when the fish refuse to come up into the chum slick, and the jigs will account for the majority of the fish. Such was the case on the day we filmed this episode. On this day, dense schools of sand eels blanketed the bottom, and there was simply no reason for the fish to leave them. Thus, a small A-17 diamond jig worked just off the bottom was a perfect simulation for the fish’s actual forage base, and this approach saved the day for us.

 

In such a situation the best approach is often to lower the jigs to the bottom and leave these rods in the gunwhale holders while bait is drifted back with a second set of rods. Once a school of fish is spotted on the electronics, the jigs are reeled to the appropriate depth and worked aggressively. This method did well for us on this day, and allowed us to make two effective presentations at once.

 

 

We must admit to having been somewhat skeptical of the new “jigging systems” that have become all the rage in the tackle industry. These systems couple braided line with fast retrieve reels and comparatively short rods. Having always subscribed to the notion that a long, stiff rod was needed to move the jig properly through the water column, we just didn’t believe these new systems would offer much of an advantage; more marketing than substance…or so we thought. Boy, were we wrong!

 

On this trip, we employed the Penn Torque jigging system. We used a lightweight TJ3080C66 rod with a Torque 100 reel spooled with 50-pound Power Pro. Not only is this combination extremely lightweight, but it moves the jig very well and fights fish perfectly. It’s a whole new jigging experience, and it catches the heck out of fish. Penn makes several Torque jigging outfits, from lightweight systems perfect for inshore applications like stripers and blues, all the way up to outfits than can beat large tuna. If jigging is a method that you like to use to catch fish, then you owe it to yourself to look into obtaining at least one of these outfits.