Herring are on my mind.
Earlier this month I mentioned this in the Spring Street Signs post, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. I am pretty sure that I saw my first osprey flying with a herring in its talons near my house yesterday.
The day prior, word started circulating on social media that the town of Harwich, MA, announced the reopening of river herring harvest at Johnson’s Flume in West Harwich. This comes after a moratorium on taking river herring that had been in place since 2004.
Even when it was legal, I was never a big proponent of fishing natural river herring for striped bass. The way—and the places—I fish in the spring have never really lent themselves to live or chunk bait. Plenty of anglers had success with herring, no doubt, but I never found it necessary.
When the moratorium went into effect, some anglers lost their minds. I just kept doing what I’ve always done: throwing artificials and catching striped bass.
So how do I replicate herring in the spring?
As I’ve mentioned many times on the podcast, I’m not a big “match the hatch” guy. But when herring are around, I’ll soften that stance a bit—though I still can’t say it makes a huge difference in my overall success.
Here are my go-to herring-imitating baits, in order:
- 7″ Red Fin
- Loaded or unloaded depending on the spot, this is often the first plug out of my bag, the one I throw most, and sometimes the only lure I’ll fish on a given night.
- 9″ Slug-Go
- Rigged weightless or on a very light jighead, I’ll swing it through the current or deadstick it in likely holding water.
- Magic Swimmer 190
- This one probably shouldn’t make the list—I’ve had surprisingly little success with it—but it’s such a perfect herring imitation that it always earns a spot in my spring surf bag. And yes, it always gets at least a few casts.
There are a handful of other plugs that might get a shot here and there, sometimes carrying over from season to season, but these three are the ones that go into my bag first every year.
So, what’s in your spring herring surf bag?
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Always metal lips for when herring are present , redfins
I love using bombers, the one with the blue back and silver sides that’s kind of clear…I bring a jointed and unjointed…also Jerry spoke about the Savage Gear 4 play and that swimmer is bad ass but temperamental with adjusting hooks and if a few decent fish wack it, it’s done..Buuut that is a very, very good problem to have!!! Haha
Yes to the Redfin, yes to the sluggo, yes to the magic swimmer! Add the atom jr, a 10” fin s fish, and a jumbo paddletail on a light jig head and that’s my bag this spring.
Metal lips,glider,CCW jetty swimmer in herring pattern.
When we had herring runs, my first fish every year was on a 7” unweighted Redfin. Second go to was a soft plastic dropped back or swam backwards in the current.