Sometimes they hit hard and other times...
well, they gulp
By Fred Schwab

     There is one other experience that I had with bluefish, one which taught me a lesson and which I pass along on the chance that some night you may run into a similar situation. It was on the night of 9/25-26/73.  The North Bar had been producing bluefish ranging from 7 to 12 pounds on a rather steady basis since the 12th of the month.  I went out on the evening of the 23rd and took bluefish on both day and night tides through the evening of the 25th, but most were taken during daylight hours. Since the Bar was the place to be at about 11 pm on the 25th, no one else around, I got out as far as I could and began casting. 
      There was a moderate east wind and only light wave action along with a rather slow current.  I blamed the lazy current for the fact that on my first few casts the darter seemed to be bumping the bottom and getting snagged. In those days you rarely had that happen on the outgoing tide, and I knew that my casts were hitting the rip? This happened 4 or 5 times and because I was getting annoyed the next time that it happened I gave the rod a quick yank.  To my surprise there was a bluefish at the other end! About 10 or 15 minutes later the same thing happened again and at a time when 5 other guys entered the water.  During the next hour I landed 3 more blues and dropped twice that many, in all cases they did not hit the plug but rather sort of sucked on it, all I would feel is a slight bit of resistance. By now 4 of the other 5 guys were totally pissed, none had even dropped a fish and they left.  Once they were gone I told the one remaining guy to se the hook the next time he felt the plug getting slightly heavier, something which he had noticed on a few casts.  Eventually he took a couple of blues. I finished the night with 8 bluefish to 11-6 and two bass, one of which was 24-4, and I missed a lot of fish.  Not one fish really hit the plug, they just seemed to touch or mouth it lightly.  Since there was no crowd there that night I beached most of the fish and all were spitting up small squid.  I was used to feeling hard hits when bluefish were in that rip? When I weighed my fish at Johnny’s the next morning I told him about the weird way that the fish were taking the plug.  He responded by saying that when feeding on squid bluefish sometimes inhale them.  I could not argue with that, I’d just experienced that situation!  So a word to the wise, keep in mind if sometimes you should run into a similar happening!

Adopted  from a book  "The Complete History of the High Hill Striper Club " by Fred Schwab

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