Something about weakfish has a strong pull on the surfcaster. Perhaps it’s because they’re not as abundant as striped bass, and catching one is like finding a rare coin in your garden. Unlike striped bass, which often seem to be everywhere, weakfish are found only in relatively small patches of shoreline. They show up for several weeks, at most, and then disappear beyond the reach of a surf rod. Many of those who do know when, where, and how to catch weakfish from shore are as tight-lipped as a politician in a campaign-funding investigation. As a result, these fish, referred to by some as “unicorns” in recent years, remain a mystery and a perpetual bucket-list fish for many.
Weakfish populations are prone to cycles of abundance and scarcity . There’d be a couple of years with a month or two of great abundance when fishermen would walk down the beach at the end of the tide with stringers full of fish. We’d then have a season or two with fewer fish, but many of them were larger. And then they disappeared for several years before returning to the same pattern. As a popular species for food and sport, they faced heavy recreational and commercial fishing pressure. More recent management changes, such as a single-fish bag limit, seem to be having a positive effect on stock sizes because the past several years have been better than any I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve enjoyed a few hours of steady action often enough to keep me out late on school nights too frequently.
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These fish that Native Americans called “squeteague” show up in mid- to late April in Long Island Sound and stay in the shallows until late May or early June. They move in to spawn, and to eat, after the journey from their wintering grounds offshore in the mid-Atlantic. You may have also heard them referred to as sea trout, tiderunners, or if you’re a science guy like me, Cynoscion regalis. They’re not really trout … that’s a misnomer. They belong to the family Scianidae that includes species of drum and croakers. They are closely related to redfish, northern kingfish, and spotted sea trout.
Both males and females quickly mature sexually and can spawn at a year or two of age, with males at seven inches and females at nine. Expect the average squeteague you catch to be between 15 and 23 inches; 24 to 27 inches is a pretty decent weakfish in my area most years; 29 and above is a very good catch that may weigh 10 or 12 pounds. The world-record fish was caught on Staten Island by Dave Alu on a guided trip and weighed in at 19 pounds, 12 ounces.
Weakfish are some of the most beautiful fish you’ll catch in the Northeast salt. They’re sleek and colorful, with an iridescent sheen of lavender, green, and blue, along with a sprinkling of black spots. Their yellow fins add contrasting highlights. And they’ve got fangs—yes, fangs. If you lip one as you would a striper, you’ll have a very secure hold on it, but you’re probably not going to do it again. I’m guilty of being a repeat offender. This is primarily because when the action is fast and furious, I want to get the fish unhooked and released, and get another on the line as quickly as possible. Especially when fly fishing, there are many things that can get tangled up when you’ve got a fly line and leader, a Boga or plastic gripper on a lanyard, pliers on its own lanyard, and maybe a measuring tape. And, don’t forget the fish that doesn’t want to be landed, in a strong current. I end up looking like I’m crocheting a sweater, so I sometimes just use my fingers. As my fishing buddy reminded me this past spring, don’t forget to rub down those fingers with antibiotic cream. Of course, he forgot and woke up the next morning with his hands swollen, purple, and infected.
Lures and Tackle
Since weakfish arrive around the same time as horseshoe crabs show up to spawn, many people will tell you that the fish eat the eggs of those primitive arthropods. However, eggs aren’t on their menu. Their preferences include shrimp, mantis-shrimp, squid, or even Atlantic menhaden.
Weakfish can be taken on a variety of lures, including topwater spooks, but subsurface presentations increase your odds of success. Weaks have a reputation for liking gaudy color so experienced tiderunner connoisseurs stay well stocked with Yo-Zuri Mag Darters in orange over gold, bunker, or blue over black.
Krocodile spoons are great producers, at times, especially when the fish are feeding on last year’s bunker recruits.
When they’re hanging closer to the bottom, soft plastics on jigheads with just enough weight to get down there can be deadly. Favorites of mine are 3- or 4-inch Al Gags Whip-It Fish in chartreuse or pink. If the paddletail isn’t working or the current is strong, I switch to Zoom Flukes in the same colors.
A bucktail with a brightly colored curly tail are also good producers, and Bombers and RedFins work too, especially when the fish are big.
A “secret” lure used by some sharpie old-timers was a purple rubber worm or “jelly worm” on a light jighead.
I’ve also had some great action on good-sized weaks when letting a ¾-ounce jighead dressed with a 6-inch chartreuse shad body sink to the bottom and then drag it over a submerged sand bar with 2-foot horizontal rod sweeps to the side.
Depending on how close the weakfish are to shore, a 7- to 9-foot, light-action rod and a light reel are good choices. You’ll probably be using lures under two ounces, though often closer to an ounce. The light-action rod is also a good choice because it won’t tear the hook out of the fish’s soft mouth tissue. This is especially a problem when weakfish employ those violent headshakes that they’re notorious for. They’re not turbocharged like false albacore or as powerful as bluefish, and they don’t have the body mass of large stripers, but weakfish can still be challenging to land without dropping them.
Weakies On The Fly
My favorite method of taking a weakfish is with a fly rod. Having that lightweight rod and direct connection between the line and my stripping hand adds significantly more feel for the bite. The flexibility of the rod helps keep the hook from pulling out due to tearing of the thin-membraned mouth that gives weakfish their name. An 8-weight rod is sufficient on calm nights in back bays with light current, but a 9- or 10-weight rod is better for exposed shoreline or more exposed river mouths where the current and wind are stronger. I prefer an intermediate fly line because it is versatile enough to let me cover the entire water column from top to bottom. If I need to get down deeper, I cast further up-current to give the line more time to sink as the fly drifts down toward my target area. The fly choice can also help.
Fly choice should roughly resemble what the fish are feeding on, but you don’t need realistic imitations. Using a weighted fly such as a Clouser Minnow or a Bunny Fly (lead-eyed like a Clouser but with saddle-hackle tail and cross-cut rabbit-strip palmer wound around the hook shank) can get you deeper in current as needed. Sometimes, floating shrimp patterns may be needed when the fish are fixated on shrimp flowing out of a salt pond. In those situations, it can be hard to get them to eat anything else. My most-used ammo for weakfish is a sparsely tied Flatwing Deceiver about 3 to 6 inches long. I use only two hackle feathers and a couple of pinches of bucktail spread thin, with 2 to 4 strands of flash extending a half-inch behind the fly. As far as color goes, chartreuse-over-pink or red-over-yellow (like the Mickey Finn pattern brook-trout anglers use) work just fine. I use Super Glue to reinforce every spot where I tie in the materials to minimize the number of times I have to tie on a new fly when the action is hot and heavy.
If you notice bunker schools swimming nervously at the surface, either parallel to the bar or even right over it, try fishing the tail end of the school. Aim for relatively high in the water column but just below the baitfish and work your lure or fly a bit faster. When weakfish are on moving bait, a quicker retrieve is more likely to get bit.
I had a night several years ago when I stopped hooking fish toward the end of the dropping tide, with bare sand on the bar behind me. I was reeling the fly line back onto my spool when I had a decent-sized splash on my blurple Deceiver, but no hookup. The splash was very close to the sand as I was raising the rod to pick up the fly. I stripped out enough line for another cast, stripped in the fly by hand, steadily and at the same speed that I reeled it in on the last cast. Nothing. Not a sniff. I had the same lack of results with the next few casts. On the next one, I didn’t strip the line, but cranked the reel handle steadily and quickly, and I hooked and landed a weakfish. I caught about three more the same way when they wouldn’t touch the fly while retrieving “like it’s supposed to be done.” Lesson learned: When what “works” doesn’t work, do what “doesn’t work”. If I had a dollar for every time that strategy caught me a fish, I’d be able to spend more time fishing instead of working so much.
Locations and Conditions for Weakfish from Shore
The mouths of rivers and creeks are productive places to search for weakfish from shore, especially those with marsh banks or sandbars. They are often key, as are channel edges. After early June, the fish move into deeper waters where kayaks or boats are more useful than waders.
Weakfish are shy about coming into the shallows in daylight, even more so than bluefish or stripers. It’s generally close to dusk when they start to filter in, and sometimes well after. They generally stop feeding as soon as the morning sun makes them feel exposed in the skinny water.
Weakfish are current sensitive as well. I show up at my spots when the tide starts dropping just before dusk. I may hook a fish or two before the light fades out, and then the bite can get better and better until the tide slows down to a trickle. I sometimes catch a few on the incoming, but tend to do better on the outgoing tide, probably because of the water pulling bait out of the estuaries. Keep an eye on any fishermen to either side of you as weakfish run in schools along the beach. You’ll see rods start bending as the school gets close to you. Either you’ll hook one yourself or watch the anglers beyond you hook up after the school passes you by.
In some spots, weakfish hang with their noses tight to the down-tide edge of a drop-off where they pick off the bait as it washes over the edge. There are two ways I adjust to this situation. If I’m standing on the bar, I cast my fly perpendicular to the current flow onto the bar so it drifts over the edge of the drop-off to the waiting fish. I let the fly swing around until it’s directly down-current of me, then just let it flutter in the current a bit. I bring it slowly up-current, stopping frequently to let it shimmy and drift left and right in the turbulence, then strip in a little more line and repeat. I make sure to let it do the same for a bit right at the lip, just before it comes up onto the bar. I often back up a bit further onto the bar so I have enough line out between the rod tip and the drop-off to give the fly more freedom of movement and to prevent the fish from pulling off if it grabs and becomes hooked in close quarters.
If the stripers are ghosting you or if you are looking for something different, grab a schoolie rod and a small surf bag of lures, or perhaps a fly rod and a bag of Deceivers. Then go cross weakfish from shore off your bucket list.
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