After Dark Does It

A homemade black Deceiver teaser
was effective tonight.

Some of the larger schoolies
were hitting the skinny Hogy.

Today was a weird day from shore.  I got down to the oceanfront in late afternoon.  In the first spot I stopped at there were several big schools of stripers way out and well out of casting range. For two hours these fish were on the surface eating away just teasing the few of us on shore.  Once in a while, they would come in close enough for my son, Ben, to reach them with his ten foot rod. He landed several schoolies on the float and jig while I got nothing.

On cue, everything disappeared at dark.  However, I decided to stay and try into the night.  I used a 9 inch, black, skinny Hogy with a black Deceiver teaser rigged ahead of it.  In the past, this has been one of my go to rigs at night.  Well, it worked like a charm as I began getting hit after hit, sometimes two or three hits on a single cast.  I have no idea what the fish were doing, but they were not getting hooked!  I must have had 20 hits before I landed my first fish, a schoolie, on the teaser.  I landed quite a few more fish after that with half falling for the teaser and half on the Hogy.
So, maybe the key to catching those daytime fish that seem to hold way out is to fish after dark.  Clearly, this evening those fish moved close to shore with darkness.