Bucktail Believer
The wind off the beach on Long Island’s North Fork had turned my cheeks candy apple red as I swung the 10-foot rod toward a boulder 50 yards out in the surf. It was late November, just after the fall migration of striped bass had wound down. Not believing the last of the stripers had finned out of the Northeast, I was determined to pick up a straggler surf casting with the only lure I had brought with me: a white bucktail jig.
The 1-ounce jig sailed into the dark blue sky, needling into the surf like an Olympic diver with hardly a splash. Before the bait had a chance to hit bottom, I was reeling for all I was worth to pick up the slack. I did this over and over — precisely as I was told, point by point — by perhaps the greatest living authority on bucktail jigs, John Skinner, who was casting not 20 yards from me.
“I always say that anything that will hit an artificial lure will hit a bucktail,” Skinner says. “A properly presented bucktail, reeled in slow and steady in the strike zone, will catch anything willing to hit an artificial.”
Most anglers I know bring a suitcase of baits when they fish — poppers,
