I have only been picking fish up on 5 inch bubble gum fin s. Blues bass and weaks have all been takers. but they have been few and far between.
I have been trying alot of other colors.. black and gold, black and silver, white, blue and grey, ark shiner, but no luck with them. Any other colors working right now? I have also try bucktails, and storm shads... nothing seems to work but the bubble gum???
RB,
Yours is a rather complicated question to answer, simple as it seems.
Fact is, no matter what lure you are using in the canal, the fish will always be few and far between in the canal when using lures, and I don't care what lure it is. And the main reason for this, is that the larger fish in the canal have been there long enough to have seen a LOT of bait go by with each tide change, and they know the difference. Remember, the north end of Barnegat bay is on the south side of the canal, and the Manasquan river is at the north side, and both areas are litereally blessed with a great variety, and abundance of live bait. Each tide change forces a great amount of helpless, hapless live bait from either end through the canal, and with the currents in the canal, the baitfish are pretty helpless and easy pickings for the game fish. These fish in the canal have no problem feeding, and unfortunately, get to see a lot of live bait. And unless you have a bunch of gamefish schooled up and in a feeding frenzy(such as the schools of 2 to 4 pound blues), they are difficult to fool.
So if you want to catch larger fish consistently, especially bass, you need to give up lures, and liveline live bait. In the spring, the only game in town for stripers is livelined herring, they are candy to the stripers, and it is literally a no miss situation. Later, as the water warms up a bit, livelined eels are deadly. If large blues are in the canal(like they've been all this summer), it's pretty hard to go wrong with livelining Hickory shad you can catch at the inlet. Just be aware, that the Hickory shad run about 15 inches long, and a big blue(unlike a big striper) will simply chop the shad in half and take the back half, leaving you with the front half on your hook, so you need a stinger hook in the back end of the shad for blues.
With that being said, I am a lure fisherman, and while I catch fish in the canal on lures, I definitely put in a lot more time than most do. I have caught MANY stripers from the canal this spring and summer, all on lures, however, I have also as I stated, put in a lot more time than most do.
Lurewise and color wise here is what has worked for me.
I took most of my stripers on 2 basic lures, a Rapala X-Rap, size 12, in Glass Ghost finish, and a 5 3/4 inch Fin-S fish on a 1 ounce jighead, in either Alewife, or Arkansas Shiner finish.
While I took more stripers with the Rapala, I only get them on the Rapala when casting parallel to the wall of the canal(about a foot off the edge of it), I haven't got a keeper on the Rapala. However, 18 to 24 inch stripers consistently, on light tackle is great fun, and I don't need a keeper.
The keepers came on the Fin-S, either jigged with the current out in the middle, or where the tapered rock wall meets the bottom of the canal, about 20 feet out from the wall.
Of course, in my opinion, if you want weakies, the pink Fin-S is the only game in town, however, weakies have been VERY scarce this year, and I don't use pink unless weakies are around, as the little blues tend to chop the Fin-S in half, and in October, when the weakies are staging at the north end of the canal, and the stores aren't renewing their stock of pink, you are SOL, so I save my stock of pink until weakies are plentyfull(which hasn't happenned thusfar this year).
While I'm not much of a bait fisherman, I did quite a bit of liveling this summer with Hickory shad for bluefish. The main reason being, I had about 9 light tackle outfits I wanted to try out on big mean fish in fast currents. Just for example, I used lures in that area(north end around Pine Bluff Ave.) and caught one or 2(maybe 3 big blues). Liveling Hickory shad, it was not a porblem to catch 3 a morning or better if the tide was right.
So I think to answer your question, in essence, if you want to catch the larger gamefish that lay in the canal consistently, you need to liveline bait instead of using lures. The only exception I see to this is weakies, where a pink Fin-S on a jighead will outperform live bait most of the time.
And again, this is based on my personal experience, others may think differently, but I've seen live bait consistently outperform lures over the years in the canal way to many times to think any differently. Hope this has helped.
Garry
