Has it really been almost a week?
February 9, 2001:

The new is up! Seems DP's been "plagarising" the board again, he's gonna owe somebody a lot of nickels!

Boy, time flies! Don't you guys worry about me, things are going well and I'm feeling much better. The reason I haven't written a page in 6 days is more along the lines of a lack of material! Sure, I could be doing daily updates of all the things I'm working on, all the changes I'm making, and just what, in general, is going on around here. Instead, I'd prefer to talk fishing...only I haven't been fishing in so long, my cork tape pen is my sole reminder :-( I'm really, really planning to go this weekend even though my initial plan of the Connectquot for tommorrow morning just got changed. While that place is a whole lotta fun to fish, if you aren't parked in line for your beat prior to 1am on a Friday night, you might as well be fishing in a mud puddle in the parking lot! Some guys will be lined up at like 6pm to wait in line for the 8am opening...I don't have that kinda time to spend sitting in my truck and therefore am least likely to get the beats I prefer. It was going to work out with about a 2am arrival, we'd get decent beats....but poor Dubs couldn't swing early release from his midnight shift tonight. Hey, plans change, we can only hope they change for the best! So, instead, we're planning on driving to LI anyway in the early evening to spend some time with Crazy Alberto...make some plans for the near future and speak with Al on a number of pressing topics. As usual, even though we were planning a social visit, Al's thinking fishing...he says he knows where there's some bass hiding in the February waters...I don't doubt him and will entertain the idea by packing a couple light spinning rods for the trip anway. I swear, there's nothing that guy won't do to catch a fish!

So, what else is new? Let's see....I finally got the Hooligan Lures pages up...and in late December I bought every Hooligan that they had, so if you need 'em, we're the ones that got 'em! ;-) I still haven't had a chance to fish the spectacular looking lures, but the number of guys that get giddy with the sheer mention of "Hooligans" was enough to convince me to tie up some very rare winter time tackle dollars! We have the 2oz Large Menhaden, 1 1/2oz Medium Menhaden, the 1oz Skipjack Herring, the 3/4oz Baby Menhaden, and the 2/3oz Silverside sized Hooligans. It's very rare for us to carry a lure that I haven't personally used, the list of people who recommended Hooligans and swear by their magical properties is like a who's who of surf fishing...I feel quite confident that these things will produce as these folks have told me...I've even seen pictures!

In the bigger sizes, they have taken numerous LARGE stripers in situations where conventional lures have failed and in the smaller sizes they have turned on the bonito, albacore, and many other pelagics.Also, Alberto has been telling me that the smaller ones are devastating to the large mouths, small mouths, walleyes, trout, and many other freshwater critters. I'm anxious to swim some of these things myself! Also, we added some very rare Pork-O colors...while the black and purple 7 1/4" Pork-O's are outta stock, we now have something that I think could even be better...7 1/4" black and olive Pork-O's! There are some 5 1/4" black and purple ones and a fresh load of the 7 1/4" white and chartreuse Pork-O's that proved themselves invaluable to Dubs and I in Cape Cod last spring when the herring were around. The fish were ignoring our normal Smilin' Bills and Uncle Josh strips when I decided to crack open my first jar of 7 1/4" white and chartreuse. That was all it took, for the rest of the trip, the Pork-O's caught more and bigger bass than the old standby Uncle Josh! I'm sure it's due to the fact that the Pork-O's are a good 1/2" thick and 1/2" wide presenting a much more meaty profile than a similar length but extremely thin Uncle Josh strip. Since that trip, we've used the black and purple Pork-O's at night in the late summer/early fall and when fished with a black Smilin' Bill, they were devastating! I'm eager to swim a nice 2 oz 8/0S Smilin' Bill out on Long Island this summer with a plump 7 1/4" black and olive Pork-O on the back...but I know I'm gonna have to hide the jar from the Crazy One....he gets all giggly and funny when you just mention the word "olive"

I guess I should go on, it's been a while, at least I can let ya know the new goodies here if I can't bend yer ear with tales of fish caught and lost! While I don't have any pictures yet, I've just received some of the finest looking, most well built surf fishing plugs from Rapala. I've been using/selling the Super Shad Rap for some time now, they are a unique lure, superbly built and with their surface struggling action, the stripers love 'em...but the ones I've been selling were limited to basically, gold, silver, or shiner. These new ones are made to very believably imitate salt water baitfish with flavors..I mean colors...like Clownfish, Mullet, Croaker, and Blue Mullet (orange belly!) I'll let the other colors sell out and won't restock them, these will certainly do ;-) I'm extremely impressed with the paint job on these things, very detailed and very realistic, the Croaker looks like a Croaker to a "T" and the Mullet is a perfect mullet and a very believable bunker. Very nice, two thumbs up for Rapala!

One of the local surf fishing clubs has a new website up! This isn't just another club, there's a whole lotta StripersOnline regulars that are members of this club! Off the top of my head, there's BobPop, DaveC, and Zeebassman and a whole host of others. So, take a moment and visit the fine folks at The Berkely Striper Club's new site...tell 'em TimS sent ya! ;-)

Well, there's more new things, but if I tell ya all of 'em now, I won't have anything to tell ya tomorrow when I put up the new Rockfish! ;-)

Sincerely,

Tim Surgent