10/12 Albatross Tog Report

Albatross · 10-13-2008, 02:56 PM

Hello All,
With Scotty in Vegas over the weekend I finally had a chance to get back on the Albatross for a change. The plan was to first go hunting for topwater and then make a few early season sets to scout out the Tog grounds for the upcoming season.

The crew for this one was good friends Sean Cragan (spcragan) on NBS and Tim Jutras along with myself.

We got a late start and shoved off just after 0700 and made our way quickly down Narragansett Bay. Eric (74Formula) had called and said that he and his father were into some topwater action around Bonnett so we raced down at 35MPH to get in on the action. Upon arrival there was still some surface activity along the Anawan Cliffs. We made a few casts and landed some smaller blues but found the schools to be very spooky.

After an hour or so my crew grew restless so we turned our focus toward TOG and headed for the Reef in Newport to kick off the 08' tog season

We hit a shallow ledge first and fished in about 25 feet of water without any hits for 30 minutes or so. Then we moved out to a piece in about 45 feet of water where we crushed em' at the end of last season. Eric and Capt. Clif from Inheritance were sitting directly on top of the piece

and you guessed it - beating on them! We set up next to them but on the wrong side - no love....got on the other side of them and in the right depth and picked up a nice fish just under 20" before my boat swung dramatically and I ended up right over their anchor line....so we needed to move again...did I mention that they were beating on them??? I circled the area and set up on the other side of them and managed another nice fish in the 3lb class but that was it. Another half hour of watching Eric and Clif hammer away and that was enough for me.

We pulled the plug and ran about a half mile to the south to the old faithful "honey hole". I got set up in about 55 feet of water and finally the fish turned on for us with a nice little flury of action. We ended up grabbing our limit of tog (kept 7) to 6lbs and a few quality sea bass. There were also some scup and a few chogies mixed in. All of the tog were caught with green crabs. The sea bass also hit crabs but we caught a few of them with squid

All in all, I was very pleased with with what I saw out there yesterday. Great weather (shorts and a T-shirt all day) spent with a great crew. Its shaping up to be a good year for the almighty

Can't wait for the next trip! What an addictive fishery

Few pics below...

-Brian Droney
ALBATROSS

Bob & Mag · 10-13-2008, 03:29 PM

Enjoyed the report and pictures.

AlloyToy · 10-13-2008, 08:22 PM

Very nice

We fished spots along Narragansett Sat and did a ton of shorts with a few 5 lb. keepers all on green crabs.

Have any of you ever fished shrimp with success for tog?

My next trip will be a bit more to the East..............

Glad you found them Albatross

Scup · 10-13-2008, 10:40 PM

Believe it or not, but while chumming up stripped bass using live grass shrimp in Jamaica Bay, some togs got in on the action as well as the bass. They actually came off the bottom and followed my chum line up. However, in the hundreds of times I chummed with live grass shrimp this only happened once. Other unusual baits that I have caught togs on is squid. Here again, I was targeting Scup at Latimers Reef when one or two togs grabbed the squid and this sort of thing was a one of a time type of affair as well. I consider hermit crabs to be the best go-to bait for togs. Because they are so long, you usually have to break them in half and end up with two smaller baits otherwise you would be giving the tog just too much leeway and you will end up fishing with a bare hook. Green crabs work pretty dam good so if you are not doing well it is probably more likely that you are putting your crab on the hook somewhat cockeyed and it is spinning in a crisp tide or you are fishing where there are no feeding togs. Scup will take shrimp quite readily. Few fish with it since there are better and cheaper baits to use for Scup than shrimp. If you insist on using shrimp for togs, keep in mind that there are loads of scup about everywhere right now and they will hack up your bait usually before the togs would have a chance at it. Togs also like clams but here again the Scup will drive you nuts. The main advantage of green crabs is:
The togs like them
They are somewhat Scup resistant (Scup tend to suck up the good part out of the crab)
They are very cheap. Put out a green crab trap with any kind of rack in it, and any decent location should give you hundreds of green crabs overnight.

AlloyToy · 10-14-2008, 06:12 AM

Scup,
Good info!!! Have a customer in South Jersey that swears by shrimp!!! So much that he will only fish shrimp

Not sure if this is a territorial thing or what it is exactly..........

Green crab traps.......Albatross may know the answer to this for RI waters........Are you allowed to set a trap anywhere without a permit of any sort? What kind of trap are you guys using? We usually look for carcases at the boat ramp and find our crabs, if not then the tackle shops.......

Andy · 10-14-2008, 11:21 AM

Great report Brian ,looks like i need to hit Eric up for a trip

I still remember fishing with him and clif on that little hump what a day

Scup · 10-14-2008, 05:05 PM

AlloyToy,

The best performing green crab traps are not actually green crab traps at all. They are made by our southern neighbors for catching pawns. Take a look at the following web site: Crab and Prawn Traps
The commerical guys call this a non-conforming trap. We know it beats the hell out of anything out there for catching green crabs, but whether or not it is legal is where the non-conforming part comes into play. Keep in mind that millions have been spent in trying to eliminate green crabs and at one point even a bounty was placed on them. They are illegal invaders to our shores and first appeared around the time of our civil war. Maine's shell fishing production dropped 90% after these crabs established themselves here and to make matters worse, they manage to hitch a ride to the west coast as well. Now even the Dungencess crab is taking a hit because of these pesky green crabs. Even though the Dungencess crab is twenty times the size of a green crab these little buggers can give a very good accounting for their survival. They forage for the same food as the Dungencess, and since they are experts at eating, the population of the great Dungencess crab is now in trouble. Do not suggest that they import Togs because they have considered it. They are running scared, as well they should be, since no one knows for sure just what kind of a mess the Togs might create with their other fisheries. All efforts to eliminate green crabs have failed, hence we still have them. Whether or not an enforcement officer will summons you if it turns out that your green crab trap is illegal for some reason in your area, is probably up to the officer. If he/she just has only book knowledge with no practical exerience and goes by the letter of the law (most will likely fall into this category) you will be fined. Should you get caught by an experience officer who understands what and the why of what you are doing, he/she would not waste their time issuing you anything. This has been a touchy subject in the State of Maine because they tried to invent, regulate, and license a green crab fishery and ended up being the laughing stock of the Northeast.
The type of green crab traps currently being sold, they have a single entrance, work good enough to catch a couple of hundred crabs in a single night and are probably more or less legal although I do not have a clue on how each state regulates traps. Ketcham Trap Company (Crab) makes a small drop down green crab trap that is pretty simple but has to be dropped with the entrance on top. Lastly, one of my semi-retired commerical fishing associates makes up green crab traps to order and asks about half of what production boys want. I am not in the business of messing around with making green crab traps, but can steer you to him should you wish. He also makes holding cages for green crabs. They are fairly large and round, like a 20 gallon garbage can, and could probably hold half a seasons worth of crabs, eels, minnows, or whatever else you wish to put into it.

JackC · 10-14-2008, 10:08 PM

Scup - great information. I just ordered one of the traps from Maine. I trap my own crabs but don't catch 100s a night. The hot bait in CT is the new invader the "asian crab". I fish both asian, greens and hermits when I catch them in my green crab trap. Asians can be found a low tide in the intertidal zone by flipping rocks - they are small and very aggressive (they hurt big time). A few shops sell them and the CTDEP formally made them a "legal bait" a few years back. I do not know of the DEP in CT ever busting anyone for trapping green crabs - but I agree with your logic in the experience of the CO. If you keep your crab trap on a dock where you keep your boat I could not envision any problems with the COs. If you set one up with a buoy in a river it might draw attention that is not needed.

Asians are kind of amazing - you will nail a nice tog on a thumb nail size crab in 50 feet of water in a strong tide (tog must really like them or the smell really good.) Some days the tog only want the asians. I like to fish one green crab and one asian on a 2 hook rig.

When I was a kid we used fiddler crabs but never harvested them - the tackle shops had "florida fiddlers" - never saw local (dark color fiddlers for sale). My father who is in his 70s caught all is own bait back when he was a kid and he used to "dig" native fiddlers in the local salt marshes (obviously not good for the health of the marsh).

Jack

Scup · 10-14-2008, 11:44 PM

JackC,

You nudged my memory when you mentioned fiddler crabs. I still have a single leaf of an automobile leaf spring that I used to chase down fiddler crabs with. All the tackle stores and rental liveries in the Jamaica Bay area sold what we called China Back fiddlers. They got the name China Back because of their somewhat whitish porcelain shell coloring, and as you said they were imported from Florida. I saw how they caught them. They would stretch a fine mesh net from the waters edge right up onto the dry part of the beach. When the buggers came out to sun themselves, several guys would take up after them waving there arms, running like hell and herding them toward the nets. The best I can do to describe the scene is something like what I saw in the modern movie "The Mummy". The fiddlers moved quickly in huge masses like those black bugs that would crawl up under your skin; the only difference is in the movie they chased you rather than the other way around. These Florida imported crabs worked, and were the perfect size for tog fishing, but were no where near as good as the native fiddlers. We called our local fiddlers "Mud Fiddlers" for obvious reasons. The way to catch them was to wait for low tide, and for the sun to come out. They seem to love to sun themselves and will leave their hole and walk about. When you approached, they always knew where their hole was and would scamper quickly toward it. Once in their hole, typically they would not dive deep into it as they would peek out to see what is happening. Should you approach them, they would go deep and thus be out range for catching. I used to stick the leaf spring quickly into the mud a few inches from their hole at about a 45 degree angle. Thus they could not egress deeper into their hole since my leaf spring shut that route down. It would then be easy just to pick up your crab. Probably this was the worse thing in the world to do to a marsh but that thought never ever occurred to me. Last year I wanted to post some pictures of these mud fiddlers on this form as they had abounded all over my property in the seventies. Could not even find a single hole! Asked my neighbor, another old timer, and he too remembers seeing them all over the place back when, and confirmed with a puzzled look that lately they do not seem to be about. For what it is worth, I would rank the mud fiddler even above that of a hermit crab. Togs will hit the hermit crab very quickly, but the hookup ratio was much higher for the mud fiddlers. I have caught a few Asian crabs in my traps along with green crabs but not many. When I read about them, it seemed that they would win out over the green crab in big numbers. I think many were selling short the survival capabilities of the green crab. In a head to toe competition between the two, I would place my money on the green crab. Still both seem to be around, but for every Asian caught, I must catch a thousand green crabs. These Asians do seem to have a claw that is somewhat oversize for their body. Somehow when fishing yesterday, I accidentally dropped a green crab and he fell right smack into the top of my knee boot; glad it was not an Asian.

Bob & Mag · 10-15-2008, 08:03 AM

Have you guys had an invasion of spider crabs in your traps this year?
I've got some green(not as many as normal) very few asian and a ton
of spiders on each set. Also noticed lots of spiders along the shoreline the
last few weeks. Wonder if others have noticed same in their area?
One other crab to appear this year, that I haven't seen is, according to
fish research at cim was mud crabs.

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