Surf Fishing Lures: 4 Basic Lures and How to Fish Them

Surf fishing is a discipline that combines a great deal of tackle, surf fishing lures, and techniques, depending on your target species, the time of year, the structure along your coast, and what your target species is feeding on when you fish.

That being the case, there are innumerable approaches you could make to surf fishing. That’s why most guides are specific to catching a certain species at a certain time of year with a specific bait or lure.

This guide will be more general. In this, we will explore four of the most commonly used types of surf fishing lures and how to use them to catch a wide variety of inshore species in the surf.

Poppers

Poppers are a class of topwater lure with a cupped face that spits and sputters water when the lure is worked. They can be highly effective on species like bluefish and striped bass, but they will also catch a wide variety of other species depending on the condition.

To work a popper, cast it to a school of bait, or where you know fish to be feeding, or cast it to structure, such as mangroves or pier piles. Let the lure sit for a moment, then give the rod tip a sharp jerk upwards, downwards, or to the sides.

This will cause the lure to make a popping sound, hence the name, and to spit water. This noise simulates the sound of a predator aggressively feeding at the surface, of a baitfish jumping the water to clear a pursuing predator, or of the surface boiling as a result of heavy feeding activity

When you give the lure a pop, let it sit for a few seconds before repeating the process. Always give the lure generous pauses; it is on these pauses, or right after them, that the strike will most often occur.

One more tip with a popper is this: when you get a strike, which you will often see, pause for half a second before attempting to set the hook or before fighting, or let the fish run. You don’t want to pull the popper free of the fish’s mouth prematurely.

Diving Plugs

Diving plugs, like poppers, are another class of plugs, only diving plugs are intended to dive when retrieved. They can either float, sink, or suspend, in which case they pause in the water when the retrieve is halted.

Present a diving plug in the same manner as you would present a popper; cast to structure or to a feeding school of fish and let the lure sit for a moment before beginning your retrieve.

There are a few ways to work a diving plug:

• A straight retrieve, in which you steadily crank the reel handle to bring the lure back to you. This is one of the easiest techniques to master, but also one of the least effective.
• A twitching cadence, in which you give the rod tip a few twitches with each crank or two of the reel handle. Most strikes will come on the pause.
  
• Slashing, in which you aggressively pop or slash the rod tip from side to side, which causes the surf fishing lure to dart in the water from one side to the other. Most strikes will come on the pause here as well.

These are some of the most effective ways to fish these surf fishing lures, although there are other more nuanced techniques as well. That being said, these three techniques will encompass most scenarios.

Spoons and Metal Jigs

Spoons and metal jigs, collectively known as metals, are another class of surf fishing lures that can be highly effective on predator inshore species like striped bass, bluefish, flatfish like halibut and fluke, and in the south, snook and sea trout, among others.

Spoons and jigs are highly effective at times when gamefish are preying on minnows, spearing, bunker, eels or other fish in the surf because their motions and the flash they produce is intended to mimic baitfish.

As with a diving plug, there are many ways to fish spoons and diamond jigs. The most common is to cast to a school of feeding fish or to structure that you believe will hold them. Here are a few common techniques:

• A straight retrieve, as with a plug. This will give the diamond jig or the spoon a tight wobbling action that will entice gamefish. This is an easy technique to utilize but as with a plug is one of the least effective.
  
• A stop and go retrieve, in which you cast, allow the spoon to sink for a few seconds, crank the reel handle a few times, then let the spoon drop again. Most strikes will come on the drop.
  
• A “yo-yo” retrieve, in which you cast, let the spoon sink, raise the rod tip sharply while cranking the reel handle, then let the spoon or jig sink again. As usual, most strikes will come on the drop.

As with plugs, there are other ways to fish these surf fishing lures but the ones covered here are among the most common and effective.

Bucktails Tipped with Plastic

Bucktails tipped with plastic, or popular plastic-adjacent products like Fishbites, can be highly effective as surf fishing lures, especially since the plastic adds lifelike movement as well as the whole new element of scent, which can also get fish to bite.

To fish a bucktail jig tipped with a plastic, cast it to structure or to a school of fish, then work it in one of the following ways:

• A straight retrieve, as described elsewhere in this article; easy to master but not as effective as other techniques.
  
• Hop the bucktail along the bottom. Let it sink and rest on the bottom for a second or two, then pop it over the bottom. This is highly effective on bottom-dwelling species like flatfish and seabass, and is one of the most popular and effective techniques for fluke and halibut.
  
• Jig it through the water column. A jig can be twitched or given a stop-and-go cadence similar to the one mentioned above, but without letting it reach the bottom. This is highly effective on most inshore gamefish that will eat artificials.

Once again, this is not an exhaustive exploration of the many ways in which a plastic-tipped bucktail can be effective, but it is a good place to start and the best techniques are covered here.

Explore Unique Surf Fishing Lure Patterns Here

Armed with this information, you can select effective surf fishing lures and work them according to some of the most efficacious techniques, depending of course on your target species. Explore a collection of surf plugs and metals here and let us know if you have any questions.