Like a wanted gang, the “Fall-Run Five” are the baitfish that surfcasters search for each fall to end the season on a high note. Bass and blues relish the opportunity to chow down on these baits in the fall, and fortunately for us surf fishermen, these baits regularly appear within casting distance.
Peanut Bunker
In September, the peanuts are small at 1- to 2-inches and seem to attract only schoolie stripers, snapper blues, and false albacore. By October, the peanuts are 4- to 5-inches and have much more drawing power when it comes to big stripers and blues. Look for them running along sandy shorelines; points or bowls where the bass can trap the bait are also prime places to stake out during the fall. To match peanut bunker, smaller metal lips, 1- to 2-ounce pencils and poppers, and 4- to 6-inch minnow plugs will all work.
Adult Bunker
Forced out of the harbors where they spent the summer, full-grown bunker attract some of the largest bluefish of the season when they reach open water. Occasionally, big schools of big stripers will find them as well. Legendary blitzes like the Columbus Day Blitz on Martha’s Vineyard (wonderfully chronicled in Robert Post’s Reading The Water) was fueled by an oceangoing school of menhaden that a school of stripers pinned against the beach.
Mantis Shrimp
The odd crustacean in the Fall-Run Five, the mantis shrimp can bring some of the last, and best, fishing to the shores of New England. These slow-moving morsels begin appearing around Halloween. In recent years, they’ve been behind some memorable late-season bites in the Cape Cod Canal. A tan bucktail jig is a good imitation, but the mantis shrimp occasionally cruises along just under the surface, and at these times, a pencil popper can be a deadly tool.
Sand Eels
So much of the fall run moves at a frantic pace, but a good crop of sand eels will slow things down a bit. While other baitfish are in a hurry to get to their wintering grounds, sand eels are content to stay in one general area. Their seasonal migrations take them east and west, as opposed to north and south, which explains their willingness to sit tight. When bass and blues come across a big body of sand eels, they’ll sit tight too.
When you find some sand eels, throw needlefish by night and metals by day—a slow, steady retrieve is perfect with each. An onshore wind will also help your odds. Cast to the white water crashing over an offshore sandbar, where the bass will be waiting to ambush the shell-shocked baitfish.
Sea Herring
Though sea herring don’t make an appearance every year, when they do, the fishing they bring with them is talked about for years after. In the past decade, two of the more memorable sea herring years were in 2011, when the herring parked it in the South County, Rhode Island, surf throughout November and into December, keeping bluefish and some big bass around as well. In 2012, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy pushed a mess of sea herring into the Cape Cod Canal, where the final wave of stripers feasted on them until Veterans Day.
When the sea herring are around, blue-backed plugs are a must, whether they are minnow plugs, poppers, or metal lips. The 9-inch Slug-Go in the blue-back pattern is a nearly perfect imitation of a herring, and has caught me a few Christmas-time cows in the inlets of Southern New Jersey.
Herring are most likely to show up around open beaches in New England. The first sign of their arrival comes from the skies in the form of northern gannets and blackback gulls. Look for them beginning around Halloween, and have the rods ready to go as late as Thanksgiving. Many fishermen believe that herring, and the big bass that eat them, move through after most surfcasters have abandoned their posts.