Fishing in style
Comfort fishing is mostly looked poorly upon by most extreme anglers in NJ. Most anglers feel the lack of mobility greatly hinders your ability to adjust for fish movements. While this is true, in our competitiveness we must not forget what draws people to the sport to begin with. Bonding, relaxing and getting away from the world is just a few examples that brings people in. This doesn't mean that you can't be successful in fishing. This just means a bit more planning is needed before hand.
When you hit the beach, don't just go to the first place you see and cast out. Instead, spend about 15-20 minutes scanning the beach. Look for troughs and rip tides, look for sandbags ECT. Find that perfect spot that you plan on spending the next few hours at. If you are unsure on how to do this, see our "reading the beach" article. Make sure you have fresh bait and a variety of baits. Make sure you do not run out of bait because packing up to get more bait can be time consuming and frustrating. Have several sizes of sinkers and multiple for each person fishing. Have at least 3 rigs per person fishing maybe more. When you lose mobility I can't say enough about prepping for the trip.
Once you have your spot, now it's time to set up for comfort, style and fun. When we comfort fish we go all out. We made a bait cutting table, using sand spikes for the legs. It has bins for different kinds of bait, cutting boards, knife holder and a lid to keep the birds out of it. We use expensive camping chairs, we have a charcoal grill where permitted. We have 2 or 3 tackle boxes, sand spikes and several rods. We have a jeep where permitted, a radio and we have hours and hours and sometimes even days of fishing fun. We experimented with a pop up gazebo, but we quickly learned the wind makes it ineffective...but we tried.
Just because you want to relax and fish in comfort doesn't mean that you have to give up success, many people including us have many fish tales while comfort fishing. Just plan ahead and have fun doing something you love.
When you hit the beach, don't just go to the first place you see and cast out. Instead, spend about 15-20 minutes scanning the beach. Look for troughs and rip tides, look for sandbags ECT. Find that perfect spot that you plan on spending the next few hours at. If you are unsure on how to do this, see our "reading the beach" article. Make sure you have fresh bait and a variety of baits. Make sure you do not run out of bait because packing up to get more bait can be time consuming and frustrating. Have several sizes of sinkers and multiple for each person fishing. Have at least 3 rigs per person fishing maybe more. When you lose mobility I can't say enough about prepping for the trip.
Once you have your spot, now it's time to set up for comfort, style and fun. When we comfort fish we go all out. We made a bait cutting table, using sand spikes for the legs. It has bins for different kinds of bait, cutting boards, knife holder and a lid to keep the birds out of it. We use expensive camping chairs, we have a charcoal grill where permitted. We have 2 or 3 tackle boxes, sand spikes and several rods. We have a jeep where permitted, a radio and we have hours and hours and sometimes even days of fishing fun. We experimented with a pop up gazebo, but we quickly learned the wind makes it ineffective...but we tried.
Just because you want to relax and fish in comfort doesn't mean that you have to give up success, many people including us have many fish tales while comfort fishing. Just plan ahead and have fun doing something you love.
