By Zeno Hromin

This article originally appeared in the Fisherman magazine

Surf Fishing Tips from the Pros:

Steve Petri

This month's feature sharpie is Steve Petri, inventor, custom rod builder, seminar speaker and surfcaster whose exploits are well known in the surf fishing community. He feels blessed that he was able to learn from one of Long Islands best, his dad. After all, it was under his father’s watchful eye in 1981, at the tender age of 17 on a Cape Cod beach Steve landed a 57 and a 69.08 lb bass on consecutive nights. This multi-talented fisherman is also an accomplished inventor who among other things created a Petri-fish rubber flounder lure. In addition he is a custom rod builder operating out of Bob’s Bait & Tackle in Copiague. Although two of his largest fish came out of Cape Cod beaches Steve also has two fish over 50 lbs to his credit from the LI surf and numerous 40’s.Let’s see if he will let us in on any of the strategies that has worked so well for him in the past.

Hello Steve. We all know July is a tough month for surfcasting. Tell us how do you approach it? 

I would try to stick with the areas were the water is cooler; I wouldn’t even fish the back bay areas because of this. Stick with the oceanfront beaches. The last few years we had big bunker schools in the ocean, from Long Beach to Fire Island and I have been concentrating in that area, picking at some quality fish. Look for some bait and if you find any decent concentrations I can assure you the fish will be in the vicinity. July might be a tough month when taking boat traffic, swimmers and water temperatures into account but if you can find bait schooled up you can do extremely well. As far as locations, I prefer to concentrate close to home in July and you can often find me in the area between Jones and Fire Island inlet with Gilgo and Tobay getting most of my attention.

Lures or bait?

Both. Usually I will start at dusk throwing large metal lips, Atom 40 being my favorite and I’ll fish them thru the night, depending on what is happening. If the water is rough I might opt for bottle plugs. Anything that will provide me with the profile of an adult bunker. At dawn I often throw big popping plugs, as I love watching fish rise to the surface. As far as color preference, I paint a lot of my plugs and I like to often hit them with a little olive green on the top and try to customize them a little to get that bunker look. You also can’t go wrong with blue or solid white especially when you are tossing a large metal lip. If I feel the fish are there but not responding to plugs, out come the conventional stick and a bunker chunk.

Tell us about the retrieve when working these large metal lips

I always go very slowly. It’s always best to put the plug in the water right at your feet and turn a reel a few times and see how the retrieve is going to affect the action. With metal lips the retrieve speed is always on the slow side and I like to work them just bellow the surface with a nice wobble. Alternate the retrieve by stopping your plug and letting it float up to the top and then starting it again. I’ve seen fish follow the plug all the way on a steady retrieve and the wouldn’t touch it. If you stop your retrieve and then start it up again they will often hit it as soon as you turn your handle.

What makes you decide if you are going tro go with bait or lures on any particular night?

I usually bring both, bait and lures. In addition I always carry a snag hook with me. Last few years in July I often had a mindset to go plug fishing but once on the beach I found bunker schools a cast off the beach with fish blowing up on them. I couldn’t get them to hit a plug for nothing, not a bucktail, a tin, popper or a metal lip, they wouldn’t hit anything. The idea is to catch a fish. I don’t care which method I need to employ but I want to catch a fish. So I put a snag hook on and flip it out there. Snag one up and let it sink and fall out of the school and this has saved the day quite a few times. I like to cover both bases by bring along a conventional stick for bait and a spinning one for plugging. When I am fishing bait I like to move around. I’ll give it an hour or so and then I will move to another location. While I am fishing in a particular spot I will fan cast the area and work my bait by occasionally dragging a chunk thru the sand because on some night’s fish only respond to the sight of a meal getting away from them.

Anything about your approach to baitfishing you’d like to share?

Don’t put the rod in the sand spike, hold it and try to move the bait around. If the conditions are right and I don’t have to worry about holding bottom because of sweep or weed I like to use bank sinkers so I able to roll and move them around. Learn to use bunker heads and learn how to hook them up properly. By that I mean close its mouth by running an 8/0 or 9/0 Gamakatsu hook under the chin and out thru the nose. The bunker head with its mouth open does not look that attractive, to you or to the fish. To me there are only two good pieces to a bunker: the head and the piece next to it, the rest is bluefish bait. The second piece has enough guts and blood in it that I like to take the heart from it and add it to the third or middle pieces, which is just too meaty for me.

Are you looking to fish certain weather patterns and winds?

Not really. In July the weather is in a fairly stable pattern and all I want is for the water to be clean. This is the hard month of the year as you have so much algae bloom and weed in the water so I try to fish when the water is going to be cleanest. Try o get away from the inlets on the outgoing tide and concentrate towards the inlets on the incoming when you get some cleaner ocean water moving thru there. Hard south blows push everything onto the beach and by the second or third day of a hard southerly wind it’s usually a nightmare especially if it coincides with the new or full moon tides.

Tell us about your preference in regards to tides.

For the beaches with close proximity to the inlet I like when tides and current are moving in the same direction. For example I don’t want to have incoming tide with ebbing current, which is what happens at Cedar Beach around low water slack. Tide has already turned and is starting to flood while the current is still ebbing for a few hours. When fishing open beaches away from the inlets I like to have some water coming over the bars, whether it is the last three hours of incoming or first three hours of outgoing.

Do moon periods have an affect on surfcasting in July?

Well, I feel like they are going to affect the environment around me more than they will effect the fish. They are going to affect the tides and therefore there will be more weed along the beach. I stay away from the full or the new moons right on the head, preferring to work to few days leading into or past the actual moon period. It’s not like I will stay home because of the full moon but I would definitely bring a lot of different things with me so if it is too weedy to chunk I might be able to plug. Sometimes the bottom can be weedy but you still might be able to work a plug on the surface.

How about daytime action?

If I had to pick a time during the daylight hours, dawn would be my first choice. If you must fish during midday stick with overcast days and pick a spot at which you will have relatively little beach traffic as far as bathers and boats. The last few years I have grown fond of Smack-it poppers in daytime. They only weight about an ounce and a half but with light wind you can get them pretty far out and they catch fish. I also like casting big shad bodies during the day. Mostly ones made by Storm or Tsunami in larger sizes, 5 or 6 inches.

Do you target bluefish and weakfish too?

Oh yeah. If it swims I will try to catch it. I am an equal opportunity "filleter". In the bait department I will go with large sandworms if I know or heard that weakfish have been in the area. Two large worms impaled thru their heads on a bait holder hook with a small float pushed against the shank of the hook is my standard weakfish rig. I like my leader a bit longer then the one I would use for bass which will allow the worms to float up off the bottom and away from those pesky crabs. I also away carry a white bucktail with some pork rind and a tin if I am venturing out in the daytime. They are equally effective on bass, blues and weaks.

When deciding where to fish, how do you pick your spot?

I am going with the standard structure related spots. Look for a deep trough and an offshore sand bar. Then look for the break or the cut along the bar. The telltale signs are either darker shade of water or less white water at these locations. Fish the cut, fan casting to both edges of the opening. Also any points or drop-off along the shore. These spots are not necessarily a mile offshore; they might be a short cast away. What I am basically looking for is anything out of the ordinary, which the fish might use as its ambush area.

(Tom, I am not sure stuff bellow fit's into the context of July.  However, I liked it, for whatever that’s worth)

I have to ask you about your 68.08 lb bass………

It was in 1981 at the Cape when I was only 17 years old. On two consecutive nights fishing eels I had fish of 57 and 69lbs plus numerous fish in the 30’s and 40’s. It was my dad’s influence that got me that fish as I was truly blessed to be able to learn from one of Long Islands best. We use to go in the boat, two of us before there was limit on flounders and fish Sore Thumb. Then we would go in the inlet and drift them live along the guys that were fluking in July and pulling in 20 to 30lb bass all day long. Every flounder was a bass and sometimes you had a few bass on a single flounder. When they started to come out with restrictions on flounder I said, let me try to come out with a lure that would imitate a flounder. I started to mess around with different shapes of lead and cooking and poring rubber on my kitchen stove. After two visits by the local fire department that thought the house was on fire, because of excessive smoke, the Petri-fish was born.