Tog From the Jetty: Crabs, Rigs That Don't Snag, and the Tide at Your Rocks

Tautog (blackfish, tog, whatever you call them) might be the most frustrating fish a shore angler can chase. They live in the nastiest rocks on the coast, they steal crabs with a nibble you barely feel, and when you do hook one it heads straight back into its hole. They’re also one of the best-eating fish in the Northeast, and fall is when they feed hardest.

Most tog writing is about boats and wrecks. This guide is for the guy standing on the rocks.

When tog turn on from shore

Water temperature is the trigger, more than the calendar.

• Fall: the bite turns on as the water cools through about 60°F (On The Water). Early in the fall run, fish are often surprisingly shallow, in roughly 8 to 20 feet of water, which puts them in range of a jetty. As the water keeps dropping into November, they slide deeper (The Fisherman).
• Spring: fish start feeding again as the water climbs back to around 49 to 52°F and move onto the rocks as it warms (On The Water).

The practical takeaway: watch the nearest NOAA station’s water temperature, not the date (more in our water temperature guide). A warm fall can push the shallow-water bite back by weeks.

Which crab?

Tog eat crabs, and the crab you use matters more than almost anything else.

• Green crabs are the standard, especially early in the fall when fish are shallow. Most anglers cut them in half or quarters and remove the legs and claws.
• White-legger crabs (white crabs) tend to outfish green crabs late in the season, when fish are deeper and pickier (On The Water).
• Asian crabs, which you can often collect yourself under rocks, work well too.
• Gulp crabs and other artificials get mixed-to-poor reviews from shore tog anglers (StripersOnline). Bring real crabs.

Rigs that don’t eat your whole night

You will lose tackle. The goal is to lose cheap pieces of it.

• Keep it simple. One hook, short leader, sinker below. The more hardware you have, the more there is to wedge in the rocks.
• Put the sinker on weaker line than the rest of the rig, so when it snags, the sinker breaks off and you keep the hook and the fish. Old-timers call this a rotten-bottom rig.
• Tog jigs (a weighted jig head with a crab on it) snag less than a hook and sinker because the weight and hook come back together, and many shore anglers have switched to them.
• Bring a lot of everything. Pre-tie rigs at home. Tying knots on wet rocks in the dark is how a good tide gets wasted.

How to hook them: tog often tap-tap-tap before they actually eat. Wait for the weight, set hard, and get the fish moving up and away from the rocks immediately. Give a tog a few feet and it’s back in its hole.

Which tide fishes a jetty?

Here’s the honest answer: nobody has tested it. There’s no study on jetty tog by tide stage, and even the best tog writers admit their answers are experience, not numbers (The Fisherman).

What you’ll hear on the rocks:

• Slower water is easier. Many shore anglers like the hours around slack because they can hold bottom and feel the bite. In hard current, keeping a crab in the strike zone takes so much weight you lose the feel.
• But tog still feed in moving water, and on some jetties the fish come up the rocks with the flooding tide.
• The bigger your local tide range, the more the stage matters, because the same rock can be 3 feet or 10 feet deep depending on the hour.

Every jetty is different: which side the current sweeps, where the holes are, how deep the base is. The only reliable way to find your rocks’ best tide is to fish different stages and write down what happened, including the trips where you didn’t touch a fish.

Regulations

Tog seasons, size limits and bag limits differ by state and change often, with closed periods in some states. Check your state agency before you keep one: NJ Fish & Wildlife, NYSDEC, CT DEEP, RIDEM or Massachusetts DMF.

What to write down

Tog fishing is a pattern game, and the pattern is local. For every trip, note the water temperature, the tide stage and range, which jetty and which side, which crab you used, and what happened, skunks included. After a season, you’ll know the temperature your rocks turn on at and the stage they fish best, which is more than any tog guide (including this one) can tell you.