Northeast - Tackle for MA Offshore Fishing

I have received a lot of great advice regarding purchasing a CC from this forum. I'm on my way to hopefully purchasing a boat soon. Ninety five percent of my fishing experience and fishing tackle is geared for fresh water fishing. Can anyone provide me a list of tackle that I should purchase for fishing off the MA coast for stripers, tuna, ??? I plan on hiring a captain or mate to go out with me on the first few trips, but I would prefer to get some information now and start planning my purchases.

We like John
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Was at the Dennis store last weekend, Karl was a huge help!!!

Cleaner,

As with most things advice can be given based on the depth of your wallet. It also depends on your fishing style. Here are the old stand by's:

Stripers and Bluefish: Penn 113 HSPs with wire line on a wireline (carboalloy guides) rod. Us stubborn New Englanders are stuck on the "old fashion" methods. Do a search here and read all about wire line. Many hate it, some love it, all say it works.

Tuna: The sky is the limit but for those on a budget Penn 114 wides have caught lots of mid size (200 pound) tuna. But if you have the cash to invest in tuna gear, Penn International 30's or Shimano Tiagra 30's will never be a bad investment if you plan to get serious...

There are a million variations on this theme but those few trolling suggestions can't go wrong.

For spinning gear, there are more "flavors" based line class... How heavy do you want to fight. Your freshwater expereince will hell you out here. You can catch big stripers on 8 pound test....but you will lose a lot more than you land. Go wit a 20 pound class set up and you will even the odds.... Penn 5500 are sort of the middle ground. Shimano Stradic 5000 are great. Again a ton of suggestions but very few wrong choices.

You have to ask yourself how much you want to invest. I suggest go slow, buy quality but don't break the bank. Then when you get addicted like the rest of us, keep the quality inexpensive gear as back up and empty your wallet on really good gear..... By the time you are addicted, you will spend tens of thousand and thousands on this silly sport, so you will be used to mid 4 figure expenses... Until you are so afflicted, spend a couple hundred on reasonably priced quality gear.

Mike

Idigitu88, AlloyToy, and Parapapam,

Thank you for the information. I will start the purchases slowly as Parapapam advised. I'm running mapquest for Fisherman's Oufitter right now.

Thanks again.

http://www.fishermansoutfitter.com/
Your going to need bait at some point Mackeral will start top show in the bay in about 2 weeks through May use mack diamond jigs on the bottom of christmas tree rigs I like the muti colored ones but the silver/red work well as does the feather version
This is a great way to get your kids involved as it is a drop n pop fishery I like to use chum ground up sand eels is best When you do go check all the reports you can to determine a game plan but be flexible enough to change if you see conditions changing

idigitu88 - 3/23/2007 7:58 PM

We like John
http://www.fishermansoutfitter.com/
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Ditto, and TD

The advice so far has been excellent. I find Fisherman's Outfitters to have top quality gear at top of the line prices. Try Boaters World, especially their OuterBankds Outfitters Catalog (the fishing section of the Boaters World Big Book), for good prices if you know what you want, especially combo's. Their rods are pretty good as well. If buying seperate rods and reels, go to Chaos Rods web site, in my opinion, they sell the best value for the dollar. They don't have the low end stuff, but so what. They have mid ranged through top end stuff at very good prices.

Thank you all for the great advice!!

they really know their stuff at FO, and they ship wicked fast. ordered some stuff around Xmas, had it the next day.

I would have to agree http://www.fishermansoutfitter.com/ haves what any offshore fisherman needs, and more. But theres lots of used gear out there that can be a better price and never been used. If your just stating out why pay 1500.00 for penn 130 when a used one workes as well. In maine http://www.sacobaytackle.com/ works and used gear shows up in here all the time http://www.unclehenrys.com/Classifieds/Search/Results.aspx?SearchID=17257615&isHistoricSearch=N I'm sure there something in your area like this.