Where it all started
Jeff’s fishing story began at just four years old in Milford, Connecticut, alongside his grandfather. Some mornings started before a rod ever came out. They would flip rocks looking for earthworms, collect their own bait and head for a river, lake or pond.
Grandpa taught Jeff how to tie simple knots, bait a hook, cast and recognize a bite. More importantly, he taught him to stop staring only at the rod and start reading the water — current, shade, depth, fallen trees, rocks, vegetation and structure. Think about where the fish should be before making the cast.
Sunnies came first, then bass and freshwater trout. At the time, none of it felt like a lesson plan. Jeff was simply fishing with Grandpa. Decades later, those same fundamentals still show up every time he looks at a piece of water and thinks, there has to be a fish there.
Connecticut to Jersey
After moving from Connecticut to New Jersey, Jeff kept his freshwater roots alive throughout Northwest New Jersey, chasing bass and trout while learning new lakes, rivers and stretches of water.
Eventually, freshwater gave way to bigger water. Saltwater fishing brought New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound, the Chesapeake Bay area and then the Jersey Shore. Croaker and snapper blues turned into Black Sea Bass, Fluke, Striped Bass and Gator Blues. Farther offshore came Mahi, Tuna and Tilefish.
The trips got longer. The water got deeper. The tackle got heavier. But catching a fish was no longer the only point. Jeff wanted to know why it was there, why one presentation worked and another didn’t, and why changing weight, cadence or angle could suddenly make the entire bite come alive.
Soldier. Veteran. Fisherman.
Fishing wasn’t the only experience that shaped Jeff. His journey also led him to serve in the United States Army — a chapter built on discipline, resilience, responsibility and the ability to adapt when things didn’t go according to plan.
Those lessons did not disappear when the uniform came off. They became part of how he approached life, work and the water. Through different chapters and different directions, fishing remained a constant: rod in hand, open water in front of him, another problem to solve and another cast to make.
Then came Belmar
Belmar put Jeff in the middle of Jersey Shore fishing culture. He became a regular aboard local head boats and private charters, learning from captains, mates and experienced fishermen while fishing different boats, different grounds and different seasons.
He kept showing up. Eventually he crossed to the working side of the rail and worked aboard head boats as a mate — rigging tackle, cutting bait, untangling lines, netting and gaffing fish, helping customers, watching the drift and learning how much goes into making a day on the water run right.
How “Jiggin Jeff” was born
Jeff preferred artificials whenever there was a reasonable way to catch the target species on one. While other anglers soaked bait, he was casting, changing weight, adjusting cadence and working different parts of the water column until he figured out what the fish wanted.
Then the rod would bend. Land it. Cast again. Bent again. It happened often enough, trip after trip, that people started looking down the rail whenever somebody hooked up.
“He’s on again.” “Who?” “Jeff.” “Again?” “Again.”
Eventually somebody said the words that stuck: “There goes Jiggin Jeff.”
No marketing exercise. No invented fishing persona. The fishermen named him. The nickname was earned one trip, one cast and one bent rod at a time.
The Blackfish obsession
There is one fish that makes a guy who loves artificials happily reach for a crab: Tautog. Blackfish. Tog.
They live where fishermen spend the rest of the year trying not to get snagged — wrecks, reefs, rock piles and nasty bottom. The bite can be almost surgical: a tap, another tap, pressure, then that unmistakable moment when everything through the rod feels different.
Get the timing right and finesse instantly becomes power. Turn the fish before it buries you in the wreck. That contradiction is the addiction: subtle feel followed by brute force.
Full circle
Jeff is 38 years old and has been fishing for 34 years. His grandfather passed away in 2022, but the lessons never did.
The ponds became oceans. The boats got bigger. The fish got stronger. A kid flipping rocks for worms grew up, served in the Army, became a veteran, worked the deck and became a familiar face on the Belmar rail.
Somewhere along that rail, Jeff became Jiggin Jeff.
But the lesson underneath all of it is still the same one Grandpa started teaching years ago: