Cheap food. Run a scaler on them to take off some of the yuck. Clean them like a catfish, skin-on filets. Put them in ziplocks in your cooler until you're home. Rinse the filets in fresh water. Salt the filets for a couple hours to draw out some moisture, then freeze or batter up and fry.
Or, you can just target the gafftops to use as bait for larger fish once you're into regular waves and have passed the breakwater.

Gafftop will take artificials like shrimp flies and even skitterwalks. I don’t like gafftop. I’ll keep things to eat like sand trout, croaker, whiting, even bluefish, but not gafftopsail or hardheads. I get them by accident in the surf when I’m going after trout and redfish. Gafftop and ladyfish are the two biggest downers out in the surf. Too many of either and I will leave the area. But, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Thanks for your reply. I've heard this response before and to me is what is puzzling. Why would anyone go after a below average tasting fish that requires a ton of work to prep (not to mention the work it takes to get the dried slime off the boat) when in the same water there are at least half dozen fish that taste sooo much better and many can be caught with the same bait. I use the word never cautiously because never is a long time but I don't think I will ever understand the snot rocket draw.

Thank you. Enjoyed your video.