From my past experiences your better to give these conditions a miss as they arnt very enjoyable and iv fished them a few times just like you and had no luck and usually lost gear in the crushing waves, so thats my advice give big ugly swells a miss, by any chance where did you try i may be able to shed some more knowledge your way regards my experince with the conditions down the east coast if you want.

Ok what i have found that anything blowing more than a breeze in the north to northeast direction especially late afternoon can create really awful swells that become very hard to fish even with a norwest direction wind the cook striat acts like a funnel and directs it straight down the coast which can cause the same effect. A noreaster usually means that most of the east coast is very hard to fish asa its hard to get distance and hold a biat out there then detectt bites, just my two cents worth of my experince although its not to say that theres not fish to be caught in those conditions it just takes a lot of enjoyment out of the fishing