People who complain that South Florida doesn’t enjoy a change of seasons don’t fish the annual fall mullet run.

To anglers from Stuart to Key Largo, nothing signals that fall has arrived like the migration of these baitfish. Silver and black mullet move south in enormous schools along the Atlantic coast, all the while dodging a host of predators such as snook, tarpon, jacks, sharks, Spanish mackerel and bluefish. October marks the prime time to fish the mullet run, both offshore and inshore.

The Live-Bait Game Plan

Anglers never know what they might catch from one cast to the next. They don’t even need live mullet to catch the gamefish species. Half a mullet, topwater plugs, spoons, and soft-plastic bait imitations can be as effective if not more.

Capt. Chris Murray, of Stuart, usually nets several dozen mullet wherever he sees the baitfish pushing water. After catching bait, he cruises around until he spots another mullet school. Then he closely watches to see what the baitfish are doing and what’s feeding on them.

Tarpon often jump completely out of the water, then come crashing back into the middle of the school. Snook hang below the school and suck in mullet with an audible pop. Jacks charge into the school and send mullet flying.

Murray likes to fish live mullet on a 7-foot, light- to medium-action spinning rod with a 4000-size reel spooled with 20-pound braided line. He usually attaches a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader with a 3/0 circle hook and clips an indicator float to the leader, which allows him and his anglers to keep track of the bait.

“I vary my leaders. I like to actually start lighter,” Murray says. “Normally I rig up two that are 25-pound, two that are 30, two that are 40. When I know what kind of fish are there and what kind of heat I have to put on them, normally 40. If they’re short snook, 25 or 30 is fine.”

When drifting or slow-trolling, he hooks a mullet through the upper lip and casts it to the edge of a submerged oyster bar, which snook, tarpon and other species use as ambush spots. Murray then opens the bail of the reel and slowly lets out line.

Jacks Are Wild

On one trip I took in the St. Lucie River with Murray and Anthony Javarone, we cast out, and moments later I felt my mullet get very nervous. Suddenly violent splashes erupted, and whatever had scared my mullet nailed Javarone’s bait.

Following Murray’s instruction to let the fish swim for a few seconds before closing the bail and reeling tight, Javarone hooked up to what turned out to be a 15-pound jack. The fish took Javarone from one end of Murray’s bay boat to the other before it finally tired.

“Those big jacks are great practice for people who want snook and tarpon,” Murray says. “They’re a guide’s best friend. They just give you every chance to develop your rhythm.”

When jacks, tarpon and Spanish mackerel successfully raid the schools for a meal, they often stun and maim a few of the baits, which fall to the sea floor. That’s when fishing a mullet head on the bottom can be extremely effective.

Snook on Artificials

Fishing around the rocks at the mouth of Stuart’s St. Lucie Inlet, Capt. Greg Snyder uses a D.O.A. plastic shrimp to catch all sizes of snook. He fishes the shrimp on a spinning outfit with 30-pound braided line and a 40-pound fluorocarbon leader.

“They use the rocks as a trap,” Snyder says of the snook. “The bait hits the rocks and gets confused, and the snook take advantage of it.”

Let the shrimp drift with the current and be aware of any taps or hesitation in the drift, because that means a snook has taken the lure. “Let the tide do the work, and keep in contact with the shrimp,” he says, “because you need to be able to set the hook when they eat.”

Why would a snook eat a shrimp when mullet are abundant? I posed that question to D.O.A. luremaker Mark Nichols. “During the first of the mullet run, the fish are all over the mullet,” he says. “But after three weeks of eating mullet, they’re ready for something different.”

I witnessed that fishing with Nichols in the north fork of the St. Lucie River on the last half of a falling tide. His flats skiff was surrounded by mullet and rolling tarpon, but after we threw some D.O.A. soft-plastic mullet imitations such as a Bait Buster and a TerrorEyz without a bite, Nichols switched us to D.O.A. glow shrimp.

Standing at the front of the boat, we waited until a tarpon rolled within casting distance. Then we cast the shrimp just ahead of the tarpon. Instead of steadily twitching the shrimp back to the boat, Nichols advises working it slowly.

“You want the shrimp to go down,” he says. “Then snap the rod and jerk the shrimp sharply, but don’t crank the reel and move the shrimp away. You want it to stay right where the fish was.”

Picture it in these terms: Here’s a shrimp, slowly sinking in the water. Suddenly it jumps up, then sinks right back down. The next time it jumps, thinking it might get away, the tarpon eats it. Using that technique, Nichols and I enjoyed about two dozen tarpon bites.

“I think it’s just easy for them to eat a shrimp,” he says. “They have to work hard to catch a mullet. It doesn’t take anything for them to catch a shrimp.”

Read Next: Mesmerizing Drone Video Shows Tarpon Attacking Mullet

Two other advantages of fishing an artificial shrimp around a mullet school: Bait stealers don’t peck at a plastic shrimp like they do a live shrimp, and Nichols can fish his shrimp exactly how he wants.

To make a D.O.A. shrimp more appealing to a fish keying on a school of mullet, Nichols fishes it below the school or on the edge of the school. That makes the shrimp look vulnerable, which makes it an easy target.

“If you’re not catching fish with a shrimp, you’re fishing it too fast,” Nichols says. “No matter how slowly you think you’re fishing it, fish it slower.”

The post Fishing Florida’s Fall Mullet Run appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The introduction around two decades ago of small, live croakers as summertime spotted seatrout bait forever changed Texas coastal fishing and ruffled a lot of salty feathers. Croakers breathed fresh life into a formerly rough patch of hot-season trout fishing one livewell or yellow wading bucket at a time. That pulse has grown stronger with every subsequent season. And now, as gauged by the length of pre-dawn lines at bait camps, it may well be a majority of fishermen who proudly embrace their designations as “croaker soakers.”

And why not? They’re the ones catching the most fish through the hottest months. And they were catching all the more spotted seatrout, prime spawners, when the daily limit on trout was still 10 statewide. So many, in fact, that a sagging trout population in the early 2000s, as measured by annual gillnet surveys conducted since 1974, was attributed by many anglers as primarily the fault of little croakers on big hooks.

Finger-pointing occasionally turned into dockside shouting matches and sometimes worse between those who did and those who would never use croakers as bait. That level of confrontation has subsided, thankfully, mostly because the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) enacted countermeasures to repair a substantially broken population.

Texas Trout Numbers Aren’t What They Used to Be

As a test, in 2007, TPWD rolled out a five-fish limit along the lower Texas coast. It worked. In 2014, perhaps a little late, that five-fish bag was extended northward roughly to Matagorda. And in 2019, five fish daily became the rule along all 700-plus miles of Texas coastline.

The latest reduction, to three fish daily statewide against a 15- to 20-inch slot (with a special annual license tag for one over-slot fish that won’t be used often by Texas’ conservation-minded anglers), started this past spring. It came none too soon. From inception, croakers replaced light stringers with easy limits of prime, spawning-class trout. So easy, in fact, that many guides did and still do book two trips daily — sometimes with guaranteed limits. Croakers are that irresistible to speckled trout.

The fate suffered by spawning-class croakers was worse. There are enough, as we see by how many are caught and sold for bait each summer, but relatively few if measured against previous counts. Yesteryear’s croakers routinely weighed 2 pounds. In the dawn of summertime croaker soaking, in 2002, Texas even produced a new state record for the species. That beauty of a beast was 29 inches long and weighed 5.47 pounds. The record stands today, and I’ve neither seen nor heard of a croaker heavier than 3 pounds since.

It’s trout that rule in Texas, though, and the sinking of the croaker population hasn’t drawn many tears. So long as there are enough spawning croakers — perhaps opening a fish-farming opportunity — there will be buyers at any price. Early on, live croakers fetched maybe a quarter each, a little less if you wanted to load the well. Today, with demand on the rise and no comparable alternative, the little baits fetch as much as a dollar per croak.

Bait trawlers love their pay raise. Shorter drags, necessary to keep juvenile croakers alive, burn less fuel. Similarly to how Paul Prudhomme buried a leather-tough bull redfish fillet in rich spices, shrimpers have found a way to turn low-value bycatch into a high-profit commodity.

Refreshed Texas Trout Regulations

Instead of banning the popular bait, as suggested routinely in recent years, TPWD is rebuilding its trout population — in quantity and quality — by common-sense harvest reduction. No closed season, thankfully, but a shorter stringer that shifts from reactive to proactive on enhancement of this precious fishery.

There was a halfway organized movement to have croakers declared gamefish in Texas, the same status enjoyed by trout and reds. It got exactly as far — nowhere — as the idea of banning croakers as bait. Worth noting, requests for input from guides and recreational fishermen prior to writing this story fell mostly on deaf ears. Common goals heal many wounds, especially since Texas trout appear to be on a good track.

The focus now, with a no-nonsense limit in place that can’t help but improve this fishery by every measure, is on enhancement and on an excellent path to success. Even with croakers on every other boat, nearly every boat on some bays, the three-fish daily limit enables Texas trout to increase their population overall, and that top-end slot of 20 inches gives bigger fish the chance to become giants. Collectively, Texas trout fishermen are on board and eager to reap the benefits of their sacrifice.

The post The Great Croaker Debate appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

“That thing looks like a lobster,” I said.

“I feel like we should be eating these shrimp, not the fish,” joked Mike Rice, senior vice president at Quantum.

The live shrimp Capt. Jon Lulay had in his livewell were on steroids. He knows a guy. And that bait guy netted some of the largest shrimp I’ve ever seen on Florida’s Space Coast. Those big shrimp were the key to success on our day’s fishing along a stretch of Indian River Lagoon shoreline. If the shrimp are running at night, that’s what inshore gamefish want, so utilize ‘em during the day.

Anglers in the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast should always be on the lookout for “select” live shrimp in bait shops. It’s like having a cheat code.

“Yes, we catch snook, redfish and seatrout on lures too,” said Lulay. “But large shrimp give you the best shot during a moving tide up against the shoreline. If the tide is flowing, I have confidence fish will eat a live shrimp.”

Jumbo shrimp are a top bait anywhere shrimp runs occur. For example, triple-digit tarpon explode on shrimp in the bridge shadow lines of crowded Miami. Louisiana’s largest red drum suck down shrimp under a popping cork when schooled up in Gulf outer bays. And ferocious speckled trout push shrimp to the surface in Texas shallows, attracting both wade fishermen and birds. 

How to Best Rig a Live Shrimp

For many, a frozen piece of shrimp is the first bait they used when fishing in saltwater. That’s not what I’m talking about here. If it’s dead or frozen, rig a new bait. A shrimp-tipped jig has its place, but not in this setting.

When it comes to pitching the banks for species that lurk near mangroves, oysters or fallen trees, keep it simple. Pick a circle hook sized to the fish species you’re targeting. I like a 4/0 circle hook when targeting trout, reds and snook. Tie 30 inches of fluorocarbon leader to your main line, then tie the leader straight to your hook. No sinkers, split shots or popping corks needed.

“You really have to be able to cast into small windows to get that shrimp in front [of the fish],” said Lulay, of 2 Castaway Fishing Charters. “When anglers come on my boat, they can have wildly different experiences. The anglers who can’t make pinpoint casts catch more jacks, ladyfish and mangrove snapper, while the anglers who are able to reach under the mangroves or next to that log are more likely to catch a snook or seatrout.”

In my mind, fishing with live shrimp is just like skipping a weedless fluke under the trees. We were trying out brand-new Quantum Strive and Benchmark reels, sizes 4000 and 5000, paired with 7-foot Quantum Myth rods. The Benchmark 4000 handles 300 yards of 20-pound braid, with 25 pounds of max drag.

“Going with a light leader is a must,” said Lulay. “You lose some fish, but a light leader allows the live shrimp to swim freely with a light-wire hook. I don’t even start the morning with a heavier leader anymore because I know I’ll be going as light as possible soon enough.”

How to Fish Live Shrimp

Getting that natural presentation is more important than a heavy leader, so we used 25- to 30-pound-test fluorocarbon for most of the morning. Paired with a hook that pokes through the top third of the shrimp’s carapace — stay in front of those dark spots — this is the best way to keep a live shrimp kicking. Hitting the dark spot of a shrimp kills it. So does using too large of a hook, or a hook with too heavy of gauge. A dead shrimp is just not as productive, so we rebaited as necessary.

Cast your bait side-arm under the overhangs; utilize a shorter, stout rod for even better accuracy. Then, let the bait drift with the current, with no tension on the line. If you don’t get bit quickly, work the shrimp slowly like a soft-plastic. Get the bite first, then figure out how to get them to the boat.

When a snook picks up your shrimp, the solid thump is unmistakable. Those first few seconds are always a rush against a tight drag. Our fishing tackle held solid, but sharp snags found our leaders at times. That’s the price you pay for fishing in the jungle. The speckled trout cooperated, but it took a couple of breakoffs from unknown behemoths before we finally landed some lindesiders. Tight drags early on, plus a rod with backbone, helped pull fish out. Once away from the shore, there were also pesky porpoises looking for a free meal.

We had a blast fishing in the morning before the tide quit on us. The action was solid, and Rice and I even cast some baits at rolling tarpon. Common with tarpon during the day, they had no interest in feeding. At one point, I hooked up near a pod of school-size tarpon — nope, it turned out to be another snook. The few boats around us weren’t having much luck.

“They’re probably fishing with live baits like croakers,” explained Lulay. “Those baits can be great sometimes, but they’re not going to outfish a jumbo live shrimp.”

The post Make Mine a Jumbo appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Mullet

King of the inshore baitfish, different mullet species are a favorite food for everything from striped bass to tarpon. Mullet connoisseurs prefer individuals that feed over sandy bottom for the finest bait. Apparently, they taste better to gamefish (and even anglers).

Mud Minnows (aka Mummichog)

The hardy little killifish is a great bait for flounder, redfish and speckled trout. Easy to catch in a small mesh trap, the minnows will stay alive for hours in the bottom of a cardboard box covered with a blanket of wet newspaper.

Herring

These come in different varieties. It could be threadfin herring in Florida. Or maybe it’s blueback herring or shad species farther north. No matter where you fish, herring are a likely baitfish worth using or imitating. Some herring species travel into fresh waters, making them great options for heavyweight catfishing too.

Atlantic Menhaden

They have been called the most important inshore fish as an essential part of the food chain and a powerful water filter. Menhaden start their life in the marsh where they feed the next generation of gamefish. Too small to use as live bait, the small, silver menhaden are imitated by dozens of twitch baits, soft plastics and swimming plugs.

Scaled Sardines (aka Pilchards or Greenbacks)

Sardines school up into living clouds of little fish providing a reliable source of food for all types of inshore gamefish. Whether used live, frozen or imitated with all sorts of lures, greenies are a best bet. Scaled sardines are known to spawn offshore and are especially popular on the Southwest coast of Florida.

The post Five Baitfish Species You’ll Find in the Marsh appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

During the winter months, mama croakers spew their eggs into high-salinity offshore waters, where they’re fertilized by daddy croakers, and then, in the afterglow, both mama and daddy head off to find something to eat, leaving the youngsters to fend for themselves. Maybe it’s parental malpractice, but Mother Nature shrugs. She couldn’t care less.

Along the Louisiana coast, the larval and post-larval croakers are pushed by the tides into shallow waters, where they use seagrasses and detritus to hide from predators and feast on rotifers, copepods and even the very detritus that serves as their home.

Eventually, though, the fish outgrow the marshes, and begin to migrate in the spring. That’s when they face a murderer’s row of speckled trout — and unwittingly provide anglers with some of the best fishing action of the year.

Croaker Chaos

For the growing croakers, big spring tides are both a blessing and a curse. Riding the conveyor belt of the tides is how juvenile croakers make their way into the bigger bays, but these strong currents also slam the fish into ledge walls that disorient them and make them easy prey for specks. This, in turn, makes the trout easy prey for anglers.

It happens every spring in South Louisiana, and is most consistent in brackish marshes, where juvenile croakers proliferate. Anglers who want to maximize their productivity simply ride around looking for what locals call “boiling water.” Boiling-water areas show upwellings on the surface, where hard currents hit ledge walls and are forced upward. These are most commonly found in winding bayous with 10 to 20 feet of depth. Not every ledge wall will hold fish, but a high percentage of them do, and an angler who hits enough of them will certainly find a bite that has him posting pictures on social media.

Best baits, far and away, are 3½-inch soft-plastic paddle tails that most accurately mimic the size and action of the migrating croakers. Louisiana anglers fish those on ⅜-ounce jigheads, and will sometimes add a ¼-ounce jighead-and-paddletail combo fished as a double rig when currents are particularly swift. Figuring out how fish orient at each ledge wall is part of the fun, and shrewd anglers will frequently change their angles to find feeding specks. Hooked fish regularly upchuck juvenile croakers onto the boat decks of successful anglers. Often these fish are so recently ingested, they can be thrown overboard, where they swim down, probably to be eaten by another trout.

Spring Seatrout Success

Depending on water temperature, the bite will begin around the first of March and stretch almost to the summer solstice. By then, most of the mature specks have moved offshore to spawn, leaving behind only the undersized immature fish, along with a host of pests, like hardheads and gafftops.

But during the run, the specks are shockingly large for Louisiana marsh fish. An 18-inch average is about the norm, and several fish in the schools will stretch between 20 and 24 inches. In comparison, anglers fishing marsh lakes and expansive bays during this same time of year will typically be plagued by undersized and barely legal fish.

Though specks are the primary beneficiaries of the croaker migration, other species also notice and take advantage of the easy meals. Redfish are ever present, and the pattern delivers far more bites from black drum, flounder and largemouth bass than unfamiliar anglers might expect. Given the onslaught, it defies belief that any croaker survives to reach offshore waters and complete the spawn cycle, but clearly a whole bunch do. Despite getting no help from their parents.

The post The Best Spring Seatrout Bait appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

You run offshore on a bluebird morning, hoping to score some tuna or fly a halyard full of release flags. You throttle back near a beautiful color change and break out the tackle. You’re all smiles and confidence—until you open the livewell and see a mass of floaters. Nothing ruins a fishing trip faster than a fouled-up livewell. But if you set up your system properly, you’ll minimize the chance of such a day-shortening mishap.

“The main thing in a livewell system is getting the water out,” says Capt. RT Trosset of Key West, Florida. “It’s easy to get water in, but you need to get water out to achieve maximum flow.” Trosset runs a Yellowfin 36, and says that the builder has optimized the diameter and size of its drain hoses, and has installed significant drain systems in the livewell floors, where waste and scales accumulate.

To power his 50-gallon transom and cockpit wells, he uses a sea chest with three Shurflo 2,000 gph livewell pumps screwed into the top of a splitter box. Sea chests, which generally feature clear acrylic lids and remain constantly flooded with seawater, vent air from the system. Aeration is a common issue for offshore boats that can fly off wave tops at high speeds. When air enters, it can create air locks that block water from entering the livewells.

Most sea chests, such as those used on SeaVee boats, house pumps inside to keep them cooler, but Trosset says that his pumps mount on the outside. While this helps facilitate pump replacement, he admits that all pumps are difficult to change. (And now you know why every boatyard has at least one employee with really long arms.)

High-speed pickups beneath Trosset’s boat funnel water to the sea chest through 2-inch hoses. To vent air, a 3/8-inch hose runs from the top of the chest.

Each pump, whether inside or outside the sea chest, features a valve to regulate the flow of water to the wells. Allow too much, and water might overflow and cascade into the cockpit. By contrast, not enough flow lowers the water level, which in turn makes the water slosh whenever the boat runs at speed, damaging the baits.

“In South Florida, we like to pressurize our wells,” says Capt. Eddie Juan, a SeaVee factory sales rep and tournament angler. “We have a Y valve that we can shut to close the drain so that the water fills the well, all the way to the lid.”

Typically, Trosset fills his livewells before running offshore. Based on the outing’s game plan, he either separates different bait species, or fills both wells with a single species and transfers baits throughout the day. “You can’t mix little baits with big baits, and you can’t mix ballyhoo,” he explains.

Using 2,000 gph pumps theoretically enables the water in his livewells to refresh 40 times per hour, or once every 90 seconds. However, wherever a pipe bends or rises, power and pressure drop. So, more realistically, the water in his livewells recirculates every two minutes or so.

A general rule of thumb suggests that livewells should replenish every 10 minutes. But for some captains and tournament anglers, more flow is better.

For Juan, a little less is best. “I don’t like 2,000 gph pumps. They bring in too much water and use a lot of power. In my opinion, 1,500 gph pumps are ideal,” he says. Of course, that also depends on the distance between the livewell and the pumps. “If you have to pump water from the transom to the bow, you might need a 2,000 gph pump,” he adds.

Usually, two round or ­oval-shaped wells—of at least 40 gallons each—will support plenty of live bait for most offshore anglers, Juan believes. If a well lacks a clear lid or side window, it should have interior lighting. Otherwise, complete darkness can stress the baits.

While some captains swear by livewell interior colors such as blue or black, Juan prefers his factory-white gelcoat. “To me, baits get too dark in a dark livewell. Goggle-eyes, for instance, change their color to match their environment, so they’ll lose their yellow line.”

The post Why You Need a Sea Chest appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Few other fish possess the mystique of the white seabass, especially in the minds of Southern California saltwater anglers. The bright silvery croakers rank as one of the most coveted of all ocean gamefish on the West Coast. They can reach weights in excess of 60 pounds, and catching just one in a day of fishing triggers breathless celebration among a team of anglers.

The chances of catching one white seabass (the daily bag limit per angler from March 15 to June 15) or as many as three (the daily limit during other times) increases in spring and early summer as these fish follow the biomass of opalescent squid that, in most years, visit the waters of SoCal’s offshore islands such as Santa Barbara, Santa Catalina, San Clemente, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa. Known as “candy bait,” squid become the preferred offering for these croakers in spring. In fact, on many days, squid—live, fresh dead or thawed frozen pieces—is the only bait that will elicit a bite.

Tanking Up

With squid serving as the lynchpin of a successful outing, white seabass anglers expend extraordinary efforts to fill livewells with candy bait. It’s called “tanking up,” and in years past, it often involved spending the night bobbing around on the squid-spawning grounds around one of the offshore islands.

Opalescent squid tend to spawn over sandy bottoms in about 120 feet of water, but they often rise to a light source. So boating anglers hang bright lights above and below the water to attract squid. Sometimes they form a floating school, allowing anglers to dip-net or use a crowder—a wide, flat fine-mesh net with a telescoping pole on each end. With a person on each pole, the crowder is lowered straight down, and then pivoted outward and lifted to the surface to corral the school before dip-netting the captives into the livewell.

In recent years, however, the growing popularity of this live bait has prompted a number of bait boats along the coast to net squid in purse seines and either sell it to anglers as they arrive at the islands or haul it back to ports along the coast so boaters can tank up before heading over the islands. A scoop consisting of two brails of live squid now sells for about $80.

Night Moves

An advantage of spending the night to catch squid lies in the opportunity to catch white seabass at the same time. The croakers sometimes cruise near the surface just outside the ring of lights used to attract squid, picking off stragglers that wander too far from the main school.

To catch these fish, anglers sometimes use floats to suspend a squid bait 6 to 12 feet below the surface. Using a Danielson EDF 1½ Easy Drifter foam float, attach a thin cord around the fishing line using a nail-knot to stop the line above the float presetting the depth of the bait. Tie on an Owner Aki Twist hook in a 7/0 to 8/0 size, and use a ¼- to 3/8-ounce egg sinker that slides down to the hook to keep the bait as vertical as possible below the float.

White seabass might also cruise below the schooling squid; astute anglers also drop white heavy metal jigs such as a 6-ounce Tady 4/0 with a single 8/0 Siwash hook with one or more live squid pinned to the hook. This replicates the spawning behavior of squid, and when dangled between the glow of the surface light and bottom, it can trick a croaker into attacking.

Gray Bite

Some of the best white seabass action occurs on the squid grounds in the morning twilight. During the time between the first inkling of light and sunrise, the croaker can feed heavily, often descending deeper to gobble up dead and dying squid off the ocean floor. This has led to a popular nickname for white seabass—gray ghosts.

To target fish in the gray, anglers drop their jig-and-squid combos deeper, and try to keep the jigs about 3 to 6 feet off the sandy bottom. This keeps the bait away from undesirable bottom feeders such as bat rays, guitarfish and leopard sharks.

A dropper-loop rig also works well in the gray. It consists of a 10-inch loop formed by a spider hitch about 4 feet above a torpedo sinker that’s tied to the bottom of the rig. Use the double line of the loop to tie on a 7/0 to 8/0 Owner Aki Twist with a Palomar knot and attach an 8- to 10-ounce sinker to bottom to keep the line as vertical as possible in the current.  As with a metal jig, place the sinker well above the bottom. If fishing multiple rods, stagger the lines at different depths with the goal of putting out a spread that will intercept any white seabass swimming under the boat.

Shore Patrol

Once the sun is up, white seabass often retreat to the shadows of the thick kelp beds that rim the islands. Daytime fishing these spots can pay off, especially on days when a good current sweeps the shore areas. A prime indicator is a milky-color break extending from the edge of the kelp along a sandy beach. The croakers feed along these breaks in depths from 50 to just 10 feet or less.

Anchor up to fish a nice-looking beach. Use a 3/8-ounce leadhead with a 5/0 to 7/0 hook. You can also use a ¼- or 3/8-ounce egg sinker that slides down to a 7/0 to 8/0 Aki Twist. Pin on one or more squid, cast toward the shore, and slowly work the bait back out to deeper water.

If fishing a kelp bed, the water is often deeper (40 to 60 feet). Anchor about 50 to 75 feet from the outer edge of the weeds. Using the same rigs as you would for the beaches, cast shoreward and let the current carry your bait downstream. At the same time, try to cover the water column using metal jigs and dropper loops to fish the mid-depths and bottom.

While you fish, chop up any left-over dead squid and put out a steady chum line. While this might not attract white seabass, it does draw other smaller fish, and sometimes the big croakers become curious and move in to investigate. If you do hook a seabass, toss out some live squid for chum, as these fish often travel in groups. If you can keep them around the boat, you might enjoy multiple hookups.

Read Next: Channel Islands Fishing Bonanza

Tackle Choice

In terms of tackle, serious white seabass anglers gear up with 8-foot medium-action rods and medium-size lever-drag and star-drag conventional reels spooled with 65-pound braid and a 10- to 20-foot topshot of 40- to 60-pound fluorocarbon line. The abrasion-resistant braid and fluoro better slice through the stalks of kelp should a white seabass bully its way into the weeds.

The technique works best if you back off the drag pressure a bit, if the fish finds its way into the kelp, so that the line can saw its way through. Once the fish clears the weeds, tighten up again and don’t back off until your croaker is on the gaff.

The post Gray Ghosts: Targeting the Elusive Southern California White Seabass appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The first cold front of the fall swept across South Florida; a few days later, Capt. Abie Raymond promised me and my buddy a mutton snapper bite.

We departed Miami Beach’s Haulover Inlet in Raymond’s 28-foot C-Hawk, running south toward Key Biscayne. He saw ballyhoo showering, so we made our first stop.

With several dozen liveys in the well, Raymond motored to a nearby patch reef in 18 feet of water, dropped the anchor and put out a chum bag. He deployed two of the live ballyhoo on 20-pound spinning outfits and set the rods into holders. While we waited, he baited some lighter spinning rods with ballyhoo strips and drifted those back into the chum slick for yellowtail snapper.

Shallow Mutton Snapper

We were so busy having fun with the yellowtails that, at first, we didn’t notice the bent mutton rod. Raymond quickly swapped outfits with my buddy, who now had a serious fish fight on his hands. The captain suggested he avoid pumping and winding the fish, because it attracts more shark and barracuda attacks.

While my companion was delighted with his 8-pound mutton, I was surprised that we’d caught such a nice fish in such shallow water. But Raymond is among the handful of locals who knows how good the post-cold-front fishing can be on patch reefs from September through November.

During those times, a major migration of ballyhoo clusters around those reefs. In addition, water clarity diminishes, caused by the wind-churned waves. “When you get a northwest wind, a little cold-front wind, and you get that north swell that creeps down and splits the gap between the coast of Florida and the Bahamas and agitates the bottom, all the way in to the first reef especially, you’ll get this milky water in there,” he says. “It’s just sediment in the water, and it makes the ballyhoo so much easier for the muttons to catch. Once that water gets dirty, they can ambush them way easier.”

Raymond typically has the patch reefs to himself because so few anglers know about that shallow-water fishery. When ballyhoo jump out of the water, chased by snapper as well as sailfish and dolphin, “most people just run right past that stuff,” he says. “It’s usually happening in 20 to 60 feet of water and most people think that’s probably bonitos in there, or mackerel. Not that time of year. Most of the big muttons I caught last year were in less than 70 feet of water in October and November.”

Catching Ballyhoo

When those “sediment days” occur, Raymond looks for showering ballyhoo to load the well. He anchors near a patch reef in 20 feet or ties up to a mooring ball and puts a block of frozen menhaden chum in a fine-mesh chum bag so as not to overfeed the ballyhoo.

He employs several methods to capture the baitfish. Using a Shakespeare Ugly Stick rod with a 2500 Penn Spinfisher reel and 8-pound monofilament, he ties on a tiny No. 20 gold hook baited with an even tinier piece of frozen shrimp. He floats the shrimp back to the baitfish, which pick the offering off the surface. With a de-hooker, he can drop the ballyhoo into the livewell without touching the delicate baitfish.

Catching ballyhoo in a hoop net takes less time. After ballyhoo appear in the chum slick, which usually takes 10 to 20 minutes, he deploys the circular hoop net with an empty water bottle at its bottom so it doesn’t sink. When the net drifts behind the baitfish, he tugs on the lines attached to the hoop, which spooks the ballyhoo into the net.

Raymond also throws a cast net with 1/4-inch mesh— bigger mesh can scrape the scales off ballyhoo—and notes that the quicker you put the baitfish in the livewell, the longer they live. “If you get them in the well pretty quickly, they’ll live six hours,” he explains. “If you catch them on hook and line, they’ll live overnight.”

Tackle and Tactics

With plenty of bait, Raymond looks for patch reefs in 10 to 30 feet of water from Cape Florida in Key Biscayne to North Key Largo. He anchors and deploys the same ground menhaden in a chum bag with larger mesh.

He rigs two ballyhoo, hooked on 1/2- or 3/4-ounce jigs. Raymond prefers Hookup Lures jigs; chartreuse is his favorite color, but he also uses pink or white jigheads.

Some anglers also do well using Troll Rite jigs.

Raymond breaks off the ballyhoo’s bill with an upward snap and runs the jig hook through both of the bait’s lips and through the front of its skull to keep the hook in place.

He fishes the ballyhoo on 7-foot, 20-pound Ugly Stick rods with 7500 Penn Spinfisher reels, spooled with 20-pound mono and 4-foot, 30-pound fluorocarbon leaders. (The dirty water and light mono allow him to use shorter leaders compared with anglers who use 30-foot leaders for wary muttons in deeper water.) Raymond ties a four-wrap spider hitch in the main line and attaches that to the leader with an eight-wrap no-name or Yucatan knot. He attaches the jigs with an improved clinch knot.

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He deploys one bait on either side of the boat, and unless he has patient anglers, he leaves the mutton outfits in the rod holders. “They need to be real still,” he explains. “Customers tend to want to wind and wind and wind. The rod holder doesn’t have that tendency.”

It takes patience to let the chum attract the snapper. As Raymond notes, “The longer you can sit on one of those patch reefs and wait to get a quality fish or two, the better.

“If you can allocate about two hours at one patch reef and let that chum really get established and let those fish really settle in and come running from all the other patch reefs, a lot of times you’ll do better. If you don’t have current, you give it half an hour, 40 minutes and you move on to the next one.”

The post How to Catch South Florida Mutton Snapper on Shallow Patch Reefs appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

When anglers anywhere want to catch live bait, they commonly use a gold-hook rig or throw a cast net. But there’s a third option, one that originated among South Florida captains targeting ballyhoo: a hoop net.

All three methods carry pros and cons. Catching bait on a gold-hook or sabiki rig, which typically consists of six dressed hooks, can be quite effective, but the process can be painstakingly slow, especially when you’re catching only one baitfish at a time.

Cast nets catch bulk numbers in a single throw, but they can be difficult to fully open, and they can damage baits, removing scales and gilling the fish in the mesh.

Hoop nets catch fair amounts of bait and, when used properly, they don’t gill or scale bait. On the negative side: They can be difficult to store, given the size of their circular hoop. However, recent advances in hoop-net design have resolved that and are leading to increased popularity.

How Hoops Work
Different types of hoop nets have been used for years to catch everything from bait and food fish to lobsters and crabs. Commercial anglers use long, ­conical nets deployed in the water so fish swim into them. A crab hoop net is baited to attract the crustaceans; when a crab goes in to eat, the fishermen lift the net from the water.

Most hoop nets for catching bait — traditionally homemade or custom-made — include a solid, 4-foot-diameter fiberglass hoop with a 4- or 5-foot-deep mesh net and an attached line. The standard mesh size would be ¼-inch square, or ½-inch stretched, which makes the net less likely to gill the baits.

The captain chums up bait near the boat, and then places the net in the water, drifting it back behind and beneath the fish. He then pulls the hoop to the boat, capturing the fish.

Capt. Bunky Leach of Homestead, Florida, has long used hoop nets to catch ballyhoo, speedos, cigar minnows and other baitfish for charter trips on his boat Reef Reelief out of Ocean Reef Club in north Key Largo. Storing the net on the 37-foot sport-fisherman is not a problem

“I have plenty of room,” Leach says. “On a center-console, that could become an issue. When I had a center-console, I used to stick it on top of the T-top and bungee it down.”

Capt. Tony DiGiulian (saltwater​proconsulting.com) of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says that while storage can be a challenge, a hoop net can often make the difference between having dozens of live baitfish or just a handful.

“Hoop nets are great for cigar minnows, speedos, threadfin herring, pilchards, anything that can be spooky,” DiGiulian says. “When we’re trying to catch those baits, we see them, we mark them, and they come up in the chum, but they can be very ­reluctant to eat our sabiki rigs.

“A lot of times, when ballyhoo, ­pilchards and other bait are on top, when you start to throw your cast net, they can see it coming, and they’ll scatter or dive right before it hits the water. You can’t catch as many at one time in a hoop net, but when bait is really sketchy and scared, it’s a good way to go.”

The Ballyhoop
Always a big fan of hoop nets, Yunior Dominguez of Hialeah, Florida, saw room for improving their design. In 2015, Dominguez, the owner of Piros Bait & Tackle, built a net with a one-piece stainless-steel hoop, which he said worked better than his fiberglass one because of its thinner diameter.

The ¼-inch steel could be retrieved through the water much faster than the ½-inch fiberglass. The steel hoop also held up better, and its silver color didn’t spook baitfish like the yellow fiberglass did. But the new version was still difficult to store.

Two years later, he designed a net with a collapsible two-piece aluminum hoop with male and female connections that stores in a half-moon-shape case and fits in most consoles or large hatches. He introduced the Ballyhoop (theballyhoop.com) at the 2017 ICAST fishing-tackle trade show in Orlando, Florida.

“It was a total success,” Dominguez says, “but I still kept getting people saying it was too big for their small boat.”

So he invented another version — all of his designs are patented — with a two-piece clear-polycarbonate hoop that stores like a two-piece fly rod. It can be placed upright in a rod holder or in a rod rack under a gunwale as well as in a console. Plus, because it’s clear, Dominguez says it doesn’t spook baitfish at all. And because it’s lightweight, any angler can use it easily and efficiently.

He adds that he has sold Ballyhoops — which retail online and at tackle stores for $200 (aluminum) and $300 (polycarbonate) — from Florida to Australia to Dubai, plus Costa Rica and Mexico. However, he hasn’t sold any in California, where he says hoop nets sometimes are used to catch Pacific mackerel baits. So far, he has no dealers in the state.

Hoop-Netting Tips
Dominguez says anglers should use finely ground chum to attract bait as opposed to chunks, which can get caught in the net’s mesh, causing baitfish to feed on it from behind the net. He uses Tournament Master Blue Label Chum, which is double ground.

“You have to control your chum. If you chum too much, the bait’s going to go all over the place and be hard to net,” adds Dominguez, who says to wait until the bait is eating the chum before putting the hoop net in the water. “Once they’re in that feeding frenzy mode, they don’t care. If you put the net in first, it could spook them.”

Leach, who uses a fiberglass hoop net, adjusts the position of the chum bag on his boat, moving it toward the bow if necessary to bring baitfish closer to the boat. If there’s too much current, he’ll attach a 1- to 5-ounce lead sinker to the bottom of the net with a clip so it sinks and keeps the net open.

“If you don’t have a weight on the net, a lot of times it wants to blow back on the hoop,” he explains, adding that he sometimes ties an overhand knot in the mesh to shorten the net. “That way we don’t put the bait all the way in the back of the net. The quicker you can put them in the livewell, the less scale damage you’ll have and the better they are. They just last a lot longer.

“When we’re fishing offshore for big game or even if we’re on the reef, we like to have good, healthy baits. Typically all the baits we have in the livewell at the end of the day we put in a bait tray and salt them up for the next day.”

If the current is light or non­existent, a hoop net can sink too deeply. Dominguez, who has numerous bait-catching videos on the Ballyhoop Instagram page, attaches a half-filled clear-plastic water bottle with a rubber band to the hoop. “The bottle is buoyant enough so the net stays under the ­surface, but not way down,” he says.

The more you play with a hoop net, the more likely you’ll leave the sabikis and cast nets untouched.

“If you can get a hoop net to work, you’re going to do pretty well,” Leach says. “We went out for 30 minutes and caught 400 baits for a tournament.”

The post Pros Tips on Using Hoop Nets to Capture Ballyhoo, Live Bait appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

If any fishing tool is as ubiquitous as rods, reels and hooks, it might be floats. Buoyancy comes into play whether you’re using a bobber to suspend an earthworm for bluegills in a pond or a balloon to drift a butterfish chunk to yellowfin tuna in blue water. Floats can be so effective that they’re virtually omnipresent on all bodies of water.

The retail market provides a dizzying array of floats, including some shaped like shotgun shells and others with built-in night lights. But for offshore saltwater fishing specifically, floats can be homemade as often as store-bought.

Using Floats in Deep Offshore Waters

For bluewater game fish, anglers ­usually need floats that can suspend a significant amount of weight — sometimes pounds instead of ounces — at depths ranging from 10 feet to hundreds of feet, despite strong currents or fast drifts. Floats must be adjustable for various depths and set to release after a hookup so they won’t interfere with line retrieval during a fish fight.

“I’ve set floats as deep as 1,700 feet when daytime swordfishing,” says Capt. Bouncer Smith, who fished out of Miami for decades. “We use a two-liter soda bottle and attach it with a No. 64 rubber band looped around the line and back around the neck of the bottle, which is easy to remove. Longline clips work too.”

Why use a soda bottle? Store-bought offshore floats can sometimes be difficult to locate and surprisingly expensive, although online ­searching presents a few interesting options for floats that can support up to 4 pounds of lead. The key feature to look for is a quick-release mechanism that allows the float to slide freely on the fishing line after a strike.

Another option is to use in-line floats. “Rig a bead, then the float, then another bead on the line,” Smith explains, “and tie a rubber band around the line to keep the top bead from moving. When you reel in the float with a fish on, it’s easy to slide the rubber band along the leader to bring the fish in.”

Smith says that although this in-line system isn’t used as much these days, it remains an effective way to keep a bait near the surface while fishing for sailfish, and the same egg-shaped floats used for kite-fishing rigs work when you don’t need much weight on the line.

Eco-Friendly Floats for Offshore Fishing

Floats made by RediRig feature a built-in quick-release mechanism in the form of a clip at the top and a pair of spring-loaded rubber stoppers that hold the line in place at the bottom. When a fish pulls out the line from between the stoppers, the float slides freely while the line continues to run through the clip.

Balloons are another popular (and very cheap) option, but they’ve fallen out of favor due to pollution and sea-life concerns. When a fish drags them underwater on the strike, balloons commonly pop. Latex can remain on the fishing line or drift in the water. Balloons can also float free and become an ­ingestion danger for sea turtles.

That said, balloons do make ­effective floats. Angler should be sure to affix them to the line breakaway style with a thin rubber band so they can be retrieved after the fish is boated.

Hollow-foam pool noodles have increased in popularity in recent years, particularly along the mid-Atlantic coast, because they don’t drift away after a hookup. The main line runs through the center of the noodle and is temporarily secured at the desired depth by tucking the line under a ­rubber band (or several rubber bands, when used with lots of weight) on the noodle’s exterior. When a fish strikes, the line pulls out from under the ­rubber band, and the noodle slides freely on the line.

Anglers can choose how long to cut noodles, according to need (a 10-inch section is enough to support more than a pound of weight); they’re extremely inexpensive; and they allow for color-coding lines according to depth, distance set from the boat, or whatever variable you like to track.

A Float Aficionado

Just how important can a float be? Capt. Mark Sampson of Fish Finder Adventures, who operates out of Ocean City, Maryland, during summer, and the lower Florida Keys in winter, says without hesitation that he’d never leave the dock without floats aboard his boat.

“The only time I don’t use them is when trolling, and even then, I’ve stopped the boat and wished I had one,” he says. His on-the-spot solution? He digs through the trash can and pokes around the galley until he finds a drink koozie that can get the job done.

“Anytime you’re either drifting or at anchor, fishing either a live bait or a dead bait, you should have a float on at least one line. It doesn’t matter if you’re live-baiting for kings, chunking for tuna, or fishing for sharks; a float will help you place a bait at the exact depth you want. It’s also a good way to keep a bait up top when you might normally want to kite-fish but the conditions don’t allow for it,” he explains.

Sampson says his preferred tool is the pool noodle: It’s inexpensive, easy to rig, and doesn’t add to the refuse floating around in the ocean. But he cautions that whatever system you use, you shouldn’t just set out a float and ­forget about it.

“Obviously if you’re watching the float, you can react quicker if you get a bite, but you also want to watch it to make sure the line doesn’t get fouled,” he says. “Sometimes a bait will spin or a live bait will swim in circles, tying a knot or twisting the line around the float.”

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Another issue you might encounter, particularly with mako sharks, occurs when the shark attacks the float instead of the bait. Sampson says that when this happens, there’s not much you can do other than crank the float out of the danger zone, which often brings the bait within the predator’s view. If the float gets bit and severs the line, send back another bait as quickly as possible.

Having a mako eat your float might be a problem, but as far as fishing goes, it’s about as first world a problem as you can have. Besides, were it not for the float, that mako might not have attacked in the first place. Forget to bring one on your next offshore outing, and you might end up merely bobbing around on the ocean praying for a bite — or rooting around the cabin looking for a drink koozie.

The post How to Drift Baits Away From the Boat appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.