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MATCH THE HATCH
By CAPTAIN BOUNCER SMITH
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Fall migration of bait fish generates plenty of action
FISH ON! FISH ON! FISH ON! You go under!
Quick around the back! Over the top!”
Every fall that sound goes on day and night
along both coasts of Florida. It is the fall migration of bait and
predator fish. It’s time to have some fun whether from shore,
a pier, a beach, in a small boat or on a fishing machine. As
the days get shorter and the air slightly cooler, huge amounts
of baitfish scramble to avoid the cold water developing in the
north and pushing south. With this bait come predator fish of
all descriptions.
Let’s start with the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
Schools of finger mullet from three to six inches push south
in clouds. At every canal mouth or boat dock, these little guys
fear an ambush by snook, barracuda, mangrove snappers, sea
trout and jack crevalle. You can fool the predators with a live
finger mullet or any surface plug that imitates these guys.
In more open water along this water highway it is the same
jack crevalle, plus mackerel, bluefish and tarpon doing the
attacking. Add bucktails and nylon jigs along with a variety
of spoons to the arsenal. In the north and central portions of
Florida, put redfish and flounder on the list of predators. Also
found along the Intracoastal are big schools of pilchards and
other “white bait.” In these schools you will find the same
predators plus ladyfish, blue runners and pompano, which
migrate along the beaches. The list of predators is the same,
but there are a lot more sharks, plenty of king mackerel from
undersize guys to the biggest smokers, loads of tarpon of all
sizes plus mutton and yellowtail snapper. The amount of fun
action fish is endless.
After the first week or two of finger mullet and small bait,
you will start to see schools of bigger silver and black mullet
join the show. At this time the redfish, jacks, tarpon and sharks
will get bigger so the tackle better get tough or reels will run
out of line and hooks will straighten out. The biggest snook
of the year are finished spawning, but they will still be big
and fat. Those big snook will be hiding in the rolling surf and
around jetties to ambush the south bound shoals of food. Fish
these spots even when no bait is evident. The fish will be there,
but their stomachs may be empty and appetites ravenous if no
bait schools have passed recently. Some other schools of fish
will look like schools of mullet, but when a bucktail or other
small bait hits the water, the action will be surprising. Black
schools of bluefish, pompano and ladyfish will travel alone as
well as behind or within the schools of mullet. The action will
sometimes cripple the arms of overzealous anglers.
Further offshore the action is less visible. Along the
reefs from the beach out to several hundred feet of water, the
same migration is occurring. Private boats, charter boats and
especially party or head boats will be anchored along the edge
of various reefs waiting to ambush huge schools of mutton
snapper and yellowtail snapper migrating along these edges.
The action can be blistering, so be aware of size and bag limits
because these fish will tend to be smaller than normal mutton
snapper. Mutton snapper must be16 inches from the tip of their
nose to the end of their tail with the tail fin pinched together.
Use circle hooks in your chunks of ballyhoo or pilchards
to help released fish survive and mature to their common
maximum of 12 to 20 pounds. This fall migration also includes
gag grouper. They will be showing up first on reefs and wrecks
around 100 to 200 feet. As waters cool those gag grouper will
move into shallow reefs, inlets, the Intracoastal and bays.
One of the fish that most anglers don’t realize migrate
south is the lowly pinfish. Huge shoals of pinfish migrate
south in waters from 12 to 300 feet deep. These guys are
usually on the bottom, but they will sometimes be seen tailing
along the surface out to as deep as 300 feet of water. Another
baitfish that will be seen migrating south well offshore are the
black mullet more commonly seen along the beach. Look for
sailfish, sharks, barracuda and dolphin to be harassing either
pinfish or mullet. Sardines are another baitfish migrating in
the offshore waters. They start to appear around the first of
September off South Florida and are found most of the winter.
Their movement is a little less defined. We see them moving
north in the Gulf Stream and south along the beaches, but
wherever those silvery fish are moving, you can bet that game
fish are there as well. It may be jacks or mackerel off the beach
or sails, dolphin and assorted tuna offshore, but the birds will
be wheeling and the fish will be foaming then or soon after.
I have seen these sardines so thick that catching them was a
simple act of dipping them up with your bait well net. Small
sardines are fragile, but they work well, whether freshly dead
or alive, when hooked through the nose and pitched near
the balls of bait. Larger sardines will settle in on buoys and
shallow wrecks for the winter and will be the first choice of
many top fishermen around South Florida.
Another baitfish swarming south will be ballyhoo.
Their travel will be identified by walls of showering
bait, diving birds and splashing, boiling water right
behind the showers. This is one situation where the
angler better be prepared to “match the hatch.” When
sailfish, tuna or dolphin are showering ballyhoo, they
will frequently ignore any other bait. Live ballyhoo or
even fresh dead ones will bring loads of action for those
who enjoy chasing the showers of bait and pitching the
offerings into the action. With all this bait moving south
we have learned that those great fall and winter days of
double digit sailfish catches are soon to follow. Good size
dolphin will be more common near shore. Cobia also
come down the fish highway. Every warm water fish will
swarm into our waters for another wonderful winter of
action.
Even further offshore the greatest migration is taking
place. When you run or troll offshore 10 to 20 miles and run
across dolphin, sails, marlin, wahoo or tuna, did you ever
wonder how they survive on a few flying fish? Go offshore in
the late fall or winter to target swordfish and the water at night
will be full of tinker mackerel and fragile offshore sardines.
These baits have migrated south for the winter, encouraging
plenty of swordfish to follow suit. Of course, all the other
blue water game fish enjoy this bounty of food. The fleet of
boats fishing offshore on fall nights, when not tormented by
northerly winds, will number close to 100 vessels. Every
boat will usually be surrounded by these swarms of bait and
catching swordfish on a regular basis.
In the end, whether in the rip running across the bay,
outside the inlet, on the reef or out in the blue, I hope to fish
them all.
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