Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
After way too many years of running a charter fishing boat, I’ve come to anticipate a few questions from my clients whenever certain events occur while we’re out on the water. For instance; when it’s choppy someone will ask, “How big are the waves?” When we’re out on the ocean someone will almost always ask, “How far out do you lose sight of land?” And be sure, if we see a fish jump out of the water someone is going to ask, “Why do fish jump?”
Given the right tools and proper know-how, the first two of those questions can be definitively measured and very precisely quantified. The third, however, is not so easily answered. Why do fish jump? Certainly a good question, but one in which there simply is no short answer, and since only God really knows what’s going on in a fish’s mind when it decides to leave the water for a split second or two journey into an environment that they’re not really designed to be in, when coerced to explain “why,” rather than just saying “who knows?” and moving on, I’m inclined to respond with any number of not so scientific responses such as: “They do it on a dare from other fish. You know – “I bet you can’t hold your breath and jump in the air!”
Another answer would be, “They just jump to look around.” Or how about, “They’re just trying to impress their friends by seeing how high they can go or how big a splash they can make.” Trust me, when pushed into a corner I can come back swinging with a lot of words other than “I don’t know!”
But it really is a fair question, and one that I wish I could answer, but can really only suppose what’s going on in a fish’s world or mind when it makes the decision to launch.
As fishermen we probably see fish go airborne more often than other folks who spend an equal time on the water, but that’s only because we prompt the jumps by sticking hooks in their mouths and tugging on them. Stick a hook in my mouth, give it a yank and you can bet I’ll be jumping around as well!
Anglers tend to rate the sporting qualities of different fish by how much and how well they jump, and the waters off Delmarva hold some real springboard champs. Blue and white marlin are the first that come to mind with the way they greyhound, tail-walk and generally tear-up the surface of the water when hooked. Mako sharks are the “Air Jordens” of the fish world, tending to go more for altitude than distance by launching straight up into the air as though they where a missile shot out of a submarine. Spinner and blacktip sharks will also leave the water, but their jumps have them corkscrewing through the air as if they were on some kind of high-speed rotisserie. Thresher sharks are no stranger to the air even when they aren’t hooked. Dolphin (fish) are also great jumpers and bluefish are certainly known for taking to the air when hooked-up on light tackle.
Some fish that don’t jump “while” hooked are known to literally jump “onto” the hook. Wahoo, king mackerel and even tuna will sometimes leap from the water, dive down on a trolled bait and snap it up during re-entry. Witnessing such an airborne assault should help to at least partially answer the question of “why fish jump?” At least in that case it’s obviously a way of securing the next meal.
But just because they don’t jump when there’s a hook involved doesn’t mean that they can’t. Though tuna will often be seen jumping while feeding, they will almost never jump when hooked.
Last summer, I saw with my own eyes a 24-inch flounder jump 18-inches out of the water in the middle of a school of baitfish, and anyone who spends enough time offshore will eventually witness the unimaginable sight of a huge and seemingly sluggish ocean sunfish leap 3-4 feet into the air! Any type of fish that jumps when it’s not hooked is known as a “free jumper” and it’s these very fish that most often prompt people to ask the inevitable questions about why fish jump. It’s a good question and a fair question, and one that when trying to be totally honest with my clients the best answer I can come up with is, “Because they can.”
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
