Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
Last week we were fishing a few miles off Assateague Island when I witnessed a phenomenon I had never seen before. It was mid-afternoon and, as is typical in the summer, the heat of the day brought with it an increase in wind from the southwest. At about 15-knots the breeze made things a bit choppy on the ocean and there were plenty of whitecaps. Fishing was going along pretty well and my mate and I were staying busy enough on deck that I didn’t realize what was going on around the boat until we were already in the middle of it, but all of a sudden I realized that for hundreds of yards all around us the water had dramatically calmed. The wind was still blowing and if you looked far enough away you could still see that it was just as rough as ever, but in the 4-5 acres of water that surrounded us there was no chop, no whitecaps, nothing but a heavy ripple!
Mention a sudden calming in one patch of water and most boaters will immediately think of some sort of oil slick created by feeding fish or from an accidental spill. But in this case the calming wasn’t from any kind of oil, evidenced by fact that the water’s didn’t have the telltale surface-slick or any kind of sheen to it. To us on the boat that afternoon there was no mystery at all about what created the calm water, all we had to do was peer down about a foot below the surface and we could see the culprits - it was fish! Thousands upon thousands if not millions of menhaden (bunker) were swimming past in the biggest single school I have ever seen! There were so many of them swimming so close to the surface that their presence in the water actually calmed seas, it was truly amazing!
I doubt that anyone who has been offshore lately needs to be told that there are a lot of bunker and other natural baitfish out there. Particularly on the calm days, while running offshore one barely needs to clear the inlet before they start seeing the telltale dark patches of “nervous water” that indicates a school of fish not far below, and while I have no idea how the actual numbers stack up, it at least “seems” like there is more bait around than in past years. Since big fish tend to go where little fish go, this should be a plus for fishing conditions unless, of course, the big guys get so intent on eating the surplus of little guys that they avoid snapping down on anything that comes with “strings” attached.
Fish can be that way too. Just because they’re in an area and feeding heavily doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be an easy catch. If Mother Nature is serving her predators a bountiful buffet of a particular baitfish, it can sometimes be darn tough to get them to munch on something different or that’s presented in a manner unlike what they’re accustomed to. “Matching the hatch” is a term often used in freshwater fly-fishing whereby anglers attempt to use artificial flies that imitate whatever type of real flies are hatching in the stream or river at that particular time. Here on the coast, when there’s a lot of natural bait in the water anglers might also have to match the hatch if they wish to fool a fish onto their line, and sometimes that requires catching bait while they’re offshore.
Catching bait offshore can at times be easy and almost as much fun as catching the fish the bait is intended to be used for, but only for those who plan ahead and have both the knowledge of what kind of bait they are dealing with and the proper tackle and equipment to capture it. Take bunker for instance, some anglers might think that tossing a small spoon or tiny baited hook into the vast schools of 6 to 10-inch fish will solicit a quick bite but they’d be very wrong. Bunker are filter feeders that eat by straining plankton from the water and simply won’t bite a bait or lure. However, anglers can make a snag-rig by tying a 3-4 ounce sinker to the end of a line and adding a treble-hook or two a couple feet above it. By casting the rig across a school of bunker, letting it sink a bit and then ripping it back through the school anglers can often snag the bait they need. While it’s easy to throw a cast net over little bunker around the docks, the combination of deeper water offshore and much more wary fish make netting them quite a challenge. The fish need to be very close to the surface and not spooked by engine noise or any banging around on the boat. A cast net of at least 6-foot with heavy weights and large mesh that allow it to sink quickly is required to prevent the bunker from diving down and out of the net before it’s pulled closed.
Besides bunker the nearshore waters are also loaded up with small bluefish. Anchoring along the edge of a shoal and chumming will usually bring the blues right up to the back of the boat were they can be taken on small hooks with cut bait. At times chummed up bluefish can be pushovers to catch and anything dropped in the water will get a bite. But usually when they’re feeding on chum, anglers will find that they get finicky and require small baits that resemble the chum on tiny hooks tied to a light line.
Recently, while fishing the nearshore waters, we’ve also had a lot of 4-6 inch mackerel in our chum. These little bullets dart right up to the chum bucket to feed and can be caught on small Sabiki rigs. Usually the mackerel will hit the bare rigs, but sometimes they require a little sliver of bait to be put on the small Sabiki lures.
Another baitfish found both nearshore and farther offshore are schools of threadfin herring. Only about 6-inches long, these little fish are prime feed for all kinds of predator fish and can be caught in the same manor as the little mackerel.
Offshore fishermen often encounter big schools of oceanic bonito and false albacore. Of course, these fish will often hit trolled baits and lures when anglers “don’t” want them, but when fishermen “do” want them, the fish can sometimes be a bit persnickety. Sometimes dropping down to very small spoons or feathers jigs can be all that’s needed to turn the tide on these fish and get them in the bait box for later use. Sometimes schools of what looks like regular bonito are actually tiny, 10 to 12 inches long “mushmouth” bonito which have markings similar to false albacore but are much smaller and have eyes set farther forward. These fish are often seen schooled up on the surface but they will seldom bite conventional trolled baits. Mushmouths can, however, be hooked on very small bucktail-type jigs or flies that are either trolled or cast around the schools and they’ll also respond to chum.
It’s not every day that the baitfish are so abundant that they actually calm the water, but even when they’re around in just modest numbers anglers should expect that there’s a pretty good chance that bigger fish can’t be far away. Being prepared to take advantage of the opportunity to catch bait offshore can sometimes be the difference between catching fish or just spending the day seeing what they’re feeding on.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
