As the fall water temperatures begin to cool, large schools of fish begin to show up in the pass. They will be in around fifty feet of water. These fish are in search of smaller baitfish to enjoy and fatten up. Hopefully, storms and hurricanes will not change the movement patterns of these long-awaited schools of sport fish.
Most of the schooling fish will show signs of feeding just below the water surface. Some of these signs include birds diving for scraps just over the feeding school, very active water patches holding the moving fish, an occasional fish breaking water, and
schools of white bait rapidly running for their lives just under the surface. All these conditions point to one good fishing technique and that is chumming the fish into a feeding frenzy.
Chumming is the process of throwing bait, either in chunks, or in the form of a soup like mix of ground up baitfish into the water in a specific interval. This process usually causes an oil like slick on the surface that looks like an oil road leading away from your boat with the current. This method of drawing the schools of game fish to your boat has been used for years. Long-range tuna boats, leaving out of California ports, have been very successful in bringing large yellowfin, bluefin and bigeye tuna to the boat where the anglers onboard the boat used pieces of bait sent out with the chum. Party day boats, along our east coast, fish for large bluefish use this method as well.
Many anglers who have relocated from up north brought this method with them, and found “chumming” as it is called, worked well for grouper, blackfin tuna and yellow tail. The problem with this method has always been finding good baitfish to chum. Tackle shops began selling blocks of frozen ground up fish to meet angler’s needs for this fishing method. While this type of chum works well, it also tends to attract many sharks.
One charter member of the Burnt Store Anglers, George Folio, a lifetime fisherman from Maryland, suggested the use of spearing fish, or as they are known here in Florida as silversides. These baitfish measure about 3 inches long and have a silver line about a quarter inch wide running down the entire length of the fish. During a teaching session of the Anglers Fishing School, George demonstrated the use of the silverside. Instead of running the hook through the lip of the baitfish, he would run his hook through two silversides. One hook would run through the lip, and a second bait would have the hook run through the body just above the tail. Using a small ⅛-ounce or a ¼-ounce split shot weight about a foot above the hook on the clear leader material that is attached to the running line of the reel, the bait would float out just below the water surface. The baitfish would spin and show odd movement in the water as the current caught the baitfish as it floated and sank out with the rest of the chum. This technique worked provided you could find the bait.
A few years ago, Publix offered a small freezer filled with frozen bait: squid, chum, sardines and bags of silver sides. For about $2.50 you could buy a small supply. You would need about 5 bags to have enough for a good chum line to be formed off the boat during a three-to-four-hour period. It is very important to thaw the silversides out before throwing them over the side into the bait chum line. Four or five baits thrown overboard at a time was just about right. Depending on the flow of the current, you would wait until you no longer saw the silverside, and then feed a few more into the chum line.
Blackfin tuna and bonito especially love to feed on that type of chum line. The fight is usually a strong run and attack, and get ready to have a fun fight. I might mention that a circle hook of size 4/0 to 6/0 attached to a five- or six-foot piece of 50-to-80-pound leader with a thin diameter is the key to a good terminal tackle rig. Send the bait away from the boat, releasing about a yard every so often until you get your bait about fifty feet away from the boat. If no bite happens, reel in the line and start the drop back over again until you get the hook up. You might be surprised to see the variety of fish that will be attracted to the chum and your bait.
Tight Lines
