Big bluefish make a startling appearance this month off the beaches east of Wilmington.
A large charterboat headed out through Carolina Beach Inlet, its wake rocking a 21-foot center console anchored in a slough running alongside the inlet’s northerN sandbar.
Ned Connelly sat down to keep his balance, having already netted a menhaden from his livewell. He slipped a treble hook through the baitfish’s nose, cast it into the roiling water on top of the bar, engaged the gears of his spinning reel to flip the bail closed and set the rod into a rod holder.
“The only bad thing about fishing Carolina Beach Inlet is the boat wakes,” he said. “Sometimes they’re worse than the waves kicked up by the wind.”
Connelly has lived nearby for 12 years and fishes the inlet several times each week, so he knows the times of arrival for various fish as well as the contours of the inlet. He set another rod in a holder at the opposite corner of the stern. A fish struck, bending the rod, but its teeth missed the hook.
“The bluefish are definitely here,” he said. “Look, there’s nothing left but the menhaden’s head.”
Indeed, the baitfish had been neatly decapitated with a semi-circular cut. The shape of the bite mark identified a bluefish as the culprit.
“The big ones swallow the menhaden whole, so you get a good hook-up,” he said. “If I want to fool around with catching small bluefish, I move the hook near the anal fin. With the hook at the anal fin, even small bluefish get the point. The downside to hooking them in the body is that the line may twist or the hook may rip out if the menhaden stays in the current very long. If a good school of bluefish is here, that never happens.”
Another rod dipped, and the drag sang. Connelly picked it up and snatched it backward as a 12-pound bluefish felt the sting of the hook. In water so shallow, there was nowhere else to go except up, so the fish went airborne.
Connelly fought the fish for several minutes, and it leaped at least a dozen times. He deftly landed the bluefish with a gaff.
“Some people don’t like to eat the big ones,” he said, “but I do. I filet and grill them or cut them into small chunks and fry them. The trick is cutting out all the red meat, which has a strong flavor. Freezing bluefish also makes them taste strong, so I only keep the bluefish I’m going to eat right away.”
Connelly reset his live-bait rods, then began casting to the bar with a Rat-L-Trap. It wasn’t long before another bluefish struck. While he was fighting that fish, another one hit one of the live baits.
“It’s pandemonium when the big blues arrive at Carolina Beach,” he said. “I knew they were coming because king mackerel and bottomfish anglers have been reporting them at 10 miles over the past month. An onshore wind brings them to the beaches, and that always seems to occur the last three weeks of May. Sometimes they arrive earlier or stay later, but you’re going to always run into them around Memorial Day.”
Connelly squirted some menhaden oil into his livewell. The discharge of “used” livewell water created a chum slick that soon stretched 200 yards behind the boat. Small baitfish began jumping in the slick. Big chopper bluefish weren’t far behind.
“Now’s the time to switch to lures,” he said. “I like to cast jigging spoons, bucktail jigs, and swimming plugs into the slick. Bluefish follow the lure right up to the boat. Sometimes it seems they’re going to eat the propeller.”
At Carolina Beach Inlet, falling tide is the best stage for catching bluefish. It orients the boat in a good position for anchoring along the sandbars. It also washes baitfish from the marshes and Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) into the ocean, where hungry bluefish are waiting. But Connelly cautions that any onshore wind, from northeast to southeast, whips up waves that can come over the stern and fill a boat.
Kure Beach Fishing Pier is a short distance south along the oceanfront from Carolina Beach Inlet. The pier’s owner and manager, Mike Robertson, said the arrival of big bluefish brings lots of anglers to the pier.
“Bluefish are one of our first big fish to show up,” Robertson said. “The first hookups usually come to someone fishing with a 2-hook spot rig. Then the live-bait fishermen start setting trolley rigs to catch them. But all you really need is a chunk of fresh mullet fished on any type of bottom rig to catch them.”
Jim Wilder works the evening shift at the pier house and also fishes every chance he gets. He said big bluefish pull hard and make spectacular jumps, making them one of his favorite fish.
“You can cast a jerkbait, such as Got-cha, to catch bluefish,” he said. “But you need to use a short wire leader to make sure the lure doesn’t get bit off. A big bluefish can bite through monofilament or braided line like it’s nothing.”
Wilder said the higher tide stages are best for catching bluefish from the pier. He fishes the whitewater, where the surf first begins to rise.
“All the little spots and other baitfish bluefish eat are in the whitewater, eating mole crabs and other marine creatures stirred up by the waves. I watch to see where other anglers are hooking up or getting baits bit off, and that’s where I start fishing. But you might hook a big chopper anywhere from the pier. They move in schools. Sometimes, there are only one or two bites as the fish move through. Other times, everyone’s getting a hookup at once.”
It wasn’t long ago that big bluefish almost disappeared from the southeast coast. But the federal and state bluefish management plan has worked as hoped, bringing back the bigger fish. Some fishermen think they have always been cyclic in nature, taking advantage of schools whenever and wherever they occur. One is David Franklin a retired biologist from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. who has been a frequent winner in king mackerel tournaments.
“I was heading out for some red drum fishing at Masonboro Inlet,” said Franklin. “I saw some pelicans diving, which usually indicates a school of menhaden. I got the cast net out to catch a few baits. Then I saw the bluefish chopping up menhaden at the surface.”
Franklin tied a treble hook to a short wire leader, hooked a menhaden in the nose and tossed it against the rock jetty where bluefish had driven the school of baitfish. The hooked menhaden didn’t even hit the bottom before a bluefish struck.
The bluefish cut the baitfish off just behind the head. Several more strikes resulted in the same result, so Franklin moved the hook to the tail of the next menhaden.
After that, he began catching a bluefish on nearly every cast. He tossed most of them back, keeping a half-dozen or so for supper.
“If I’m king mackerel fishing, I don’t want to waste my live baits catching bluefish,” he said. “But if I’m looking for a good time around the inlets, I like catching bluefish. They eat just about anything, fight hard and jump around a lot. What more could you ask of any
gamefish.”
Be the first to comment