In this business, April wraps up several months of boat shows, fishing schools and dealer seminars.I have spoken with hundreds of our readers during these events and fielded a variety of questions covering the entire spectrum of fishing.
One topic that kept popping up was chum.
The questions about chum came from many kinds of fishermen, but the king mackerel guys probably asked more often than anyone else. Looking back, I hadn’t talked about chumming in about four years, so I thought I would expound upon it a little before the 2006 fishing season kicks into high gear.
Only a few years ago, if you looked up “chum” in the dictionary, the definition you’d find would be a “pal” or “friend.” That definition may have changed in the past few years.
Just for laughs, I checked it on my computer’s dictionary/thesaurus and found it now includes such definition as fish parts and fish attractors. You can call it an appetizer or hors’ devours for fish if you like.
Once anglers locate fish, they have to get them in a feeding mode, if they’re not ready to eat. Sometimes they are hungry and are already feeding, sometimes they are feeding lightly and need a little coaxing, and some days you work your butt off just to get them to show any interest in bait.
One of the most generally accepted ways to entice fish to bite is to appeal to their appetite. Fish are usually in an area for one of two reasons: (a) the water temperature is perfect for them or (b) there is an abundance of food.
I believe the abundance (or lack) of food is the higher ranking factor.
Think of this from a personal level and it makes an excellent hypothesis. I don’t know about others, but I can be a little cool or warm and still enjoy an excellent meal. Certainly fish don’t remain long in uncomfortably warm or cold water, but within several degrees each side of their preferred temperature, I believe the abundance or absence of food has more bearing on most fish than the absolute temperature.
Probably the most universally-recognized version of chumming is ground-up fish, dispensed from a loose mesh bag at the side of a boat.
There is a growing debate over whether freshly ground chum is better than frozen and I don’t have an answer. Without a doubt, unless the mixture has spoiled, using any form of chum is better than using none.
When making chum, some of the packagers mix extra oils and other attractants into their frozen concoctions to enhance their appeal. It can be difficult to grind chum on a boat, plus a fish always seems to strike when your hands are oily and you can’t grip the rod and reel well.
I like to catch my chum pogies early, in bulk, and store a bunch in case preferred baitfish become scarce. I have found if I treat my chum fish like I am planning to eat them, which means they are heavily iced and drained, they stay fresh and work just like freshly-ground chum.
The pieces of chum should have a little “substance” to work best. They should hold scent and be (barely) large enough to be easily seen. While I often caution fishermen not to get their chum chunks too large, I also caution that ground too fine is not good either. The need for the perfect size is so there is actually something fish can nibble on and taste, but they can’t just eat chum chunks and fill up.
I use two devices to grind chum. When grinding fresh chum on the boat, I use a size 22, Fish-Ng Mr. Chummer manual grinder, with 3/4-inch holes in the grinding plate. When grinding for freezing and storing, I use a 2 ½-hp electric chipper/shredder. There are occasionally some larger pieces mixed in with the blend from these units, but for the most part, chunk size is just about right.
Something to remember is lightly-frozen pogies process through the electric and manual chum-grinders best. It isn’t always possible to get them frozen, but the colder and firmer they are, the better. Chum that has been baking in the sun is offensive to us and the fish’s sense of smell and taste are much more highly developed.
Ground fish parts are a good way to chum, but aren’t perfect. The fish chunks sink through the water column pretty slowly and are usually really far behind the boat before they reach the depth of a deep down-rigger bait. I’ve tried several things to get some chum into the water column quickly with varying degrees of success.
One of the first ways, I got chum down to the depths of my downrigger baits was to use smaller mesh bags behind my down-rigger weights and position the releases a few feet above so they wouldn’t tangle. This definitely got the chum to the correct depth, but it had a few problems I couldn’t overcome.
The most annoying of the problems was when large fish, usually sharks, would attack the chum bag rather than the bait. The other was the bulky bag increased drag on the down-rigger ball, creating a lot of blowback and making the depth meter inaccurate.
About 15 years ago, I began experimenting with plastic drink bottles to hold chum concoctions and attaching them to down-rigger weights to get them below the surface. This overcame the main problems associated with trying to use a chum bag below the surface. There is some drag on the bottle, and it creates a little blowback, but nowhere near as much as with the bag. I have heard a few folks say they have still had some sharks bite the bottle, but it hasn’t happened to me — at least not yet anyway.
There is one negative with this setup: it doesn’t allow for using ground-up fish. You have to use something that will flow through small holes in the bottles. After years of experimenting, I use two different mixtures. One is behind the deep down-rigger and the other is behind the shallow one.
The drink bottle is clipped to the eye at the rear of the downrigger ball by a snap swivel that is attached to a bottle cap. I have experimented with using small eye bolts and other fasteners to attach the snap swivel, but have returned to making a small hole in the bottle cap that is just large enough for a doubled piece of 50- to 80-pound test mono to pass through and tie on the swivel.
First, I cut a roughly a 1-foot-long piece of 50- to 80-pound mono, then I slide a 150- pound or larger snap swivel on the mono and double it over, leaving the snap swivel in the loop. Finally, I pass the ends through the hole in the bottle cap, tie a double-overhand knot inside the bottle cap and snug it down tight. This knot is large enough that it won’t easily pull through the hole and attaches the bottle cap to the snap swivel. In the event of a large fish striking the bottle, the knot will pull through the hole and not put too much pressure on the downrigger mount.
My initial subsurface chum was a mixture of dry dog food and menhaden oil. I would fill the plastic bottle full of dog food and then pour the menhaden oil in over it. Soon I found chunk-style dog food was the preferred medium for this. Chunk-style dry dog food absorbs the oil, while the smaller pellet-style dog foods do not.
It is important for the dog food to absorb some of the oil and act as a time-release mechanism for the menhaden oil. With some of the more porous dog foods, it occasionally requires topping off the container several times before the dog food is completely saturated with oil.
When deploying this chum bottle, use the snap swivel attached to the cap to clip it to the down-rigger ball and make two or three small holes in the top and bottom of the chum bottle. An ice pick is an ideal tool as it makes round holes. A bottle should last several hours and will gradually require opening the holes a little larger. Once the mixture in the bottle bleaches out to white, it has lost its effectiveness and needs replacing.
How this works is basic physics. Oil is lighter than water and therefore will rise to the top. The dog food acts as a time-release agent and keeps all the oil from escaping at once. I use this mixture on my deep down-rigger.
My second chum mixture involves mixing oil and water. Several years ago, Voodoo Offshore introduced a product named Menhaden Milk. This is menhaden oil that has been emulsified and condensed so it will mix with water. Because it mixes with water, it becomes neutrally buoyant and will permeate through the depth where it is released rather than immediately rising to the surface. In exploiting this trait, I use a bottle of Menhaden Milk behind my shallow down-rigger.
I have found that I do not have to mix it with dog food to be effective. In fact, it is so soluble that mixing it with dog food turns the dog food into a blob that will barely run from the bottle. If you feel the need to use a time-delay agent with Menhaden Milk, cooked macaroni works very well. Fill the bottle approximately 1/3 full with menhaden milk and then top it off with water from where you are fishing.
To use Menhaden Milk, I begin by drilling put three small holes, in a triangular pattern, in a screw-on bottle cap. One is large enough to run a doubled piece of 50- to 80-pound test mono through and attach a snap swivel, while the others are smaller. The offset of the snap swivel causes the bottle to wobble and dribble menhaden milk slowly out the other holes. The time a bottle is productive is roughly the same as with the dog food and menhaden oil mix and there is no need to continue enlarging the hole. Plus, with Menhaden Milk, you can reuse the same bottle.
The rig I use for attaching the down-rigger ball and drink bottle is simple. Beginning with a foam golf ball that has a 3/16-inch hole drilled through it, I slip the ball and an upside-down out-rigger release on the downrigger line. I place a crimp over the down-rigger line, between the ears of the release clip, so it will slide freely, and tie a large snap swivel to the end of the down-rigger line.
After clipping on a downrigger ball of the weight you plan to use, let out enough line to lower the down-rigger weight just a couple of inches below the chine of the boat. (I prefer a 10-pound down-rigger ball to keep the line as close to vertical as possible.) Now slide the outrigger release up the down-rigger line until the foam ball bumps the guide at the end of the down-rigger arm and crimp it in place. This is usually about 30 to 36 inches above the downrigger ball but will vary according to the side height of the boat (see diagram).
Once you are fishing in an area that holds fish, this triple-decker deployment of chum should get the fish’s attention and have them homing in on the source of all that good smell and taste.
Once they get close, your baits should get their attention and draw strikes.
Once they have been lured in by your chum and taken your bait, you only have to get them in.
Now it’s your turn.
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