Ladyfish are hard fighters, fun to catch
When the weather is hot, inshore action is on fire.
One fish that is so willing to bite and fight that it is unafraid to show itself off for anglers is the ladyfish.
“Ladyfish first show up at Swansboro in the White Oak River System, and at Morehead City in the Newport River System in July. And by the beginning of August, they are swarming,” said Capt. Jeff Cronk (Fish’N 4 Life Charters, 336-558-5697). “Mullet will be schooling around oyster beds, and ladyfish will be eating them.”
Cronk said he may have clients fishing for red drum and speckled trout when they see ladyfish leaping. It doesn’t take much coaxing on his part for them to take a pause from casting for their target species and make a move to the visible fish.
“Oyster beds are everywhere in the rivers,” he said. “They run perpendicular to the river channel. So the ladyfish come off the shoreline and head for the big current eddies and creases created by the beds. The best time to fish in the rivers is from high tide through the first couple of hours of falling tide. With 1 to 3 feet of water on top of the oyster beds at high tide, the fish stage until the beds become exposed. As long as water is flowing over the oyster beds, you will see the baitfish. And you’ll see and hear explosions that are either trout or ladyfish.”
The difference between a trout and a ladyfish feeding on the surface is as stark as night and day. A trout doesn’t leap high out of the water. And ladyfish are so animated that anglers can see them from hundreds of yards away. Birds diving on baitfish schools may also alert anglers to surface-feeding ladyfish.
Aggressive feeders
That’s the key to ladyfish action – that you can actually see them,” he said. “You might also catch some nice bluefish or speckled trout. But ladyfish are more likely to interfere with catching those other fish because they are so aggressive.”
A trout is fairly easy to hook and might slosh around a bit as it fights. However, when a ladyfish is hooked, it goes wild. It may leap a dozen times or more and fight every inch of the way to the boat, making multiple runs before it tires enough for the landing net. The difficulty is getting the hooks into a ladyfish.
“A ladyfish might strike a lure a dozen times until it hooks up,” he said. “It will knock it out of the water, chase it and knock it out of the water again. They have boney mouths that are hard for hooks to penetrate. They throw the hooks half of the time and it is usually on the jump. It’s hard to keep slack out of the line when the fish is in the air, spinning and flipping upside down. The line cuts the water as though you have hooked a big shark. The line is slicing the water in one direction while the fish is racing off in another.”
Over a few weeks of observing and fishing for ladyfish, an angler can pattern them. They hopscotch from one oyster bed to the other starting in the channels behind the beaches. Then they ride the rising tide into the river mouths. As it continues to rise, they enter the first mile or two of the rivers onto the sand flats. The farther up the rivers they go, the more fish there are, but they will be smaller.
“If you wait and watch around the sand flats in the areas with 3 to 4 feet of water at high tide, big, 3- to 5-pounders are usually blowing up the baitfish,” he said. “After that, they orient to the oyster beds. And that usually produces the best action during the first part of the falling tide. Then the fish head to the beaches to repeat the cycle.”
No slack
Cronk uses a medium- to medium-light spinning rig with a 2500 series reel filled with 10- to 15-pound test braid and 2 feet of 20-pound fluorocarbon leader. His go-to lures are Zara Spook, Skitter Walk and Jay Walker walk-the-dog topwater lures. The Top Dog Jr. is his favorite because its lower profile and higher pitched sound attracts more ladyfish strikes.
“The trick is retrieving it while working it across the current so there’s never any slack in the line,” he said. “You can’t work the lure if there’s slack and you sure can’t set the hook if there’s slack. If a ladyfish hits the lure and doesn’t hook up, keep it coming and it usually hits again and again. If you set the hook and get a jump off, don’t worry because ladyfish can travel in huge schools. Another one will probably hit it before it gets to the boat.”
Capt. Buddy Smith, who recently acquired Capt. Smiley Fishing Charters (843-222-7532) in North Myrtle Beach, catches ladyfish near the mouth of Little River.
Find bait, find ladyfish
“I fish the creek banks around the inlet,” he said. “On certain tides, I also catch them at the jetties and along the ICW. The important thing is knowing where the baitfish will be at certain stages of the tide. On the lower tides, they will be in the deeper water. On higher tides, they move to shallower water. I look for ladyfish wherever I see the silversides or glass minnows concentrate. And I spot the ladyfish before I ever make a cast. You can see them jumping and crushing baitfish from a mile away.”
Once he moves to the fish, he casts live shrimp on float rigs along the bank. While ladyfish are not good table fare, he keeps a few to cut into steaks for redfish bait.
Late afternoon is the best time to invite a ladyfish to dance by casting a topwater walk-the-dog lure. Smith prefers the Badonk-a-Donk but also uses Zara Spooks. He said the Badonk-a-Donk floats higher. So it is more user friendly for anglers with less experience using walk-the-dog lures. And, therefore, it attracts more strikes.
“I prefer an all-silver or white-and-silver topwater lure,” he said. “They like the silver shine because it makes it look more like a mullet than other colors.”
He uses a light action spinning rig with a 3000 series reel, 20-pound braid and 3 feet of 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon leader. Ladyfish don’t have teeth, but have sharp gill plates that chafe the leader. He checks the leader after catching every fish, and cuts the chafed portion until the leader is shortened to 12 inches before tying on another leader.
“They will be around the same areas you catch trout and bluefish,” he said. “They will also hit the same lures. I offer a 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. trip in summer when the water is cooler. That’s a great time to catch them. The salt marsh is a different ecosystem when the sun goes down. The afternoon can be dead calm. Suddenly, the stillness is shattered by a school of leaping ladyfish. It really gets anglers excited when they see them. If they see them, they want to catch them.”
Landing a lady
Don’t be offended if your guide doesn’t allow you to handle a ladyfish. The use of treble hooks on lures is important for hooking the fish. But treble hooks also pose a threat to an angler’s hands.
A landing net is used to control them. Once they are in the boat, a soaking wet towel or glove can be used to handle them while the hooks are extracted with pliers.
A ladyfish that appears to be subdued may suddenly become animated, shaking and writhing. The hard, bony mouth can slip free of a lip-gripping device. If the angler is holding the fish with a finger inserted through a gill, the sharp gill plate can cut it. The gill may also tear if the fish thrashes, harming the fish to the point that it will not survive release.
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