Florida Sport Fishing - Skipjack City

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Skipjack City

Written by Captain Jan Maizler

AS SEEN IN THE JULY/AUG 2006 ISSUE

With ferocious feeding habits, nearly unparalleled fighting abilities, and quality table fare, it’s time for blue-water anglers to treat this striped blue-water bandit with respect!

As you come off plane and ease into a trolling pattern, the Gulf Stream seems like an endless shimmering sapphire carpet. Bright yellow-green squares of seaweed lines and rafts pop into view as they rise on the crests of each passing wave. You edge your vessel towards what seems like the largest mass of Sargassum- it appears to stretch at least one hundred yards.

Off your bow, two flying fish launch through the air and you swear you could almost hear their wings whirring. A frigate bird spots the duo and swoops down for the kill, but the huge bird is way too late as his intended prey plunge back into the azure depths long before he arrives.

Working the edge of the thick, supple weedline, the good news is the countless juvenile fish that you spy darting in and out of the tangled mess. It’s a good sign predicting that predators like dolphin should be around. After only a few minutes of trolling, a huge blue and yellow form materializes behind your starboard flatline. Sixty feet astern, it’s easily recognizable. Seconds later, your ballyhoo disappears in a fierce eruption, and a large bull dolphin goes airborne. You snatch your 20lb. outfit out of the rod holder and begin the battle. As you apply pressure on the fish by lifting the rod tip as needed, you know you’re on top of your game. It’s a glorious ten minutes under a bright tropical South Florida sun. Soon, the neon fish gives in to the gaff and is smoothly slipped into the cockpit. All you can think is “dolphin dinner!” As the twenty-pounder flaps in the box, high-fives circulate among the crew in celebration.

Your crew pulls together to resume the troll, and one of your partners points across the weedline yelling, “Look! Look!”, and there it is. About seventy yards away at two o’clock off the bow is a huge melee of white water and leaping tuna-like fish in an area perhaps no larger than a tennis court.

Now, its crossroads time- do you resume your well-proven trolling techniques for more dolphin action, or do you head for the frothy commotion and figure out your most effective approach for the tuna species you’ve yet to identify? At this depth far offshore, the leaping gamesters are not likely to be bonito. Chances are, they’re probably blackfin or skipjack tuna. Either one of these members of the tuna family gives offshore anglers more of a challenge for presenting bait effectively than do the more aggressive and not terribly discriminating dolphin.

You’re spared a decision in your delicious dilemma as the explosions and skyrocketing gamesters rapidly head your way. The fish are less than fifty yards from you now and are closing in fast. You immediately cut your engines to place your center-console in stealth mode. Suddenly, a chunky tuna around ten pounds rockets out of the face of an oncoming wave, and the sun’s rays light up its shiny underflanks, revealing long horizontal lines grown intensely dark by the feeding frenzy. You now realize you’re right in the middle of a full-on skipjack attack! All hands on your vessel toss lures from topwaters to spoons towards the racing predators. A fast splashy retrieve from every angler onboard results in near-instant hookups, doubled-over rods, and screaming drags.

This kind of scenario is somewhat typical of the South Florida fishery for skipjack, a.k.a. arctic bonito. This great pelagic gamester is a fish that is most often sought when the opportunity presents itself, but can also be a summertime target that could very well be singled out. Learning the basic facts about skipjack tuna should make all of the encounters much more promising.

Tips from two captains-

Captain Greg Poland of Islamorada is a light tackle expert equally adept on the shallowest flats all the way out to the high seas shipping lanes and beyond. Most importantly, Captain Greg loves “skippies.”

He feels that his Conch 27 center-console powered by a 275-hp four-stroke Verado is an essential set-up for skipjack fishing far offshore. When conditions permit, Greg operates his vessel from the tower of his center-console. His elevated position enhances his ability to see diving and wheeling birds as well as breaking and traveling skipjack schools. He feels that his “running & gunning” approach is best accomplished not just with maximum visibility, but with a super-fast and super-quiet engine as well. Once he determines the skipjack school’s direction of travel, his powerful outboard effortlessly positions his crew ahead of the marauding predators. Most importantly, his engine’s four-stroke construction creates a power plant that is so quiet, there’s no need to kill the engine to avoid spooking the skipjacks. His optimal presentation is to have his bow facing the approaching school of fish. He feels that vessels with large inboards or two-stroke outboard motors are far too noisy even when in idle mode. Greg recommends that ‘noisy boats’ should try to anticipate the school’s path and position up-wind or up-current and drift with a “dead” boat into the skipjack school.

Florida Sport Fishing

Captain Greg generally feels skipjack tuna have a predictable habitat that is more unique to Islamorada and the Florida Keys versus Miami. Down his way, there are seamounts called the Humps located over twenty-five miles offshore in the Atlantic. These areas rise up from the sea floor quite dramatically and cause current upwellings that draw a rich food chain which is often “topped” by multiple members of the tuna family. It’s common for Poland to find both skipjack tuna and blackfin tuna intermixed in these areas.

In actual practice, Greg never slows down until he sees color convergences, offshore current rips, flotsam, wheeling or diving birds, or, of course, breaking tuna. He advises anglers to slow way down when approaching any blue water stretch that has birds “working” there. Birds that are diving or “running” to keep up with something below should be considered “must-investigate” spots that could erupt with breaking skipjacks-or even blackfin tuna or dolphin- at any given moment. When there are no fish visible, Poland fast trolls these areas with cedar plugs fished far back in the shotgun position so as not to spook any unseen fish. As soon as the skipjacks erupt on the surface, he returns to his “run & gun” methods.

Captain Greg has very specific preferences on tackle and techniques when casting to skipjack tuna. He wants his outfits to be light, capable of very long casts, and extremely fast retrieves. He finds that twelve-pound spinning tackle with rods at least seven and a half feet long work well. Spinning reels must have a large line capacity of at least 250-yards, and must absolutely sport ultra-smooth drags. The long upwind casts that may at times be necessary make baitcasting and fly tackle simply not as effective. His terminal tackle is a one foot trace of twenty pound fluorocarbon and a half-ounce white bucktail jig. When the skipjacks are sighted, he instructs his anglers standing in the bow to cast as far as they can while the fish are well away from his boat and then reel as fast as possible without even whipping their rods. Greg prefers the lures going so fast that they only appear as a blur which helps trick the skippies’ excellent vision. He instructs his anglers to hold on tight as he knows skipjack tuna often hook themselves when hitting jigs with such abandon.

Captain Jon Cooper is based out of Fort Lauderdale, yet he fishes the entire Florida Gold Coast from Jupiter to Homestead-both inshore and offshore. Like Captain Greg, skipjack tuna get Jon’s heart pounding! Jon’s entry into the offshore fishery came in the form of a 25ft. Triton Bay Boat, 200hp outboard motor, and a bow-mounted electric motor. This vessel’s setup provides him incredible offshore options, and has also formed another effective method of approaching feeding skipjack schools.

In contrast to the Florida Keys, the Gold Coast has few offshore seamounts that concentrate skipjacks, so Jon scouts out the Gulf Stream for flotsam, color changes, and current edges by fast trolling cedar plugs far back off his transom. First, this accomplishes hook-ups on unseen skipjack. Second, once the skippies are hooked, the thirty-pound conventional gear he uses gets them coming to the transom as quickly as possible in order to draw in an intact school of unhooked companions. Jon makes sure the unhooked fish are fired up and turned on. He accomplishes this by tossing a few live pilchards towards the skipjacks off his stern. When the free-swimming baits are smashed, he knows unhooked skippies are coming in with the hooked fish. Just before the fish reach his stern, he cuts the engine, and starts tossing small netfulls of pilchards, which often result in a skipjack feeding frenzy around his bay boat. While this method was perfected in Southern California for yellowfin tuna, it works just as well for skipjack tuna off Florida’s Gold Coast!

Florida Sport Fishing

Captain Jon also employs the “run & gun” method of sighting and casting to skipjack schools. In contrast to the run-around-and-intercept strategy, Captain Jon has learned to slowly approach breaking and feeding skipjack schools with his electric motor running on a slow and constant RPM mode. The slower stealthy approach is possible because savvy anglers know that skipjack sometimes feed in a circular pattern- this gives pursuing fishermen time to reach them on their “electrics.” Once his anglers get within casting range, they throw shiny lures and plugs with long spinning rods, high-speed reels, and light lines and leaders. Hook-ups are often instantaneous.

Captain Jon also reassures anglers that skipjack make an excellent meal if they are quickly bled, thoroughly iced, and properly prepared. As a matter of fact, skipjack tuna, not yellowfin tuna, now dominate the world’s tuna (food) market. A vast majority of the canned tuna sold in the United States labeled as “chunk light,” is pure skipjack.

Skipjack facts:

Skipjack tuna have a wide temperature range and occur in water from 58 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit with the higher end of the echelon more preferable.
While skipjack tuna primarily remain at the surface during daylight hours, they may descend to depths exceeding 900 feet at night where they become swordfish prey.
Skipjack tuna have a tendency to school under floating objects, weedlines, or marine mammals such as whales and porpoises.
Skipjack tuna often school and intermix with blackfin tuna and yellowfin tuna and may swim slowly in circular paths or fast in a single direction.
Juvenile skipjack tuna school in enormous numbers exceeding tens of thousands, whereas adult specimens congregate in small groups often containing only dozens of individual members.
Skipjack tuna have an average weight of seven to twenty-two pounds, while the all-tackle world record taken in Mexico in 1996 tipped the scales at 45 lb 4 oz.
Skipjack tuna feed well offshore, are cannibalistic feeders, and supplement their nutritious diet of fresh ‘skippies’ with herring-like fishes, crustaceans, and even mollusks.
Skipjack tuna appear to have peak feeding periods around dawn and dusk which comes as no surprise as all members of the tuna family bite better in low light conditions.
Skipjack tuna rely on their keen vision, distinct coloration, and fast speed to hunt.

Finally, skipjack tuna are highly migratory (think HMS Permit), and are likely to be found far offshore where there are current convergences, powerful up-wellings, or floating debris. These are all areas that provide an abundance of forage. Commercial fishermen have learned to harvest skipjack by distributing artificial flotsam and FADs (fish attracting devices) far offshore which congregate large schools in specific areas. For a consistent level of success, recreational fishermen should stay aware of the skipjack’s structure-orientated characteristics.