Feathered pros show anglers way to fish
More than a dozen professional fishers formed a picket along a reach of East Galveston Bay shoreline one morning this past week and, unlike mypartner and I, they were on fish. Lots of fish.
Soon, we were too.
It was another lesson in why paying attention to such professionals — feathered fishers such as egrets, herons, gulls and terns whose lives depend on their ability to find and catch fish — can be a great benefit to us amateur anglers.
The mix of snowy egrets, great egrets and a couple of tricolored herons had gathered on a stretch of shoreline that was in a slight lee from a pestering southwest wind that, along with seemingly endless freshwater runoff from this year’s rains, had the bay a murky brown. Down the way, maybe 100 yards, was the mouth of a bayou that threaded through an extensive marsh bayou.
It really didn’t look that much different from the other spots mypartner and I had fruitlessly plumbed over the previous couple of hours. But it was, and the birds knew it. Wewatched as the egrets and herons speared a mix of small fish and even a couple of shrimp. Andwe noticed the patches of “nervous water” — bay surface slightly agitated by schools of bay anchovies, menhaden or some other small forage fish — in deeper water in front of the fishing birds.
We eased into the area and began fishing. Both of us had fish on the first cast, the live shrimp we used as bait barely hitting the water before being grabbed. The small area was alive with feeding fish — redfish, flounder, black drum, big croaker and, yes, a few gafftop and the occasional hardhead. For the next three hours, we had almost nonstop action. Bird-dogging done right
Taking advantage of some birds’ almost supernatural ability to locate concentrations of aquatic prey — forage that also attracts the predator species anglers target — is a classic tactic Texas anglers can use to their advantage in coastal and inland waters. And late summer and autumn is, perhaps, the most productive time of year for anglers to use birds to “bird-dog” fish.
Often, the tactic is as simple as looking for several herons or egrets congregated in a relatively small area along a shoreline and actively wading and hunting, as in the case illustrated above. The birds are there for a reason, and it’s almost always food. And big fish eat the same small fish those birds are after. It always pays to check out the stretch of water around these birds.
Onthe bays this time of year, pay particular attention to any herons or egrets gathered at the mouth of a bayou, canal, ditch or any other small waterway connecting marsh or back-bay “lakes” to the open bay. Onfalling tides, those small waterways can sweep swarms of forage — small fish, crabs or shrimp — down the channels, funneling them out of the drain’s mouth, where the buffet draws the attention of predators.
If there’s enough forage being swept out of a bayou or marsh drain to attract attention from above the surface, bet on it attracting attention below the surface, too. Flounder are especially drawn to such places. But, they also attract schools of redfish and speckled trout.
The predatory nature of herons and egrets can also guide freshwater anglers to fish. In late summer and early autumn, some of the rivers and larger creeks feeding reservoirs will hold tremendous swarms of threadfin shad. Schools of predator fish — white bass and largemouth bass on occasion —will often drive these balls of shad into the shallow, where they’ll tear into the smaller fish. Herons and egrets quickly learn the location of the underwater shelves, indentions and shallow flats, and station themselves to take advantage of the melee. I’ve enjoyed some outstanding fishing for white bass, striped bass and largemouth in the Trinity River upstream from Lake Livingston and the Colorado River, above Lake Buchanan, by keying on water around groups of herons and egrets standing on the bank or on snags. Eyes in the sky
And it doesn’t take a group of birds to point an angler to fish. Asingle bird can be enough to point an angler to fish. Along the coast, a solitary heron and egret will sometimes walk the bank, shadowing a school of redfish feeding in thin water. As the redfish root, hunt and attack, they scatter prey — killifish, mullet, small crabs or shrimp — that often head for the shallows to escape.
Those same shallowwater redfish schools will often attract the attention of gulls and terns, birds that aerial shadow feeding schools waiting for the fish to push prey to the surface, where the bird swoops or dives and grabs a meal. Any angler spotting a gull or tern moving slowly along a shoreline or shallow flat, head down, watching the water, hovering and wheeling should check out what the bird’s watching. It could be a school or redfish or a single, big speckled trout.
Those gulls and terns can be the guides to some of the fastest fall fishing on the Texas coast when they shadow schools of speckled trout and sand trout preying on migrating brown shrimp. And that’s just around the corner. Learning from pros
Beginning when autumn cool fronts start pushing across the Texas coast, in late September and early October and continuing into November and sometimes December, juvenile brown shrimp that have spent the summer hiding and growing in the estuaries rimming Texas bays make their migration to the Gulf of Mexico, where they grow into adults and spawn.
To get to the Gulf, the shrimp must traverse the open bays, where they are stalked and preyed upon by schools of speckled trout and sand trout.
The trout push the shrimp to the surface, where the crustaceans frantically skitter and skip, trying to escape the trout. From their aerial vantage, sharp-eyed gulls and terns easily see the melee and shadow this moveable feast, wheeling overhead until shrimp are driven to the surface, then diving to snatch the fleeing shrimp.
Anglers keying on these groups of gulls and terns, looking for the flashes of wings as the birds hover and wheel just feet above the feeding schools, and maneuvering their boats close enough to cast into the tumult of scattering shrimp, gorging fish and scavenging gulls and terns are guaranteed immediate hook-ups.
This tactic, commonly termed “fishing the birds,” provides some of the most exciting and productive fishing of the year for many coastal anglers. And because it occurs during some of the most comfortable weather of the year, it’s one of the most anticipated, enjoyable and popular.
But it’s certainly not the only way to “fish the birds.” Texas anglers can do that, in different ways, much of the year. All it takes is paying attention to what those avian fishers have to teach us. And that’s a lot; they are, after all, the real professionals at this game.