All Sailfish, All the Time
FROM THE CAROLINAS TO THE KEYS, FOLLOW THE NEVER-ENDING SAILFISH SEASON
IF NOTCHING A SAILFISH IS ON YOUR LIST, BUT THE TIMING NEVER SEEMS RIGHT, THINK AGAIN.
There’s scarcely a time when you don’t stand a good chance of tying into this prime trophy, provided you choose the right destination.
The fact is, you can just about fish for sailfish year-round, if you are so inclined. And that’s even without leaving the East Coast.
Kick off the yearlong pursuit in the Carolinas in the summer. As fall comes on, start moving down the Eastern Seaboard and, beginning in November, hit the central Florida coast, where sailfish season runs through the end of February. Then head south, keeping up with the fish as they move down toward Key West, where they remain abundant through May. Situations and strategies vary from place to place, but in the end, it’s all sailfishing.
SUMMER KICKOFF
Off North Carolina, summer is sailfish time, according to Capt. Dan Rooks, who runs Tuna Duck out of Hatteras Village on the Outer Banks. From midsummer though early fall, he makes the 25mile run to the edge of the continental shelf to begin his hunt. “I look for structure,” he says.
“Whether it’s current, a rip, a color change or bottom structure, you can catch them about anywhere, in 90 feet or 900, often on the same day.” Especially worth paying attention to is an inshore color change where the water goes from green to blue, or the inshore side of the Gulf Stream. But above all, he looks for signs of bait, which attracts the fish.
Sailfish off the Outer Banks average about 60 inches. They are large for the weight they carry, long and not heavy. But what they lack in weight, they make up for in action.
“I pay close attention to the sargassum,” he adds. “When I see minnows, about the size of your little finger, I always do well.”
Rooks’ strategy is based on trolling a combination of teasers and dead bait. “I pull a couple of squid daisy-chain teasers and naked ballyhoo, dinks rigged on 60- to 80-pound leader.” He sets flat lines to run behind the teasers, in close, and rigs both short and long outrigger lines with the same small ballyhoo. All baits are fished on Shimano TLD 25s loaded with braid backing under about 300 yards of 30-pound hi-vis mono.
The setup is the same no matter which species he’s fishing for. “A lot of times I’m not targeting sailfish,” he says. “I’m looking for wahoo, and the sails are with them. It’s good wahoo fishing at that time of year, and you can get blackfin tuna and dolphin as well. So I set up so when a sail comes in, I have something for him — a dink next to the teaser. And I always keep a dink on a flat line and one on the shotgun, fished way back.”
Sailfish off the Outer Banks average about 60 inches, or 45 pounds, says Rooks. “They are large for the weight they carry; they can be long and not heavy.” But what they lack in weight, they make up for in action. “These are acrobatic fish, so it’s a visual and exciting fight on light stand-up tackle.”
IN THE BALANCE
“We get going with a surge of fish in early November,” says Capt. Patrick Price of Daymaker Charters in Jensen Beach, Florida, where December and January bring the peak action before it tapers off by late February — “dictated by the strength of the winter,” he explains.
Price has a lot of options at his disposal. Jensen Beach sits at a teetering point between the primarily deadbait trolling fishery to the north, where the continental shelf is broad, and the live-bait fishery to the south,
where the reef line swings in close to shore and concentrates the fish.
“We can run both north or south,” he says. “Early in the season we go north to meet the migrating fish. We look for temperature breaks, water-clarity edges where the color goes from green to blue, and also birds and bait, obviously. We might mark bait when running, or start seeing flying fish. But dolphin
SHOWERS AND TAILERS
No one’s surprised to pick up a sailfish or two any time of the year off Key West, but the big push of fish begins in November, when the sails first appear in the deeper water beyond the reef. “In the fall, ballyhoo begin showing up in the deeper water, out to 200 feet, and we see a lot of smaller fish then,” explains Capt. Brice Barr, who operates Double Down out of City or birds — any kind of life is a good sign.” It’s not uncommon to find dolphin and sailfish mixed together, Price points out. “When any area shows signs of life, it pays to stay put and be patient.
“To the north, we use dead baits,” he says. “Up here, we have a wider swath of bottom. Depths from 115 to 130 feet of water could be 5 miles, so we troll at 4½ to 7 knots, with dead chin-weighted ballyhoo Marina in Key West. “We’ve gotten into dredge-fishing at that time of year, when the fish are spread out,” he says. “We’ll raise a pack of sailfish, then start throwing live baits at them. That’s how we put on 6/0 and 7/0 hooks on 30- to 50-pound leader.” His typical spread is two flat lines, two short rigger lines, and two long rigger lines, all with small, naked ballyhoo. “We run them with dredge teasers consisting of a mix of rubber fish and real baitfish. We also pull squid daisy chains on the surface.”
In Stuart, to the south of Price, the continental shelf swings shoreward, and the up the numbers and get some double-digit days.”
In December, according to Barr, the ballyhoo move to shallower water, and the sails follow closely behind, ambushing the bait schools in the shallows. “My favorite thing to do is throw live baits when the sailfish are chasing ballyhoo. With sails feeding in just 12 to 20 feet of water, light tackle is in order.”
When sailfish are showering the ballyhoo, he fishes with 12- to 20-pound spinning tackle, mono line and 20-pound leader. It’s all sight-fishing then, and the sails, which hunt in packs and run larger this time of year, will strafe the ballyhoo schools, grab a meal, and then drop back to deeper water for a while. It can be challenging fishing, says farther south you travel toward Jupiter, the narrower the migration lane the sails funnel into. With the fish concentrated, and without the need to prospect to find them, live-bait tactics come into play. “I can put kite baits in 100 and 200 feet of water at the same time,” Price says. “Due to the sharp drop, sailfish migrate in a smaller zone, and that’s what makes live-baiting more effective.” Barr, but it’s seldom short on excitement.
“We go back and forth a lot. We’ll sight-fish awhile in shallow water, then go out and slow-troll a pattern of live ballyhoo along the reef line, and maybe put up the kites,” he adds.
As winter transitions into spring, the sailfish are on the move, working west toward Mexico. “In late March, April and May, we have fish that tail,” says Barr. The right conditions — an eastbound current with the wind running against it — create swells on the deep side of the reef in 120 to 150 feet of water. “The sailfish get up on the waves and surf down the swells, and that’s when we throw a bait in front of them. Typically, in the springtime they bite really well.”
No one’s surprised to pick up a sailfish or two at any time off Key West, but the big push begins in November, when the fish first appear in the deeper water beyond the reef.