Know your live bait: Spot

Spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) belongs to the family of fishes called Sciaenidae. Spot plays a key role in the trophic dynamics of the Chesapeake Bay, as a predator of benthic invertebrates and as a prey species for striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, shark and flounder. Like croaker, spot are opportunistic bottom feeders that consume polychaetes, crustaceans and mollusks, as well as plant and animal detritus. Although both spot and croaker have similar diet and habitat, they are able to coexist without directly competing with one another.

Mature spot are easy to recognize by their physical characteristics: they have a relatively deep, short, compressed body; a short head with a small, mouth; and a large, black shoulder spot. Other distinguishing characteristics include an absence of teeth from the lower jaw, a long pectoral fin extending beyond the tip of the pelvic fin, and a strongly notched but continuous dorsal fin.

Spot swim in coastal and estuarine waters from the Gulf of Maine to the Bay of Campeche, Mexico. The area of greatest abundance occurs from the Chesapeake Bay to South Carolina. They have been collected from the mainstem and all tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay and have one of the most extensive distributions of any marine-estuarine fish species in the Bay. They are tolerant of a wide range of temperatures and have been collected in waters from 34-98 degrees.

Life Cycle

* Adult spot migrate into estuarine areas in the spring but are not as widely distributed as juvenile spot. They are generally found in the Chesapeake Bay from April through October.
* They are relatively short-lived; it is rare to find a f5 year-old. Ages 0 to 2 dominate the catch from populations along the Atlantic coast. Spot reach sexual maturity at ages two and three. Minimum size at maturity ranges from 186 to 214 millimeters.
* When the water temperature starts to decrease in the fall, adult spot move offshore to spawn. The spawning season extends from late fall to early spring. Spawning occurs over a broad area, and data indicate that they use deeper areas further offshore than other sciaenids.
* Fertilization is external, occurring at night in surface waters. Larvae grow rapidly in the warm offshore waters, but growth slows as they move into the cooler inshore and estuarine areas. This movement into colder water is a critical point in spot year class success, due to thermal stress at temperatures less than 10 degrees.
* Low salinity areas of bays and tidal creeks comprise the primary nursery habitat for spot. They are also associated with eelgrass communities.
* Young-of-the-year spot generally reside in tidal creeks and shallow, estuarine areas during the summer. When the water temperature begins to decrease in the fall they move to deeper estuarine waters or the ocean. There is some evidence that juvenile spot overwinter in the Chesapeake Bay in deep water. They are similar to adults in their ability to tolerate a wide range of salinities and temperatures.

The Fishery

Commercial landings for spot exhibit year-to-year fluctuations, which are attributed to the fish’s life history of spot and annual environmental differences on the spawning grounds. There are no apparent long-term trends. Within the Chesapeake Bay, the commercial harvest of spot usually begins during April or May and continues until September or October. The largest commercial catches are reported during fall when spot are migrating out of the Bay, and most spot are landed as bycatch from the pound net fishery in the lower Bay. In Maryland, commercial catches have ranged from 590,000 pounds in the 1950s to less than 100,000 pounds by 1990. Landings in Virginia have historically been higher than those in Maryland, ranging from 8 million pounds in the 1950s to approximately 150,000 pounds by 1990.

In Maryland, spot are one of the species most frequently caught by recreational fisherman. Spot ranked third in a 1980 recreational fishing survey with an estimated catch of more than 1.3 million fish. In Virginia, spot are generally larger, more abundant, and targeted by recreational anglers. Scrap catch, bycatch and discard mortality significantly affect the spot population.

Get Chummy

There's a lot more to chumming than a load of ground-up or cut pieces of fish or shellfish tossed over the transom. In many ways it's an art.

There's a lot more to chumming than a load of ground-up or cut pieces of fish or shellfish tossed over the transom. In many ways it's an art.

While it is true that there isn't a gamefish in the sea that won't respond to chumming, if you don't do it right, you very likely won't get the results you have in mind.

First, you need motionÐsomething to take your chum to the fish. If you're fishing from a fixed location, like a pier, seawall, jetty, or an anchored boat, the key element in chumming is current. There must be enough water movement to carry the scent and food particles a good distance (except when you're trying to bring fish straight up from the bottom). If there is no current, you're better off chumming from a drifting boat, where a scent trail is left by the boat's motion.

Yum, Yum-Pick Your Chum
Chum comes in many forms, from fresh to frozen to dried. The most common ingredients include fish, shellfish, squid, and oil.

To attract fish from a distance or from deep water, fresh-cut chunksof chum are hard to beat. The process, called chunking, involves using a small amount of frozen or dried chum as a starter to attract baitfish, which are then caught, cut up, and immediately tossed overboard. This attracts even more baitfish, creating a mix of fresh-cut chum scent and a big school of baitfish. Reef and blue-water species simply cannot ignore the abundance of food. Chunking works especially well on the tunas, but I've also seen wahoo, king mackerel, sailfish, marlin, and dolphinfish lured by this technique.

With fresh chum, it's good to use a variety of ingredients. By-catch from commercial shrimp trawlers is a fine example. Usually the only way to get this is from a shrimp boat that's cleaning its nets; if you're willing to buy or barter, you're usually welcome. While you're checking out the shrimp boats, remember that even the heads from shrimp that have been cleaned dockside make great chum, although they spoil very rapidly if not kept on ice.

Live chum, including small baitfish partially crippled by bouncing them off the transom, works best when the gamefish you're after have already been attracted to the vicinity by other meansÐby the smell of dried or frozen chum, or by slow-trolling with a live baitfish until the first fish is hooked. It is important for the gamefish to be close enough to see the crippled baitfish hitting the water. This works best with aggressive species like bluefish, the mackerels, and billfish.

Frozen and Canned
Frozen chum typically consists of fish and shellfish that have been ground into small pieces and frozen in blocks weighing several pounds apiece. You can make your own or buy it in bait shops. Put the frozen block inside a nylon-mesh laundry bag, and hang it in the water. As the block thaws, the food particles drift away with the current. You can shake the bag to release chum a little faster. A block will usually last several hours, even in warm water. Some anglers add a little bunker oil to the mix to create a stronger scent trail.

You can even find chum on supermarket shelves. I often use cheap canned tuna or fish-flavored cat food, mixed with bread and bunker oil. Form the mixture into golf ball–sized chunks, and toss them overboard at regular intervals. To make them sink faster, add a little sand to the mix. It's a great way to attract baitfish and gamefish.

When and Where
Essentially, you need to chum in a location where tide or current will broadcast the scent over the target zone where you expect to find fish. Anchor up-current from a channel, reef, or other structure where you think the fish may be holdingÐfar enough away for the chum to be able to sink as deep as necessary by the time it gets there. The stronger the current, the farther upstream you need to be.

Current flow most frequently depends upon the tide. Be sure to use tides to your advantage. You may have to re-anchor as the current increases or decreases during the tidal cycle. Slack water is usually a poor choice because the chum doesn't spread far enough to attract fish.

Some species, like snappers, are easiest to attract at night, but as a general rule the morning is always a good time to chum. For others, like the mackerels, bluefish, and tunas, almost any time of the day is good if conditions are right.

Tossing Chum
You may be in the right place with the right chum, but if you don't dispense it efficiently, you're just wasting time. For example, use too much chum at once, and you'll send all the fish chasing a big mass of the stuff downcurrent. Or they will hang so far back that you'll never even know they are there. On the other hand, if you're too stingy with chum, fish may never show up at all.

The best approach is to start slowly. Gradually increase the flow until you start to get the desired results. When chunking, remember that as a rule the bigger the fish you want to catch, the bigger the edible pieces must be; scent alone may bring bait and panfish on the run, but the big boys usually want something they can chew on. In shallow water, like a bonefish flat, small pieces of fresh-cut shrimp, for example, serve as both scent and edible tidbits.

No matter which type of chum you use, it can unquestionably improve your success. Without using chum to bring them to your vicinity, catching pelagic species like the tunas, king mackerel, and other far-roaming fish on flies or lures would be an exhausting process with a huge number of casts per strike. And it's exciting to watch yellowfin tuna slow from their normal supersonic speed to a bare crawl when they get a taste of chum. Once big pelagic or reef species fall into a rhythm of taking chunks of fresh chum, the substitution of a fly or lure at some point almost always gets dramatic results.

Catch More Fish – Chum ‘em Up

All game fish respond in varying degrees to chum. For some anglers chumming has become an art form, even a science. One thing is absolutely sure, effective chumming techniques produce more fish. Let’s discuss some of the most productive methods that will make you a more successful angler.

First, let’s understand that there are as many types of chum and chumming methods as there are fisherman that employ them. No one technique is the panacea. The way you choose to chum fish to your boat may be the very best technique, because you have confidence in “your” system and that makes you fish harder.

Over the years one chum recipe has worked for me. Following is my “Only Chum Recipe.”
Supplies & Ingredients:

* 1 box of heavy duty zip lock plastic freezer bags
* 1 five gallon bucket
* a garden hand rake or stirring implement
* Garden Hose
* 1 gallon pure pogy (menhaden) oil
* 1 - 3 pound can whole kernel corn
* Rice, oats, macaroni (optional)
* 12 cans Kozy Kitty cat food (sold at most stores 3/$1)
* 6 loaves of wheat or stone ground bread. Some bakery outlet stores sell old bread for 10 cents per loaf, you must ask for “critter food”.
* Food processor (Warning: You may burn it up and don’t even think about telling the wife what you need it for)
* Electric can opener

Recipe:

* Chop bread in processor
* Dump 12 cans of cat food into bucket, mixing in bread with small amounts of water. Consistency desired like thick soup
* Stir in 2 cups of Pogy oil, evenly distributed
* Take off gas mask and drink one cold beer a safe distance from bucket
* Fill freezer bags and double bag
* Lay bags flat in kitchen freezer (Warning: see Food Processor above)
* Transport chum in designated chum cooler with ice over and under
* Use ½ bag at a time ( fits perfectly into a standard nylon chum bag)

Depending upon your target species, chum deployment is the next issue. When anchored and wreck or reef fishing for bottom species like snapper and grouper, several methods will work. Hang your chum bag on a stern cleat and allow the current to create a “chum slick” behind your boat. Remember, your goal is to not to over feed the fish, just get them interested in your baits. Many species like mangrove and yellowtail snappers respond extremely well to this technique by coming up in the water column to eat your free-lined baits. Or, send your chum to the bottom on a hand line or use your downrigger ball. Dispensing a small amount of chum periodically will bring Kingfish in for a free lunch. They can’t resist the pogy smell. Neither can nuisance sharks, especially in summer.

Chumming up bait is another auxiliary use for your new chum recipe. All the best live baits will come to chum, like pinfish, hardtails, cigar minnows, ballyhoo etc. You can cast net them or catch them on hook and line. Having the most lively fresh baits sometimes produces when all else fails.

Chumming is a standard, integral part of fishing in many locations, while in others, it is non-existent. Local custom and tradition seems to dictate. For example, chumming snappers and groupers on the coral reefs of the Florida Keys is the accepted, modus operandi, but this procedure is virtually unused in the Panhandle. Sometimes necessity is the Mother of invention. Regardless of where you fish, do some chum experimentation. The results may surprise you.

Years ago while fishing in the British Virgin Islands, I learned a new, simple chumming technique that worked great for triggerfish. An elderly lobster fisherman showed us how to mix cracked crabs with sand to create a really effective chum ball. We thanked our new friend with some fish fillets. He reciprocated with a few lobsters. We all learn from each other.

Variations of the process are endless. Another popular method is called chunking or chunk-baiting. Again, this variation simply induces the fish to eat, by sight or smell or both. I learned how highly effective chunking can be on a tuna trip out of Venice, Louisiana. A friend and I were chasing tuna steaks in the Gulf, out of the mouth of the Mississippi River. The drill went something like this. First, we found a shrimp boat underway and dragging his nets in 200 feet of water. We would motor up behind the shrimper, so that you could literally spit into the cockpit. As we threw chunks of cut poggies directly behind the shrimper’s transom, we pitched a chunk with a 12/0 circle hook tied to 60 pound fluorocarbon on a 20 pound class Shimano spinner. The take was immediate. Blackfin tuna follow shrimp boats for the free by-catch that is shoveled out of the scuppers. We could see the tuna with their big eyes rolling over on their sides to watch the free hand-out hit the water. Gives a whole new meaning to Pavlovs’ dogs. Pumping and winding on Blackfins to 29 pounds will force you to sit down and drink a cold one. Guar-own-teed!

Mahi-mahi is another species that loves to be chunk-baited. Offshore in summer we just park it in a sargassum weedline and start chunking fresh-dead baits. Before long, mahi show up to investigate and the fun begins. Or, a speed-demon Wahoo shows up and wants to play. That’s the joy of it all, just like a box of chocolates, you never know just what you’re gonna get.

Live bait chumming is one of the most deadly of all methods. Many guides have perfected this to an absolute art form. Having the ability to keep large numbers of bait alive and frisky is the key. One of the best ways to catch snook is by live-baiting them with sardines. Virtually all sportfish can be caught in large numbers using the most natural of all presentations, a live bait. One of the really innovative patterns is live bait for billfish. Anglers in the Keys are super successful catching Sailfish on 12 pound class tackle using live Ballyhoo on small circle hooks. Around the worlds’ great billfishing venues, Marlin are being tricked with live baits. The list of live-baiting success stories is only limited by imagination and creativity.

Try chumming on your next fishing trip. You will catch more fish. And everyone knows that a day spent on the water fish catching is a day that does not count against one’s longevity. FISH ON!