Black Sea Bass, Fluke and Sea Robins

I tried something new to me yesterday. I had never targeted fluke or black sea bass before. I’d picked up some fluke in the past on my fly but they were always tiny and not what I was targeting. The Old Man and I, however, have been growing tired of working awfully hard just to catch some baby stripers. Personally I’ve been putting in too many 4-5 hour days just to walk away with a handful of bass, all under twenty inches. A mild exception occurred last week when I landed into a 24″ fish off the beach. However I was the only one to bring in anything of size and it was one of two fish that I caught in a three hour outing.

So, being sick of wearing out our arms just to catch a couple 10-12″ fish, we decided to explore a new kayak launch point and try our hand at jigging for black sea bass.

We launched at a marina located about a quarter mile up a tidal river. It was just after 4:30 am when we arrived and dawn was still about 20 minutes away. The mosquitoes, however, were up and hungry. With that motivating us, we geared up and launched quickly, making it through the marina and out the channel by 5:00am. A gorgeous sunrise greeted us (regrettably,  I did not snap a photo of it) and we made our way out to some points we had noted on a chart. Neither of us have a fish finder on our yaks, so we weren’t able to get real time readings of the bottom structure. I have been playing with a new chart app on my phone, Navionics and I used it as best I could to move us near marked rocks. We also had some physical markers denoting a channel and one of them sat on it’s own rock island, so we knew of some areas to hit right off the bat.

Our basic strategy was to paddle against the now incoming tide towards the open bay. We would then let the current take us back in while we jigged the bottom, paddling as necessary to drift over some key areas. We both began the day rigged with a single Deadly Dick.

I was using green and I believe the Old Man was as well. A few passes, and we were definitely getting harassed by some life on the bottom. I had picked up a small sea robin and the Old Man actually had a sizeable fluke on but it was barely hooked, and with no net it escaped at the side of the boat. At this point, two things happened. One, we met a fellow kayak angler who was very familiar with the turf. Two, I decided to get adventurous and drop a small bucktail jig I tied about 2 feet below the Deadly Dick. I also tipped the jig with a Berkley Gulp sandworm to give some scent.

Our new friend, pedaling a nice Hobie yak, informed us that the black bass season was basically over and they had mostly moved out to deeper waters. This made sense, we knew the season was short and we weren’t hooking up on any. On the other hand, almost immediately after adding the bucktail jig dropper, I pulled up a small fluke. With the Old Man’s lost keeper sized fluke and my little one on our minds, we decided to keep doing our drift thing but really target the fluke.

Sea robins are a pain in the butt. I could feel them constantly pecking at the Berkeley Gulp worm. It seemed like every time I reeled up, I was missing a bit more. Even the Old Man, who was still on a solo Deadly Dick was getting constantly harassed. Finally one of the robins at least had the decency to hook himself and the Old Man boated it. A minute with the knife and suddenly we had some fluke bait. I kept the little bit of rubber worm on my jig hook and added a chunk of the robin to it.

We paddles up and drifted again. We were about midway through the drift, getting molested my crabs and more, now canabalistic, sea robins. Then I hooked up. I could tell it wasn’t very large, but it didn’t feel like a fluke or a robin. I brought it up to the surface and discovered that apparently not all the black bass were gone. Just the big ones.

He was only about 13-14″. Far too small to keep but being my first, I finally got a good look at how beautiful they are.

After that fish’s release, it went back to being fairly quiet. By this point it was about 9:00am, the sun was out and the day was really warming up fast. The power boats had woken up and were now buzzing around, some heading off shore and others stopping around us to fish the same drift. “A couple more drifts.” we said before we’d pack it in for the day.

I finally got the hook up I’d been waiting for. It felt larger and took me a minute to get it up to the surface. I could see it was a decent sized fluke. Without a net, getting fluke into the boat can be a little tricky. Luckily in my case, I had a solid hook set and was able to lift him with my line. Once a fluke gets to be a decent size though, there isn’t much to grab on to so if you are targeting them I recommend a net. Regrettably I didn’t get a great picture of this fish. It came in at exactly 17″, the minimum to keep it. This was coming home for lunch.

You can see home here in my footwell of my kayak. I had forgotten any kind of stringer material but it was just as well, he survived just fine down there.

I think we put in one more drift after this fish. We let it carry us further in, back towards the mouth of river. It had been a slow but productive day for us. I think we both took it as more a learning experience  than anything else. It was a style of fishing that I was not accustomed to and it’s not something I would want to do every trip. However, if it is a fish dinner you are after I can’t recommend it enough. Fluke is delicious, and I think as long as you go out with some basic information you stand a better chance of coming home with a keeper fluke than a striper especially in the daylight.

I brought that fluke home, beer battered it and pan fried it with some onion rings. While my frying skills need some work, the fish itself was deeeeelicious.

Tight Lines