Cedar Point NC Inshore Fishing | Reel Obsession

Black Sea Bass

## Black Sea Bass Fish Species (Centropristis Striata) ## Fish Description Black Sea Bass is a member of the Grouper family. They are plump-bodied with an extended pelvic and dorsal fin. The dorsal fin comes with a soft rayed rear section and a spiny forward section, marked with a sequence of white spots and bands. Their body color is gray to black, but the center of the scales is white. During the spawning season, males can turn bright blue in color and have a large hump on their heads. Juveniles are brown and have a dark stripe running down the body. ## Fish Size The Black Seabass can reach about 25 inches in length; weigh more than 8 pounds, although most of them caught is less than 4 pounds in weight. The Black Sea Bass world record catch is 10 lb 4 oz. and was caught in Virginia Beach, January 2000. ## Fun Facts About Black Sea Bass Up until recently, the furthest north the black bass was found was Massachusetts. Because of the warming climate, the bass has ventured up to the Gulf of Maine where the water temperatures have increased over the years. They are born as females then change to males. This generally happens when they reach 9 - 13 inches Social interaction can play a big role in this sex reversal. The removal of the big male from the Black Sea Bass population may cause one or more of the remaining bigger females to change sex and play the male role. The female Black Seabass normally matures at the age of 2 to 5 years and produces about 280,000 pelagic eggs. ## Fish Diet Adult and juvenile Black Sea Bass feed on a variety of invertebrates such as hermit crabs, rock crabs, squid, and razor clams. ## Distribution and Habitat  ## Fishing Method The best time to fish for Black Sea Bass is from late spring to summer when they congregate close to the shore. Underwater structures like jetties, piers, and wrecks, is where you will be likely to find them. The bigger males will be found in deeper water and a rocky bottom. The Black Seabass will put up a good fight until it breaks water. A medium-weight rod that's 6-8 feet long with a reel with a 20-30 pound fused, mono or braided line will be successful. They are mostly bottom feeders although they will occasionally strike at jigs, plugs, and lures including a 2 hook bait rig. Live bait such as squid or fish strips is a very good method. The Federal Recreational Black Sea Bass season is February 1 through 28, and May 15 through December 31. ## Habitat During the summer months, they will gather around sunken wrecks, rocky bottoms, old pilings, and wharves and are most abundant at depths of less than 120 feet. Juvenile seabass tend to prefer estuaries where they feed and avoid predators. During the winter months, they migrate to the more south Atlantic states and offshore. ## Distribution Black Seabass are found on the US eastern seaboard from the Gulf of Maine to the Florida Keys and then to the Gulf of Mexico.

Bluefish

Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) Fish Description

Bluefish is a common game fish that is known for its delicious taste. Bluefish is a warm-water migratory species living in the Atlantic Ocean from Nova Scotia to Argentina and Spain to southern Africa. In South Africa, the Bluefish is known as Shad or Elf; in New Zealand and Australia, it is called Tailor. Bluefish are seasonal visitors to Cape Cod waters, arriving in mid-June and remaining until mid-October. They spend the winter in warmer waters from North Carolina to Florida's tip.

The Bluefish has a moderately proportioned body; one of its distinctive features is its broad and corked tail and its spiny first dorsal and pectoral fins that are usually folded back in a grove. The Bluefish is generally grayish to blue-green in its dorsal area, whereas its belly and lower sides fade to white.

It is a voracious predator with a large mouth and flat, triangular teeth that are strong, sharp, and prominent teeth.

Bluefish Diet

As aggressively strong feeders, the Bluefish have a complex menu of prey. They can chase after schools of forage fish owing to their fast swimming speed. They usually go on a feeding frenzy by attacking these schools of fish even after having satisfied their stomachs. They especially like sardine-like fish, Menhaden, Weakfish, Grunt, Anchovy, Squid, and Shrimp. In return, the Bluefish serve as food for bigger fish like Dolphin, Billfish, Sharks, and Tuna, among others.

Bluefish Size

Commonly, the Bluefish can grow up to 7 inches; they weigh up to 40 lbs. However, most of the Bluefish population reaches only up to 20 lbs.

Interesting Facts About the Bluefish 

• The Bluefish is the only remaining living species from the Pomatomidae family. It used to be grouped with Gnomefish, but the latter were separated.
• Lophar miocaenus from Southern California is an extinct relative of the Bluefish from the Late Miocene Period.
• Bluefish are reported to live up to 9 years.
• The Bluefish are cannibalistic, and they sometimes eat their own young.
• The Bluefish are known for churning water like a washing machine, attacking schools in shallow depths. This is called “Bluefish Blitz.”
• Bluefish is a common host to many parasites; in particular, it is often inhabited by the parasite named Philometra saltatrix, which is found in the ovaries of the fish.
• Despite being high in omega-3, children and adult women are warned against consuming Bluefish due to its significant mercury content.
• When properly prepared, bluefish is extremely good to eat, with mild, flaky meat, though larger fish (those weighing more than 10 pounds) have a stronger flavor than their smaller brethren.

Bluefish — Fishing Techniques

To reel in lots of Bluefish, you can use the following harvesting methods: trawls, hook and line, and gillnet. Note that you can only use a circle hook and nothing else; recreational anglers can only capture up to three pieces of Bluefish per day (no minimum size). As for artificial lures or flies, you can use only up to a maximum of two treble hooks. Be careful when handling Bluefish since they can bite you, leading to some serious wounds. Oily fish, such as eels, make excellent bait for bluefish. However, almost any type of baitfish can be used. When learning how to catch bluefish, another option is to use cut bait. Try chunks shaped like a small lure.

You can best fish for Bluefish from tidal rivers, bays, and sandy harbors during summer. In late summer, small, juvenile bluefish known as "baby blues" or "snappers" can be caught in sandy harbors, bays, and tidal rivers. This is an excellent fish for young and inexperienced anglers to catch. Bluefish are frequently caught using gillnets in the commercial bluefish fishery, but they can also be nabbed using a hook, line, or trawl gear.

A permit must be secured to catch Bluefish in commercial fisheries. Some states also impose a specific catch limit for commercial and recreational fishing.

Bluefish Habitat and Distribution

As a marine pelagic fish species, the Bluefish generally inhabit subtropical and temperate waters all around the globe. Most thrive along the continental shelves of America (except in northern South America and south Florida), Australia, and Southeast Asia. Interestingly, the Bluefish is also not found on the north side of the Pacific Ocean.

Typically, anglers find school of Bluefish in various habitats, including brackish waters, estuaries, rock headlands, surf beaches, or above the continental shelf. From time to time, the Bluefish migrate to open waters in schools.

Bluefish fishery management employs a bag limit for recreational fishing and an annual quota distributed to states for commercial fisheries to avoid overfishing.

Spotted Weakfish

Spotted Weakfish (Cynoscion nebulosus) Fish Description

The Spotted Weakfish (Cynoscion nebulosus) is a popular gamefish commonly found in the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico as well as in the South-eastern United States—from Maryland to Florida. Its popularity as a target by both recreational anglers and commercial fishers is due to its abundance in the said waters, the relative ease to catch the fish, and the excellent flavor of its flesh. Though the fish is also often called spotted seatrout, it is actually not a trout but a member of the drum fish family, which is known for making a croaking or drumming noise.

The Spotted Weakfish can easily be distinguished from other fish species through its compressed elongated body that is speckled with irregular faint spots on the top half. It’s mostly metallic silver in color but the upper half has a dark grayish or bluish tinge and the lower half is tan or white. Its dorsal fin is long and segmented into two parts—with the front part upright and spiny, and the back part leaning to the hind part of the fish. And like all Sciaenids or drumfish, it has a long lateral line that is faint and runs from the head to the tail base.

Diet and Size

Spotted Weakfish are known to be ambush predators wherein they would lunge at their prey who happen to pass by their turf. Their prey mainly consists of fishes and crustaceans, including shrimp, anchovies, pinfish, silverside, mullet, croaker, silver trout, snapper, gobies, sheepshead, grunts, toadfish, and mojarras.

Spotted Weakfish can grow as much as three and a half feet in length and weigh as much as seventeen and a half pounds. The average size, however, tends to be between twelve to sixteen inches in length.

Spotted Weakfish Interesting Facts

• The biggest Spotted Weakfish on record weighs seventeen pounds and seven ounces, measuring thirty-nine inches long.
• The world record Spotted Weakfish was caught by Orlando angler Craig Carson off Fort Pierce Inlet in Florida.
• Their average lifespan is between eight to ten years.
• They have large canine-like teeth that they use to grab unsuspecting prey.
• Their meat is said to have an excellent taste and best cooked by steaming, broiling, or baking.
• They are often found to have “spaghetti worms”, which are actually quite harmless to humans and these can easily be picked out when the fish is filleted.
• Aside from humans, known predators of the fish include striped bass, alligator gar, barracuda, porpoises, and sharks as well as seabirds such as cormorants and pelicans.
• The Spotted Weakfish spawns starting from spring until late summer. It usually spawns at night, with the males announcing their presence by making croaking sounds two hours before sunset. Although it would often stay in the oceanic coastal waters most of its life, it would move to bays and estuaries during spawning season. A single female can produce between 15,000 to 1,100,000 eggs per spawning and the eggs would hatch in just about eighteen hours after fertilization. The young spotted weakfish would form small schools of about fifty individuals per school and would stick together until they reach juvenile stage, in which they would head to their natural habitat of seagrass beds, sandy bottoms, muddy bottoms, and reefs.

Fishing Tips

Spotted Weakfish can easily be caught via fly-fishing as the fish is known to attack colorful lures, especially when they’re in hunting mode. They also tend to hunt from the bottom to the surface of the water so you wouldn’t really need to add weight to your lure as they’ll just try to get to your bait once they spot it. The best way to attract the fish to your area is to make it look like you’re your bait is just swimming casually near the water surface and the best way to do this is by retrieving slowly. But as soon as you see the fish approaching, reel in a little bit faster to make it seem like your lure is a fleeing fish and the Spotted Weakfish will try to strike faster and harder, thus, the hook will set to the fish’s mouth much deeper. You need to do this since the fish’s mouth is known to be soft, making it easy for hooks to pull loose, especially if the hook is not embedded in the mouth tightly.  

Habitat and Distribution

The Spotted Weakfish is endemic in the Western Atlantic Ocean, particularly from Massachusetts to South Florida; as well as within the inlets and estuaries along the country’s Atlantic seaboard. They can also be found within the entire Gulf of Mexico.

As a demersal fish, the Spotted Weakfish prefers to swim on or near the ocean floor, although they are found swimming near the surface when they’re hunting—which is actually quite often. The fish likes to hunt in shallow coastal and estuarine—in both salt and brackish—waters over sandy bottoms and seagrass with depths of up to thirty-three feet. They also tend to move closer to the shores and the shallower parts of the water during warm summer months and will only move to deeper parts of the ocean when it gets colder.