Frenzied Bluefish Prime Targets for Fishermen

Southern Anglers Love to Go After the Angry Gamefish

It's April in southern waters, which means it is time to go fishing for bluefish. Blues are everywhere now, zipping around with mean intentions and eating everything that is crazy enough to cross their path. If you find them you can catch a lot of them in a hurry, as they are a fish that stages runs on the piers and in the surf. Just be careful after you pull one in that the blue doesn't take a second bite out of you.

Bluefish fall into different size categories which saltwater anglers have given different names. Small blues up to a few pounds are called snappers. Medium size blues are known as tailors. The big fifteen or more pound monster blues are called choppers. Snapper blues are most often caught by bottom fishermen and those plugging from the piers or surf, while the bigger fish will hit rigs meant for big red drum or king mackerel. When an angler with a light-tackle rod hooks up with one of the tailors or choppers it can be the definition of angling chaos. As you can tell by the names, bluefish of all sizes like to bite. They also put up a hard and enraged fight. If they got much bigger, we'd need shark fishing gear to get them in. For this reason, blues are a much sought-after species. Kids, in particular, seem to love bluefish which are often accompanied by swearing and lots of blood.

Yet, strangely enough, some fishermen actually disdain bluefish and don't like to catch them, preferring species like speckled trout. This is mainly because they don't consider blues good to eat. It seems to be mostly a southern thing, which never fails to amaze our Yankee visitors down here. After all, eating freshly caught bluefish is a longstanding northern tradition.

One explanation is that southern anglers tend to fry everything (have you seen the fried pickles and candy bars at the state fairs?) and bluefish just aren't very good fried. They also aren't very appealing after being left in the hot sun or an ice-less cooler for a few hours. If you know what you're doing, however, bluefish are great to eat, especially broiled or baked and not overcooked. Like many fish, the smaller ones taste better than the larger ones.