Massachusetts Kayak Fishing: How to Target Bluefish in Nearshore Waters

Hi sea kayakers and kayak fishermen. Welcome to another episode of Notes from a Local, your online audio and video resource for tips, tools and pointers useful to sea kayakers and kayak fishermen around the world. I'm your host, Adam Bolonsky, podcasting on the web from Twitter at sea kayak.

Today's topic: bluefish from a kayak.

Bluefish have a wholly unwarranted reputation for oiliness, whatever that means, and also a reputation for tasting fishy. That reputation isn't wholly undeserved, but not due to any fault of the fish. Let's get that straight, right here, from the outset. A bad tasting bluefish is always the fault of the fisherman.

So if you eat a bluefish that tastes oily, you're eating a spoiled bluefish. And chances are the fish spoiled because the fisherman who caught it didn't bleed and gut it as soon as he caught it. Short and long of the issue: bluefish will taste crummy if you don't take care of them in the boat. As for freezing them, forget it. They don't freeze well.

The keys are to bleed and gut them in the boat, keep them out of the sun, and eat them within a day or two. So now that we've got that out of the way, here's why. Their high fat and oil content - no higher, really, than the more widely-praised salmon - make this fine fighting fish vulnerable to spoilage, and to all sorts of put-downs from anglers who don't know better.

Bluefish are all muscle, from stem to stern, and where you have muscle, you have a latticework of veins, arteries and capillaries. All of those vessels hold blood. And as any fish inspector will tell you, blood in a dead fish oxidizes, leading to spoilage. So, number one key to good-tasting bluefish is to head off oxidization right there in the cockpit, and within an hour or so of capture, by bleeding them. Deer hunters already know how important this is.

To reiterate: drain the blood from them. Do it right there, where you caught them, on the water. Get around to removing the eviscera and gills within an hour or so. This is all pretty easy to do in a kayak provided the water is calm, you have a sharp knife, and you don't mind getting your hands a little bloody.

That said, the easiest way to catch bluefish from a kayak is by trolling a large plastic swimming and diving lure equipped with treble hooks. If you troll you won't have to chase the fish - which is often the case in shallow nearshore waters and in estuarine bays behind barrier beaches, where bluefish usually surface and surge from place to place chasing shoals of baitfish. Use a steel leader to protect your line from bite-offs.

Buefish make short work of monofilament when their teeth nick and scratch fishing line. Steel leader also prevents losing multiple lures. Use a large swimming lure that runs from six to ten feet deep in the water column. You don't really need a rod holder on the foredeck or aft deck. Instead, simply place the rod butt one one knee and lay the rod rod aft, flat towards the stern, by resting the rod against your thigh and hip.

If you set up for trolling this way, place the rod on the side of the cockpit opposite your stronger hand. Come time to land a fish, you'll be stablizing the kayak with your stronger, more coordinated leg and hip, and can reach into the water with your stronger hand to tailgrab your catch. For righties, then, this means setting up on the left, or port side, of the cockpit. For lefties, vice versa.

The rest of the job is simple. Set your drag just tight enough so trolling doesn't pull line from the reel. Cast the lure, set down the rod, and begin trolling. Paddle faster than you would for striped bass. You'll cover more ground that way, and will set the lure deeper. If bluefish are near, they'll detect your lure and it won't be but just a moment before one takes a swift and most decisive whack at it.

Here are a few other pointers. Bring a tackle box with a couple extra lures and leaders in it. If you want to go cheap, and prefer something watertight (a good idea, because gear always gets wet in a kayak), a Tupperware container will keep your lures dry and handy.

You'll want a sharp knife also, for bleeding your fish. A clasp knife with a locking blade is a good choice. Keep the knife closed when you're not using it and you run less risk of getting cut by accident. A locking blade prevents the knife from closing on a finger. Tether the knife to the kayak or to your pfd -- if you drop the knife, you won't lose it overboard. You'll find that a tether two and a half feet long or so gives you working length to spare, yet not so much that the tether gets tangled up with your reel, rod or paddle.

Finally, attach an easy to maintain saltwater spinning or trolling reel to a short casting or boat rod, and you're set. Launch into into bluefish waters and troll a few hundred yards offshore. Keep an eye out for surfaced schools, a commonplace in waters where bluefish show up in mid-summer to feed voraciously until they leave in late fall.

I've always enjoyed bluefishing off a low-lying rock island, comprised of glacial till and covered with seabirds, off the rocky shoreline of northeastern Massachusetts, where I live. The island isn't much, really a flat half moon of rough land about half a mile in square area, surrounded by submerged rocks and boulders and littered with storm-driven commercial fishing gear. There isn't much on it: a mouldering swamp that goes dry in summer, cattails, thick stands of staghorn sumac.

The whole jumbled mess is surrounded by ledges slanting down towards rocky seatbottom that often hold striped bass and small scatterings of groundfish. Bluefish gather around this island every year in summer, and often hang around until the end of September. It's not unusual for me to meet the state-regulated ten-bluefish bag limit in the course of a few hours, less often when the fish are deeper and further offshore.

Well that's it for today's installment of Notes from a Local, your online audio and video resource for tips tools and pointers useful to sea kayakers and kayak fishermen around the world. I'm your host, Adam Bolonsky, podcasting and writing on the web from twitter at sea kayak.

And one last pointer. If you target bluefish, mind your hands. Bluefish bite hard, and their teeth are sharp. But don't let that dissuade you from bleeding your catch . You'll be glad you did. Your fillets will taste better and will stay fresh longer in the fridge. Thanks for stopping by, and until next time, see you on Twitter at sea kayak.