I particularly enjoy catching wandering pelagic and semi pelagic species in Connecticut waters. Each year a lot of fish that are ubiquitous in southern waters end up in Long Island Sound, and though they are often smaller than those I could catch elsewhere it is cool to encounter these species close to home. After all, they can often be caught in relative proximity to species we are much more used to seeing around here. Catching a crevalle jack and a striped bass within a half hour of each other is perfectly possible at some times of year in Connecticut and Rhode Island. November is one of those times, and perhaps the easiest time to make it happen at will. The warm water species get concentrated in, well, warm water as the environment around them cools off. Noah and I visited one of these concentrated warm water environments a little while ago. There were indeed loads and loads of jacks and blue runners present, and they were very willing and these species generally are.
Though small in stature, these fish actually fight stupid hard. They're built for chasing down prey and swimming like hell away from predators. In the pelagic world, the predators really haul ass, so it pays to be really fast if you need to run away from those critters. That translates to a pretty sweet bend in the rod when you hook these guys. I was lucky to get the largest crevalle I've caught locally, and in heavy current that fish gave a phenomenal fight- even with a bit of its tail being missing.
The blue runners actually pull a bit harder, and we got some nice little football shaped runners that made our drags sing.
I ended up keeping one of the blue runners; I pan fried it with olive oil and a little salt and pepper, the flavor and texture were fantastic. I'll certainly be eating more of these little buggers going forward. I haven't tried a crevalle yet, in part because I've seen videos of them being cleaned. It seems if they're of any size at all, they're loaded with parasites. Of course these are Florida-caught ones we're talking about, and I don't know if that would be true of the ones we get in CT. I should try and see at some point.
The fishing was very fast paced. At times blitzes broke out and there were dozens of fish breaking around us. Mixed in were a few of the expected bluefish, but they were far outnumbered by the jacks and blue runners. It would have been particularly nice to encounter some other species mixed in, perhaps lesser amber jacks or banded rudderfish. Banded rudders are notable common in Connecticut some years but this wasn't one of them.
It's kind of cool when worlds collide. Of course, there was historically a strong Gulf Coast striped bass population. The extirpation of that population was driven by human action, no surprise. Were it not for that course of events it would be possible not only to catch jacks and stripers on the gulf coast but to catch a particularly large jack and good sized stripers in the same day. That certainly isn't a likely scenario any more. It's a cool oddity to be able to catch great numbers of both fish in Connecticut, but the jack schools Noah and I encountered were present as a result of humans altering the environment. Sure, jack crevalles and blue runners have naturally made it into CT waters for years, but they wouldn't linger into November were it not for artificially warm water. So, in essence, this is a novelty fishery.
That doesn't stop it from being pretty damn fun though.
Until next time,
