Banded Rudderfish From The Rocks

Over the years I've caught a decent number of banded rudderfish in southern New England. Banded rudderfish, Seriola zonata, area carangid fish similar to almaco jacks. They're highly pelagic, and in their younger years largely associate to floating structure like weeds mats, buoys, or driftwood. They're also known to follow sharks. When I've caught them in local waters its generally when they pile up under navigation buoys. I'd never caught them from the rocks until quite recently. 

Banded rudderfish follow warm water eddies off the gulf stream and wander into our waters in August and September when temperatures are near their peak. Not every season provides particularly good fishing for them and the windows are often short. of course, most anglers don't know or care about these little oddballs anyway. That's where I come in: the weird, the underappreciated, the obscure... that's my niche. I always spend at least a little bit of time each season looking for these oddballs. Sometimes with oddballs it's best to let them find you, though. In the final days of August I headed east in search of scombrids, and instead of catching those- though they were indeed around -I got a nice surprise in the form of a big school of rudders.

In the water, they looked like a fleet of white torpedoes running up and down the rocks harassing the silversides. Their attacks were quite coordinated, reminding me of similar patterns I've seen in scombrid species. Indeed both cargangids and scombrids school and coordinate in similar fashion, both being evolved for high speed attacks on schools of bait. Unlike scombridae the rudderfish moved up and down the rocks at a slower pace, affording far more shots than would little tunny or bonito. All I had to do was get a flash peanut in their midst. 

One of the interesting thinks about banded rudderfish is that as they grow, they actually lose those name-sake bands. In fact they can alter pigmentation at a moments notice even as juveniles, becoming patternless or heavily banded at the drop of a dime. This sometimes leads to confusion when people are trying to identify them. There are similarly shaped and patterned fish in the same genus, including lesser amberjacks, and distinguishing them can be difficult at times. But most are exceedingly rare inshore anyway.

What banded rudders do, other than look cool, change color, and feed in interesting ways, is fight like hell. For their size and even on a rod as heavy as an 8wt, these little buggers pullllll. What I really want to do, if they linger around, is bring the 1wt out there with me and get some to really scream some drag. 

Hopefully these little buggers will linger for a while. Their presence in our waters is so fleeting, as with the other exotics, I want to get it while it lasts.

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Catching Ladyfish and Jacks in Connecticut

 Over the last few years I've encountered a number of generally considered southern species that find their way into Connecticut waters in late summer and early fall as ocean temperatures peak. I've caught blue runners, banded rudderfish, and Spanish mackerel, and seen cobia and mangrove snappers. This year was an exceptional one for such vagrants locally: abundant cownose rays and Spanish macks in the western sound, frigate mackerel in RI and and even Eastern CT, and plenty of other anomalies. I lucked out with one frigate mackerel and saw some banded rudderfish but didn't really get in on the action until October, when the cooling temperatures lead the less tolerant fish to either leave or seek what warm water they could find. It was a day like many other October days, except instead of finding stripers blitzing Noah and I found jacks and ladyfish along with uncountable Atlantic needlefish and the odd Spanish mackerel.

At first it was all needlefish. There were hundreds if not thousands of them. Any cast got followed by a squadron of these odd shaped monsters, all snapping at any lure or fly we ripped past them. They'd even blast a spook. It was nuts.

Strongylura marina

Then came the ladyfish. I'd caught my first ladyfish a few years ago in Florida, where they are a year-round resident and often considered irritating, sometimes even trash fish. Of course I quickly fell in love with these acrobatic silvery fish. Catching them locally is something I've long known was possible and has been a goal of mine, I was very pleased to see it come to fruition. Soon ladyfish were making their way into the little Lone Star Skiff with regularity, including at least one that jumped into the boat still green. Noah and I were having a hysterical time catching these high flying fish, in greater numbers than we ever got in Florida. We'd never really gotten to savor the experience there, so it was exceptionally unique to catch enough locally to really get a good feel for it... and these fish are seriously fun. There's nothing in New England waters that fights quite the same. Bluefish and hickory shad don't jump as much or as high, and landlocked salmon don't zip away quite so fast, though they're probably the closest in fighting style.

Noah with the first large one.

If you look at the tail on a ladyfish, it's not dissimilar from that of some of the fastest running saltwater species like bonefish and milkfish. It's not surprising that they fight as hard as they do. It is a little surprising that people don't enjoy catching them more. Sure, they are aggressive and easily duped; and yes their maxillary has a sandpaper texture and can snarl too light a leader, but damn is it a riot when they take off. 

It wasn't long before we became aware of another southerner in our midst when the aquatic equivalent of a swarm of bees followed my fly in... a school of tiny crevalle jacks, and one of them did find steel.

Caranx hippos. On a Woolly Bugger. In CT. 

Yet another member of the Caranx genus turned up just a few casts later, the blue runner. Unlike ladyfish and crevalle jacks this is a species I'd caught locally, and New England is actually where I got my lifer. 

Caranx crysos, blue runner, this one took a gurgler.

The slay fest continued as fish suddenly began to blitz. There were clearly bluefish and ladyfish there but I also saw some scombrid like slashes and jumps. Though I managed to maintain my season long skunking of  larger scombridae and only piked up a few bluefish, Noah managed a nice Spanish mackerel. By now it really felt like we were actually fishing in Florida.

When the blitzes subsided we resumed the ladyfish and jack beat-down along the rocky shoreline. For someone who likes variety, getting these species mixed in with more locally and seasonally ubiquitous ones like needlefish and bluefish was awesome. We were doubling up on ladyfish constantly and laughing hysterically for hours. It was just visually spectacular uncomplicated fun. 

I've been playing around a lot with flies tied on lead and tungsten jigs this year. Their applications for trout, bass and panfish were already well explored but they definitely have application in the salt too.

As darkness fell we weren't sure what would happen, whether the bite would slow or stop, or change at all. It actually improved because the needlefish seemed to stop feeding, and because they are so difficult to hook we were getting a higher percentage of fish hooked and boated once the needlefish stopped biting. They were still so balled up though that I was regularly foul hooking them. I received a few bites from needlefish, they are unpleasant to say the least. I'll lump needlefish in with bluefish, mangrove snapper, and skates as fish that seem to very intentionally try to bite you, and needlefish are very good at it. 

As darkness fell I hooked the biggest of the ladyfish I'd gotten. The initial run was so hard and fast I thought it must be a Spanish mackerel, but when it came up that silver slender form was a nice surprise. This was one of my favorite fish fights this year, actually. And there have been some memorable ones.

The night proceeded with loads more ladyfish and one especially memorable visitation from a huge predator. We left genuinely shaken, but so excited we came back the next day for more.

Those two evenings will surely remain some of my most memorable saltwater days in the northeast. 

I love what I get to do.  

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon