Fishing with Slider

I love to fish. I love to sail. I’m astonished that more sailors don’t do both.

Last spring we sailed Slider down to Navarre Beach for an overnighter and anchored off the beach near a Pennsylvania couple who were sailing their Farrier tri on their annual vacation to the area. The husband noticed the fishing rods set into holders on Slider’s rudder stocks, and told me that he liked to fish, but it was just too much trouble to sail and fish at the same time.

I don’t get it. If you’re going to be out there anyway, why not trail a line and see what you get? It doesn’t have to be an elaborate effort, but it adds an element of anticipation to the sailing, and if you get lucky, a fine meal too.

Yesterday my daughter April and I got up before dawn, because I wanted to catch some Spanish mackerel. It’s the right season of the year, when this migratory fish returns to the Northern Gulf in great numbers. There was a time not many years ago when this species was in trouble. But since the controversial net ban legislation, the fish has made a big comeback, and is now one of the easier species to catch. In the bay, it’s best to try for the fish on an incoming tide, and since high tide was at mid-morning, we had to crawl out of bed at an impolite hour to have a chance at getting across the bay before the slack.

NOAA weather claimed that we’d have NW winds at 10 and that the bay would be smooth. Imagine my surprise when we exited the bayou and found the winds out on the bay blowing from the north at 20 with gusts to 25. We reached across the bay at 6 to 7 knots under full mainsail only, and it was really too much sail. It wasn’t so much that we were in any danger, but at that speed in the big chop that had developed overnight, we got wet. The air temperature was in the 60s, so we got cold as well as wet. April, being the clever girl that she is, huddled down in the cockpit and put her chair over her body, so she didn’t get quite as wet as I did. But occasionally she had to emerge from her nest, as she did when we hooked a bluefish off Destin Point. The poor guy was skipping from wavetop to wavetop, making the rod jerk in a really odd manner. He was just big enough to be legal, so we put him in the box and broad-reached down the Destin shoreline, several times hitting 7.5 knots. When we reached the bridge, we sailed along it and then west through the Coast Guard channel. The bay was ugly. The wind was blowing the tops off the chop into long windrows of dirty foam and the wind in the rigging had a slightly scary note. Later that day I stopped at a local tackle shop to buy some new lures and complain about my outing. A fishing guide who was there referred bitterly to Choctawhatchee Bay as Chocolatehatchee Bay– the water was still very dirty from the recent flooding rains.

In less vigorous conditions, we’d have trolled back around the Crab Island flats, and probably hooked a few more fish, but we were both cold and wet and we had a 5 mile beat through that fierce chop to look forward to. So we headed for home. Besides, mackerel are sight predators who like clear water. I didn’t think we were going to catch any that day. I was wrong.

Once back out in the bay we hooked a good-sized Spanish and managed to get him in the boat before he flipped off the hook. One of Slider’s great virtues is that she is so well-behaved when you release the steering line. She comes up into the wind and sits there quietly while you tussle with the fish, and this is a very reassuring trait in a sailboat. There will always be panicky moments aboard and it’s really nice to have a boat that takes care of herself when you’re too distracted to do so.

I put the rod holders on the rudder stocks, because Slider has a long boom.

The stocks were the only place I could put holders where the rods would not foul the boom. When fishing is good and I want to catch a fair amount of fish, I troll a lure from each holder, and the separation keeps the lines from tangling, except when tacking or gybing. If I plan to do a lot of tacking, I usually only run one line, so I don’t have to worry about tangles.

The most productive trolling setup for mackerel and bluefish in this area is a mackerel tree with a 00 Clark spoon clipped to the end. The mackerel tree is just a length of heavy monofilament with 4 lures made from short lengths of colored plastic tubing and single hooks. On days when the bluefish are hitting, I’ve sometimes landed 2 or 3 bluefish at a time with this rig. I usually rig this with a 3 ounce trolling weight, to keep the rig from skipping along the surface at speed, and this is also a good idea for another reason. Folks don’t seem to grasp the idea that people can be trolling from sailboats, and I’ve been cut off by oblivious power boaters on many occasions. With the trolling weight, I don’t have to let out as much line as I do an unweighted rig, and so the rig is less vulnerable.

Here along the northern Gulf Coast, we’re so spoiled by good fishing that a lot of local fishermen think bluefish are only good for shark bait, but they’ve never had my smoked bluefish dip.

Most everyone likes Spanish mackerel, but as pelagic predators, they do suffer from elevated mercury levels and the EPA recommends no more than a couple meals of mackerel a month. I smoked both the bluefish and the mackerel we caught yesterday, and if someone doesn’t take it away from me soon, I’m going to get half my allowance for this month pretty quick.

The little 2-3 pound bluefish we get here in the bay in spring and summer are usually less than a year old and haven’t had time to accumulate too much mercury, I’m told, so smoked bluefish dip is frequently on the menu around our house. Neither mackerel nor bluefish freeze well raw, but once smoked, they stand up to freezing a lot better, so the bounty can be stretched over the leaner times of the year.

To sum up: It’s not much trouble to stream a fishing line when you’re out sailing, if you happen to go sailing where there are fish that can be caught trolling. Remember– the cardinal rule for catching fish is that the folks who catch the most are the ones who put in the most time fishing. And it’s a lot of fun, even if you don’t catch anything. It’s a great thing to do to interest your family in the pleasures of being on the water. I’ve got a couple of enthusiastically sullen teenage boys, who if forced to go sailing with me, may actually enjoy it if we can catch a fish or two. I always let them reel the fish in; my attitude is that any fish caught on my boat are, in a very real and legally binding sense, fish that I caught, no matter who hauls them out of the water.

My wife is an enthusiastic fisherwoman, too. While Slider was building, and the only boat we had was an 11 foot dinghy with a crappy home-made lug sail, she’d still go out on the bay with me and have a fine time murdering bluefish.

And my daughter has always liked fishing with me, from the time she was big enough to hold a rod. Here she is almost 20 years ago.

I think the look on her little face says it better than any words could.