Bluefish Feeding Frenzy
When I was a little kid, my parents were lucky enough to have purchased a summer cottage on the water. Believe it or not, only paid $9000 for it. My cottage was miles away from being a mansion. Nowadays, a lucky purchase like that is as close to impossible as you are thinking right now. I never had more fun growing up, because of my summers up until 1974. During the winter of 1975, someone broke in and burned it down.
One of my most favorite experiences at the cottage was when bluefish would start running. It was the most exciting and savage event that I have ever witnessed. They would circle the bait fish, a.k.a. Bunker (technical term, Menhaden), they begin feeding on them in the most savage way you might think. The bluefish word bite them in half and swallow the one half bunker. Catching bluefish at a time like that was pretty simple because they would attack anything. Even a little kid like me could catch one.
The method that was used was pretty simple. We would cast out a treble hook that was weighted down in its center into the boiling school of bunker. We would then snag one and hope that a bluefish would attack the bunker and get on my hook.
That was a very primitive method. You had to become a caveman during a frenzy like that or you would go home empty-handed and ridiculed by your friends.
I never knew anyone that fished for bluefish in any other way. They would start boiling and would simply vanish just as fast. Bluefish would be in a total feedingfrenzy. Looking back, it seems like the only thing they wanted to do was kill. I remember catching a bluefish once and when I got it in the boat, it threw up a bitten in half bunker.
Keep in mind that when there is a feeding frenzy, everybody wants to get involved. People that are not quite human would want some action. That is how many fights would break out on the water. What I also mean is, bunker are smaller than bluefish. Bluefish are smaller than sharks, tuna and other fish. I was out in a very small row boat in the middle of a feeding frenzy when the dorsal fin of a shark popped up. I was only a little kid , so the legend of that shark became bigger every year until it was Jaws. I will never know the actual size of that shark, just that it was there.
Once we moved back to our real home and everyone went back to school, they would actually go fishing from shore before school every morning. The frenzies would have slowed down as the water got colder. By then, my friends would actually catch bluefish by really FISHING. I think about those days, every day. Somebody actually filmed a feeding frenzy and put it on YouTube. A link to one is below. The hope you enjoy it – this is what I was in the middle of
A couple of points that I forgot to make earlier
- Stay out of the water during a feeding frenzy or You Will Be Bitten. Bluefish do not discriminate
- I had a moment when I was a kid when I was in my rowboat and no one was around. A bluefish just jumped out of the water, and ate a passing butterfly. Strange but true. They are that savage.
Be Careful
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