I was trolling bright lures while cruising out to a major reef zone on my charter boat WaveWalker.
The plan was to see if any early surface game fish had shown up yet and then help my passengers catch some delicious red snapper, ocean whitefish, olive rockfish and lingcod at the reef zone.
Trolling was a gamble because the surface gamefish had not yet shown up, but it could happen at anytime here in August. The plan to fish the reef zone was solid because the area has been producing plenty of good, wholesome, tasty rockfish and lingcod.
We did not hook up with topwater fish, but I grinned happily because there was massive sign that gamesters like bonito, barracuda and yellowtail would be there soon.
I saw large baitballs of very small anchovies and they were throughout an area a couple of square miles. That is exactly what the game fish want.
There will be many more baitballs (a.k.a. schools) showing up this month and they are very cute.
Each anchovy right now is only a couple of inches long. Their eyes seem overly large because they grow into their eyes So at this size we call them, “two eyes and a wiggle.”
I described the situation to my charter passengers and we watched the “chovies filter-feeding ambitiously through the morning. They skim along the surface with their mouths wide open, scooping up and filtering out the minute foodstuffs of the sea.
The water flows out through their flared gills. The spectacle looks something like a small patch of rainfall on the surface of the water and it even sounds like raindrops hitting the water.
Looking across the water as we trolled, I saw many dozens of these feeding spots as far as I could see.
For every baitball at the surface there were many more below the surface. Each baitball was not the same size but typically the dimensions were 20 feet tall and 30 feet wide with some much bigger and some smaller.
As tiny and tightly packed as they were, each baitball was probably tens of thousands of individuals. Across the whole area within my range of sight, there were millions of anchovies.
These little critters feed voraciously and grow very quickly.
By late August, they will be big enough to capture the attention of foraging topwater gamefish which will skillfully work the baitballs from the bottom, which drives the baitballs to the surface where seagulls, pelicans, cormorants and other sea birds get their opportunistic bellyful.
The foodchain amazes me, and when it all happens right in front of me on such a massive scale, I am mesmerized. It is a humbling experience.
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
