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Watch the Skies to Catch Fish

Chris Fullilove - JHO ProStaff - TX
May 30, 2006

Wanna catch fish?
Sometimes you have to look up.

Fishing the Texas Gulf Coast can be a learning experience sometimes. One of the best lessons that many salt water anglers will discover is to observe their surroundings. When the spring months arrive, the angler needs to pay particular attention to the horizon for diving birds. Diving birds can turn a day of uncertainty into a trip of action and potential limits.

When bait starts to funnel back into the bays from the Gulf each spring, birds will congregate above mullet, shrimp, and other baitfish that are herded to the surface by trout or redfish in a feeding frenzy. When you see seagulls and brown pelicans plummeting to the water’s surface, you have just identified a hungry school of fish.

During my last fishing trip, the day started out uneventfully, with us catching only a few undersized speckled trout. We couldn’t locate any healthy schools of fish. This pattern halted when we saw birds hovering over the water, and then diving in unison on waves of bait pushed to the surface. I realized that the bait was concentrated between two shallow, shell reefs. Fish were using these reefs to their advantage and feeding on the confined bait.

After observing the situation, I cut my current drift short, and powered up the outboard. I brought the boat inline with the birds about 100 yards upwind and shut the motor down. Sometimes when fishing the birds, you might notice that they move faster than the fish as they follow the bait, but just because the birds have moved, doesn’t mean that the fish have. We started casting with the wind as we neared the area where the birds were diving. Typically, larger trout and redfish will not be feeding on the actual bait in the area; rather they will be feeding on the smaller trout and redfish feeding on the bait. So casting towards the perimeter of the feeding frenzy has a better chance of yielding a bigger fish.

Additionally, when fish are feeding on distressed bait in a fury, they will strike out of instinct. This is similar to the situation where if someone tossed you a pair of keys, you would catch them out of reflex, whether or not you expected or needed them. This is the kind of behavior that makes fishing the birds a productive technique. The birds are an indicator for a high concentration of fish, whether they are hungry or not.