Reading the Ocean Leave a reply
Eric Vanhofwegen with a chrome Southeast Alaska chinook he caught underneath a flock of diving birds.
Bird Activity
Weren’t they a band back in the 60’s? And now they eat fish, go figure. Watching bird behavior on the saltwater can be a good indicator of what’s going on below the surface. The most obvious of the birds is the seagull, a bird that no fish should ever trust. If fish or diving birds happen to push a bait ball to the surface you can bet it won’t be long before the gulls are taking advantage of the opportunity to prey on the bait.
When gulls are working bait on the surface the best approach is to circle the area the birds are working and avoid driving right thru the middle of the bait. Motoring thru the middle of the bait will usually send it below the surface and then it’s anybody’s guess which direction the bait will go. For the best results it’s generally best to fish around the edge of the bait or cast into it.
Diving birds are also an indicator of bait, but they are not always as obvious as the seagull. Diving birds come in an assortment of colors and shapes and they all have one thing in common, they dive, sometimes very deep, to feast on baitfish such as herring, sardines, anchovies, and candlefish. If these birds are diving under the surface repeatedly chances are there is a bait ball directly under them that could have some fish around it.
Lord knows how diving ducks communicate with each other, but they always seem to know when their bird buddies half a mile away have found a bait ball to munch on. Take note when a flock of sea birds picks up and flies to another area and keep an eye on the birds they are joining up with to see if there is any indication of bait. Where there’s bait, there’s usually fish.
Last year we were fishing a fairly large bay in Southeast Alaska and while we were getting a bite here and there, the fish really weren’t there in great numbers like they were the day before. As we ran into the bay, however, I noticed a very large concentration of diving birds, perhaps five to six hundred, diving in the deep water at the entrance to the bay.
After hooking a couple of coho in the area that we normally fish I motored off towards the concentration of diving birds and immediately recognized what all the fuss was about. The sonar was lit up like a Christmas tree, with massive balls of bait surrounded by feeding coho and Chinook. We dropped four cut plug herring over the side and immediately tripled up on tail walking coho. The bite continued for two more hours and we ended up with a box full of coho and released four beautiful king salmon. Had it not been for the birds the whole feeding frenzy below the surface may have gone unnoticed.
In the bluewater it’s the frigate bird that the fish needn’t trust, as it’s a dead giveaway that baitfish are nearby. One captain in the Bahama’s, who’s name I can’t remember, always says, “Find me a frigate bird and I’ll find you a fish.” This has been true on nearly every bluewater trip I’ve ever been on and the captains that work the bluewater are constantly on the watch for these large birds.
Rob Endsley