The Difference Between False Albacore and Bonito

Not many anglers in Florida or the Gulf coastal states will go out of their way to target bonito (often pronounced “bonita”). Sure, the small tunas put up a good tussle, but it’s a rare angler indeed who would call up his bros to say, “Hey, let’s go out tomorrow to see if we can catch some bonito!”

It’s a damned shame though that false albacore aren’t available to anglers in Florida. One seldom hears of those small tunas being caught south of the Carolinas. But you know they’re really great game fish because light-tackle and fly anglers go nuts when the false albies are running, and will enthusiastically plan a day to go out and target them. So, I guess the takeaway is: Bonito kind of suck, but false albacore are fabulous little gamesters.

But wait — the two “species” are actually the very same fish, properly called the little tunny, Euthynnus alletteratus. If a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, you’d have to figure a false albacore by any other name fights as hard.

And the fact is, little tunnies fight as hard as bluefin, pound for pound, giving it all they’ve got. When matched to suitable tackle, they’ll make a drag sing and an angler dance to keep up with a fish running this way and that around and under a boat.

Don’t Miss Out on Jacks and Sailcats

Another Rodney Dangerfield is the jack crevalle. They assault plugs and flies with thrilling belligerence and then battle with the stamina of the Energizer bunny. While anglers would likely agree they’re fun to catch, not many go out of their way to find them. These jacks are in fact a smaller version of the giant trevally, yet the GT is revered as an awesome game fish for the very qualities of the undervalued crevalle.

There are lots more examples. One that I feel is decidedly underrated is the gafftopsail catfish. Yeah, they do leave a bit of slime on one’s leader, but they are tremendous fighters and will hit lures (I’ve caught many on topwaters), plus are one of the coolest-looking catfishes. I’ve watched seasoned anglers happily assume they’re fighting a good redfish, only to be disgusted when it turns out to be a sailcat. What? They didn’t just enjoy an exciting battle?

Of course, edibility is often cited as a reason these fish don’t enjoy more respect. I’ve heard it said more than once that if bonito or jacks were good eating, everyone would love ’em. But with so many anglers these days declaring their focus largely on catch-and-release fishing, more for sport than food, that’s a bit hard to figure.

I suspect that anglers who don’t get overly hung up on the prestige of a given species are probably having a lot more fun than those hunting only glamour fish and trophies. I’m fishing not to impress others, but for the sheer pleasure of it. I respect any game fish — including bonito, jacks and sailcats — that can put a tight bend in my light spinning rod and make my drag sing. For that kind of action, I say without shame: Deal me in every time.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

The Pacific Northwest is home to literally dozens of species of rockfishes (genus Sebastes; in no way related to striped bass of the Atlantic locally known as “rockfish”). Identification can be tough. Color is the most common indicator, but it’s not always reliable, and anglers are often left scratching their heads as to what species they’ve caught.

So it was when angler Chris Bushman in Ketchikan, Alaska, jigged up this rockfish from about 130 feet of water recently. Even the guide was unsure of the species’ identity. “All of the other area guides were perplexed as well,” Bushman writes. “It would be nice to know exactly what I caught and released.”

In fact, Chris, that’s a yelloweye rockfish, Sebastes ruberrimus. If guides were uncertain, that’s understandable, since yelloweye (widely in Alaska waters referred to as “red snapper”) are generally a brilliant orange-red as adults. But juveniles — and yours appears to be a juvie — are a darker red with two bright white stripes down each side. This fish has a thin stripe but not nearly as wide and prominent as usual. And yours has a great deal of black pigment all over, which is unusual. Fish Facts checked with our northern Pacific expert, Dr. Milton Love, who confirmed this coloration is rare, though in one area it occurs with some regularity.

A bit of intel on the species: Yelloweye (Alaska to California) are very long-lived and slow-growing. NOAA lists them as living up to 150 years. They’re very territorial, often spending their adult lives in one rocky area (usually in 200 to at least 1,200 feet of water). That and their slow growth make them exceptionally vulnerable to overfishing. As a result, it is illegal to possess or fish for (once abundant) yelloweye off California, Oregon and areas of Alaska.

Unfortunately the release of these deepwater, pressure-sensitive fish is challenging, though it’s doable with a good descending device. As you might guess, yelloweye is superb eating. It’s been long coveted for that quality and for the brilliant red color, distinguishing it from other game fish of Northwest waters.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

I recently read a short article in a fishing magazine extolling the (generally unheralded) virtues of cutlassfish (Trichiurus lepturus) as a fun gamefish in its own right. Having intentionally targeted and caught them, Fish Facts couldn’t agree more.

However, Fish Facts feels the need to set the record straight since the article stated that cutlassfish “use their sharp pointed tail to slash like a knife.” Not so much. It’s true that the odd critters lack any caudal structure: Their body at the stern end simply tapers right down to a point. But sharp? As with the long — rather elegant — dorsal fin that runs the length of the body, the tail is soft, tapering to a thin filament and lacking any spine. Sure, if you grab a cutlassfish, it will squirm and wave its body around, but that tail won’t do any damage.

On the other hand, keep your fingers out of its mouth. One look at the dagger-like fangs should dissuade even the foolhardy. That said, I’ve noticed when handling these fish that they’re generally pretty flaccid creatures and easy to handle, not nearly as fierce as they appear.

About the Cutlassfish

While on the subject, here’s a bit more information on a species that is unique, fascinating and widely available around the world in many inshore and coastal waters.

Cutlassfish are widely called ribbonfish, particularly by Gulf anglers. You won’t find them listed with that name in the IGFA book, though. Their official common name, per the authoritative Fishbase, is largehead hairtail. Cutlassfish (hairtails) can exceed seven feet. The current IGFA all-tackle record stands at 11 pounds, 5 ounces, caught on a saury off Japan in 2020.

The species is characterized by its solid, gleaming silver, chrome-plated hue, its flattened body rather like an eel after an encounter with a steamroller. The cutlass lacks scales. And while you couldn’t tell by the indifference of U.S. anglers, in much of the world it’s a highly sought (and marketed) commercial fish. I’ve filleted and eaten a number of them. Taste is subjective, but I thought they were good — not my fave, but certainly not bad. While few are eaten, many are used as bait in offshore fisheries and particularly by serious kingfish enthusiasts.

One of the most striking visuals I recall from a day in the lower Patuxent River in Maryland last year was my sounder screen. Turned out that that cutlassfish were all over the river, and it proved to be great fun on diving crankbaits. Their strikes are vicious, especially on ultralight tackle. But what really stayed with me from that day was the sounder. It stayed lit up with dozens and dozens of cutlassfish, but they didn’t present like any typical predator. That’s because their hunting style is to ambush small fish by drifting motionless vertically, head toward the surface. So they looked nothing like what I’m used to seeing when marking fish: My screen was loaded with narrow vertical slashes.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Some Fish Facts fans have been wondering about the difference between a “standard” yellowfin tuna and an Allison tuna. References to both names are commonplace. For example, Tom Pytel writes, “I often notice in photos some yellowfin tuna with very long anal fins. I’ve caught yellowfin to 100-plus pounds, but none has had those long fins. Is this strictly associated with size or perhaps sex, or some other factor?”

So Fish Facts thought it should, once and for all, clarify this tuna teaser. To cut to the chase, there is no difference: We’re talking about one species, Thunnus albacares.

But indeed, some yellowfin have clearly elongate second dorsal and anal fins. It’s the only species of tuna that exhibits this variation in fin length, says John Graves. Graves, for years chair of fisheries science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, is one of the world’s leading tuna and billfish experts. He notes that the longer fins occur in only larger yellowfin. “In the extreme, the length of these fins can be greater than 40 percent of the total length of the fish. Some refer to these Allison tuna.”

Graves says this occurs independent of the fishes’ sex, but not of the location. “There’s a lot of geographic variation in the length of these fish.” For example, he says, across the Pacific, the relative lengths of yellowfin second dorsal and anal fins tends to increase from east to west.

In scientific terms, this variation in fin size for years “created havoc with the taxonomy of yellowfin tuna,” he says. As many as seven species of yellowfin tuna have been recognized, based on fin size. “It was only in the mid 1960s that the various geographic populations were combined into a single, circumglobal species.”

So while some anglers will remain convinced they’ve caught an Allison tuna, Fish Facts fans will know the truth: It’s a yellowfin tuna, no matter the length of its fins.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Steve Wozniak knows his fish, having caught and identified (often with the help of regional scientists) well over 2,000 species the world over. So when the angler, from Alamo, California, caught this robust specimen while fishing the Red Sea off southern Egypt, with guide Amin Abu Rehab, he recognized it as a sky emperor.

“This species exists only in the Red Sea,” he comments. But then he wonders, “What keeps these fish from extending their range beyond the Red Sea?” and adds, tongue in cheek, “Somali pirates?”

Good question, said Fish Facts, so we turned to our Indo-Pacific expert Ben Diggles, Ph.D., based in Australia, for more on this cool fish.

“The sky emperor (known scientifically as Lethrinus mahsena) does in fact occur outside the Red Sea,” Diggles says, “in the Western Indian Ocean mainly along the coast of eastern Africa, but also Mauritius, the Seychelles and as far east as western India and Sri Lanka. Like other emperors within the family Lethrinidae, sky emperor are relatively long-lived, having been aged up to 27 years. They’re also a relatively large fish, growing to 26 inches long (the IGFA all-tackle record stands at just under six pounds).”

Diggles notes that in their larval dispersal stage, sky emperor larvae drift around for a month or so before settling onto coral-reef substrates. This suggests “that sky emperor have the opportunity to disperse widely throughout the Indian Ocean during their lifespan.” However, prevailing currents tend to limit that dispersal, which may account for their remaining prevalent mostly in the Red Sea.

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Tunas are part of the family Scombridae, which also includes mackerels, large and small. But there are tunas, and then there are, well, “true tunas.” Two groups (sometimes known as “tribes”) dominate the tuna species. One is Thunnini, which is the group considered true tunas, characterized by two separate dorsal fins and a relatively thick body. The 15 species of Thunnini are albacore, bigeye, black skipjack, blackfin, bluefin (three species: Atlantic, Pacific, southern), bullet, frigate, kawakawa, little tunny, longtail, skipjack, slender and yellowfin. The other tribe is Sardini; these tunas — the dogtooth tuna and several species of smaller true bonitos — are somewhat more mackerel-like (notably with a more elongated body and a row of sharp, conical teeth). Below you will find complete breakdowns of the various types of tuna in the world.

ALBACORE (Thunnus alalunga)

Easily identified, having by far the longest pectoral fins of any tuna, albacore are also noted for the lightest, whitest flesh among tunas. Circumglobal, albacore prefer temperate (versus tropical) seas and rarely venture near shore. They’ve long been a popular target for California anglers, particularly off the central part of the state, but their availability in the summer varies greatly from year to year. Later in summer and fall, albacore move up into waters off Oregon, Washington and British Columbia but are often too far offshore for most sport-fishing boats.

BIGEYE (Thunnus obesus)

Bigeye may be confused with yellowfin, but their yellow finlets are edged in black and their eyes may indeed be a bit larger. The bigeye may also be more robust in its body shape. But the single sure way to distinguish the two species is underneath the skin: The bigeye’s liver is striated (striped or streaked); the yellowfin’s is not. Found worldwide, this prized game fish is also an important target for commercial longliners.

BLACKFIN (Thunnus atlanticus)

The most common tuna of the Florida Keys and South Florida, blackfin tuna are found in tropical and warm temperate waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. Anglers target them from Brazil to North Carolina, including the Gulf of Mexico, but most of the world records hail from Florida.

A blakfin’s pec fins reach somewhere between the twelfth dorsal spine and the origin of the second dorsal fin, but they never extend beyond the second dorsal fin as in the albacore, explains the IGFA. A blackfin’s finlets are uniformly dark, without a touch of the bright yellow often present in other tunas.

The blackfin is a schooling fish that feeds near the surface, mostly caught while trolling ballyhoo or jigging with artificials. Overshadowed by yellowfins where the two species overlap, blackfins are still a fine-tasting tuna that draws praise when served properly.

BLACK SKIPJACK (Euthynnus lineatus)

This species is one of the few tunas limited to the eastern Pacific, found in waters off California to Peru. The black skippy can be identified by the four or five broad, straight stripes that extend horizontally along its back. A hard-hitting, fast-moving predator, smaller skipjack are popular among anglers for use as live bait for billfish and large yellowfin. The strong dark-red flesh is not appealing to most fishermen.

BLUEFIN (Thunnus thynnus)

The king of tunas, giant bluefin are for many anglers the ultimate prize among all game fishes. Ditto for sushi eaters, who at market may bid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single giant. There’s some irony in the fact that before the latter part of the 20th century, sport fishermen had no use for giant bluefin, which at best were used for pet food, being considered unpalatable. Go figure.

Bluefin mature at about six years of age, around 300 pounds. Atlantic bluefin spawn in the Mediterranean and Gulf of Mexico. Researchers discovered and confirmed a third spawning area in the western Atlantic called the Slope Sea. They’re not terribly picky eaters, devouring even very small baitfish, and invertebrates, including starfish, have shown up in stomach analyses.

Bluefin range from far offshore to near-coastal waters. The three species of bluefin (Atlantic, Pacific and southern) tolerate a great range of temperatures and migrate great distances, across both oceans. Satellite tags have revealed transatlantic crossings in less than 60 days. Decades ago, giants made a reliable migration each May off Bimini and down the Florida Strait, but that suddenly came to an end after the 1960s. In recent years, Southern California anglers have been catching bluefin of sizes exceptional for those waters.

BONITOS (Sarda spp)

In addition to the Atlantic bonito, there are three other species of Sarda (Pacific, striped and Australian). These four true bonitos are related to dogtooth tuna and share that species’ shape — more elongated than other “true” tunas — and somewhat non-tuna-like sharp-toothed dentition. All are small coastal pelagics; all make outstanding light-tackle game fish and (even if not universally appreciated) fine table fare as sashimi or cooked. (Not to be confused with little tunny/false albacore, often called “bonito.”)

DOGTOOTH (Gymnosarda unicolor)

That the Indo-Pacific dogtooth (along with true bonitos — basically smaller versions) belong in a different group from bluefin, yellowfin and relatives isn’t hard to imagine. Unlike those true tunas, dogtooth are longer, leaner and maybe even meaner. Per its name, check out its dentures, most impressive of any tuna. Also, dogtooth are far more solitary, and unlike most tunas are not a schooling species. Finally, they prefer to haunt steep reef slopes; anglers needn’t travel far offshore to tangle with doggies. A fine eating fish, dogtooth are known for their brutal power when hooked.

KAWAKAWA (Euthynnus affinis)

Known as mackerel tuna in Australia, the kawakawa — native to the Indo- and western Pacific — is similar to the little tunny of Atlantic waters. It is also a dark-meat species, though popular among many anglers for food, as in Hawaii. Kawakawa are, typically, tremendous fighters for their size. Kawakawa mostly inhabit coastal reefs and may even move into estuaries.

LITTLE TUNNY (Euthynnus alletteratus)

A fish of many names, little tunny are known as false albacore off the U.S. Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, where they’re a very popular game fish among light-tackle and fly anglers. In the Southeast and Gulf, they’re mislabeled bonito, and generally avoided. Yet they are tremendous fighters for their size, battling in classic tuna fashion. Little tunny are readily identified by the wavy lines along their upper back, behind the dorsal, and the spots between pectoral and ventral fins. Small tunny are also popular as baitfish, drifted live or trolled dead. They form and feed in tight schools, often churning the surface as they gorge on baitfish. The dark-red, bloody meat of little tunny keeps them out of fish boxes.

LONGTAIL (Thunnus tonggol)

The longtail inhabits the Indo-Pacific, quite near shore, even prowling estuaries and river mouths, where it often roams in large shoals. A popular game fish among Australians, the species is there labeled northern bluefin, though it is not a species of bluefin.

SKIPJACK (Katsuwonus pelamis)

With distinct horizontal stripes limited to its lower half (and no stripes dorsally), the skipjack is readily distinguished from other small tunas. One of the most widely dispersed of small tunas, the skipjack is found in all temperate and tropical seas, where it often forms huge schools. Not all anglers realize that its light meat should make it a preferred species for the fish box. The skipjack is of huge importance globally as a commercial species, with great tonnage ending up canned.

YELLOWFIN (Thunnus albacares)

Named for its bright-yellow finlets, the yellowfin is fantastically popular among anglers who fish tropical seas around the world. Their habit of schooling and feeding at the surface makes yellowfin particularly exciting targets for run-‘n’-gunners. Yellowfin are decidedly bluewater pelagics but may move into coastal waters at times. The fast-growing tuna can reach 200 pounds in seven years. Anglers in eastern Pacific waters take advantage of the yellowfin symbiotically feeding with dolphin (porpoise). From years spent as an observer for the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, California photographer, writer and angler Bill Boyce says tuna definitely follow dolphin (not vice versa). The tuna seem to understand that dolphin will find the baitfish; the tuna then help corral the bait, pushing it to the surface.

OTHER TUNAS

The post An Illustrated Guide to Types of Tuna appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Clearly, says Jean-Francois Helias, of anglingthailand.com, this is a lionfish. But which species? Helias writes that in fact one of his guides, Pro Kik Phanpraphat, and clients were catching “one after the other” while jigging near Koh Kut Island, in the Gulf of Siam. He would like to know more about this impressively spiny fish.

Handle with care, advises Sport Fishing Fish Facts expert Ben Diggles, based in Australia. That is a very venomous plaintail lionfish (Pterois russelii). There are many species of lionfish in tropical and warm-temperate waters around the world. The plaintail grows to around 12 inches, inhabiting muddy areas in shallow estuaries, bays and coastal waters throughout the western Indo-Pacific. Like most lionfishes, they’re voracious predators of small fishes, so snapping up small jigs is hardly surprising.

The plaintail, like most lionfish species, sports venom glands at the base of each spine. These, Diggles says, operate like a hypodermic syringe; when contact is made with the business end of the spine, venom containing a potent and highly painful neurotoxin is released into the puncture wound. “Fortunately the venom is not deadly, but it can cause paralysis in rare cases, so best to neutralize by dousing the affected area with or in hot water,” Diggles says.

The plaintail can be sometimes confused with the common lionfish, Pterois volitans, an invasive species now well established in the Western Atlantic, from the Carolinas south through the Caribbean. But it lacks the many rows of small dark spots on tail, soft dorsal and anal fins found on the common lionfish.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

When an angler in the U.S. mentions fishing for redfish, one species comes to mind: red drum, widely called redfish through its range — a big drum caught primarily inshore, typically in very shallow waters, in Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states. But Capt. Terry Nugent, with Riptide Charters in Sandwich, Massachusetts, caught a very different kind of redfish in 400 feet of water off Chatham, Massachusetts.

“I’ve landed a few of these over the years,” he says of the fish in his photo. The fish are marketed as redfish, he adds, “but obviously they’re not red drum. What are they really?” He also asks how large they grow, what is a normal depth to encounter them, and what is their range.

Nugent did indeed catch a redfish. That is the correct common name for four species in the genus Sebastes. Two of those species are caught off Massachusetts, says Mike Fahay, a Northeast marine fish expert: S. fasciatus, the Acadian redfish, and S. mentalla, the deepwater redfish.

These species are part of the rockfishes complex (genus Sebastes) important in Pacific Northwest recreational and commercial fisheries. They are in no way related or similar to drums and croakers, like the red drum.

Fahay says that, based on depth of capture, this would likely be the Acadian redfish, common from 400 to 900 feet. In fact, the species — found from Iceland as far as south as the Mid-Atlantic — at one time supported an important, major commercial fishery and was a common item in fish markets in the Northeast. But it’s a story too-often told: Landings plummeted from 60,000 metric tons in 1942 to just over 300 metric tons landed in 1996. The species is now considered endangered by the IUCN, yet NOAA says it is not overfished.

Like all rockfish species, redfish are slow growing and long lived, increasing their susceptibility to overfishing. These days, most that are caught weigh in at under two pounds, Fahay reports. (The IGFA all-tackle record, caught in 2010, weighed a whopping 2 ½ pounds.) At one time, redfish weighing up to 24 pounds were caught.

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Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Most U.S. anglers are familiar with various species of croakers as small bottom feeding members of the large family Sciaenidae — which includes redfish, black drum and white seabass — from surf or shallow inshore waters. In the Southeast, for example, spot and Atlantic croakers are available oftentimes in great numbers.

Angling enthusiast and IGFA representative Martini Arostegui is very familiar with such inshore croakers. But to catch some sort of small croaker in about 800 feet of water, well offshore of Buena Vista on the southern Baja peninsula, in the Sea of Cortez, was something of a shocker.

“My friends and I batted around a few potential species’ names, but with our 25-year-old identification guide, we were unable to positively identify it and figured it might not be listed in that book,” says Arostegui, who now lives in Seattle but grew up in Florida.

We turned to an expert for help on this and got a two-fer, since he invoked a second expert. Milton Love, a biologist at the Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, knows his Pacific fishes. But this one gave him trouble.

“I hadn’t seen it before, and it was caught deeper than any published record for a croaker living in the Gulf of California,” he says. So he brought in Ross Robertson at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Robertson recognized it as the bigeye croaker, Umbrina bussingi.

Love says the species has been caught even deeper — from more than 3,000 feet of water — and is found from southernmost Baja to Colombia. It doesn’t get large, reaching only around a foot in length. The bottom dweller likely feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fishes. As common as croakers are worldwide, this is one species very few anglers have ever seen — or caught.

The post Fish Facts: Croaker from the Abyss appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

A permit swimming on a flat shallow enough to expose its black scythe-like tail certainly doesn’t seem “jack-like dumb” to fly fishers who suffer through countless fly presentations without a payoff. The most jaded fly fishers personify them, and call them [bleeping] dishonest, compared to tarpon, and maybe, bonefish. But a bait fisher who strictly plies offshore wrecks for permit loves that they act like jacks, more times than not. And yes, they are the same fish — revered wherever they’re pursued and caught.

Though far fewer Florida and visiting anglers target permit than they do tarpon, bones, redfish and others, the fish’s popularity is growing, as is the concern for their numbers and habitat. For starters this premier gamefish, released as an unwritten rule by flats anglers, is also a decent food fish, so a number do end up in the fish box. Or, unfortunately, the jaws of sharks.

The Project Goal

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) researchers want to know more about the permit’s life cycle, its migratory habits, spawning activities and the threats to its habitat and very existence. The innovative project was launched in 2011. At the time, the Lower Keys Guides Association and BTT voiced concerns to the Florida Fish & Wildife Conservation Commission (FWC) regarding declining numbers of permit on the flats. Their suspicion was that overfishing of permit spawning aggregations, such as those at Gulf and nearshore wrecks, was the likely culprit.

There was little hard data at that time to support the groups’ claims, and FWC made it clear that data had to be provided in the future if the commission was expected to take the issue to the public. That was the impetus to ramp up Project Permit.

Dr. Ross Boucek, BTT Florida Keys Initiative Manager, says permit were an especially “poor data species” when Project Permit was launched in 2011, incidentally, the same year that the FWC established the Special Permit Zone (SPZ) which includes Florida state and adjacent federal waters south of a line running due east from Cape Florida in the Atlantic, the waters of south Biscayne Bay, and south of a line near Cape Sable running due west through federal waters.

“Within the established Special Permit Zone, commercial take is prohibited,” said Boucek. “And adjacent to the SPZ we have the Pompano Endorsement Zone, sharing a boundary with the SPZ. So there is allowance for gillnetters that hold a pompano endorsement license to take an unlimited number of pompano.” The two species frequent the same waters there, so the state allows an incidental bycatch of up to 100 legal-size permit. Unfortunately, this commercial harvest exists very close to the permit spawning grounds.

“We closely monitor long-term trends,” said Boucek. “I feel the commercial bycatch numbers are
sustainable, especially in the SPZ bordering the pompano endorsement zone. But on the Gulf
wrecks that attract permit aggregations we did some sentinel studies that revealed a concerning
number of hooked permit are eaten by sharks, which is a problem in other Florida fisheries.”

Permit Travels

Can permit be considered homebodies?

When asked about the possibility that permit travel from the Lower Keys as far north as Florida’s Atlantic Treasure Coast beaches or the Indian River Lagoon, where anglers catch them mixed in with pompano, Boucek said that’s not at all likely.

“First of all, the mixing in with pompano in that region is a big information gap,” said Boucek. “But we are very sure that permit we catch and tag here in SPZ waters of the Lower Keys do not make the jump north across the SPZ boundary in South Biscayne Bay. We have tracked thousands of acoustically tagged fish to prove that. These fish are not as migratory as tarpon,” said Boucek.

“A prime example of restricted migratory behavior is a permit that I and colleagues from Canada tagged nearly 5 years ago in the Lower Keys. We used both an acoustic transmitter and an external dart tag on that fish, the dart being the external type of tag our fishing guide volunteers use. Three years after the tagging, Keys guides Nathaniel Linville and John O’Hearn caught that fish only 100 feet from where we originally tagged it! Granted, it did move around the region quite a bit in those years, but it never left the general region.”

A Downward Permit Trend

Besides hard science data derived from tagging, Boucek credits detailed anecdotal information, provided by anglers and experienced permit guides, with helping BTT better understand the fish’s habits.

“Capt. Pat Bracher, out of Cudjoe Key, keeps the most meticulous catch records I’ve seen which he has shared with us. In fact his notes on declining barracuda catches provided Florida fishery managers with evidence compelling enough to tighten barracuda harvest regulations,” said Boucek. “Bracher prides himself on getting his flats clients a Grand Slam. And he has literally thousands of them to his credit. His fishing trip journal, which he shared with BTT shows an unmistakable downward trend for permit around Key West, which started in the early to middle 2000s. The trend became apparent in the Lower Keys a bit more recently.”

Threats to Permit Numbers

Other than allowances for some commercial harvest, it’s become apparent that recreational harvest puts a dent in the permit stocks as well. Among light-tackle and fly anglers who enjoy sight fishing the flats for them, release mortality is low. Education and improved catch-and-release techniques, including minimal time out of the water, has helped immensely.

Ross Boucek hopes that anglers of all persuasions better appreciate the permit for its fighting ability, even on nearshore wrecks.

“We get the fact that this species is a legal fish for the table, but we think there is excitement to catching a big permit over a wreck, and satisfaction in releasing them. If the angler’s ultimate goal is to kill a fish for the table, that’s fine too,” said Boucek.

On the subject of shark depredation, Bouchek cited BTT’s studies of that situation on a few sentinel wrecks in the Gulf and some sentinel spawning sites on the Atlantic side of the Keys that hold flats permit.

“We found that about 35 percent of hooked permit are killed by sharks on Western Dry Rocks, out of Key West, and that has been a consistent number before and even after the closure period (April 1 through July 31),” said Boucek.

And the numbers are even greater (up to 80 percent of hooked permit killed) on some Keys Gulf wrecks and those in Florida Bay just outside the Everglades National Park boundary. The BTT feels these are not sustainable numbers. In light of these troubling numbers, which are anecdotal according to BTT, researchers are not sure whether anglers after permit (or snapper species) are changing their behavior by avoiding “sharky” wrecks or not.

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