Catching billfish — sailfish, marlin, swordfish and spearfish — in South
Florida or anywhere else in the world has much more to do with science than
luck.
That was the gist of a talk by two prominent local oceanographers at the
daylong 2011 Billfish Expo last month in Dania Beach.
“We’ve learned that fish like preferred habitat,” Mitch Roffer, president of
Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service Inc., said. “They like to grow fast
so they can spawn. They need a certain water temperature, water color, clarity,
dissolved oxygen and salinity. This habitat expands and compresses. If you can
understand where this habitat is, you’ll understand where you can catch fish in
certain areas.”
Roffer has built a career selling real-time fishing forecasts to anglers,
using satellite data on sea surface temperature, ocean currents and color to
predict where the heaviest concentrations of fish will show up. At the expo, he
and University of Miami professor Art Mariano explained how and why those
factors are important to fishing success.
Mariano explained that distribution of oxygen in the water can drive fish to
the surface or send them deep. Ocean turbulence, he said, determines
distribution of plankton, the beginning of the food chain. Areas where ripples
and smooth water converge — which appear as “slicks” on the surface — are
actually differences in water mass that concentrate bait.
Most offshore anglers know that the location of the Gulf Stream is key to
locating billfish. But they might not understand that this giant, northerly
flowing body of ocean does not have fixed boundaries. It can fluctuate from a
few miles off the coast to more than 100 miles offshore. The stream has eddies,
according to Roffer, that rotate counter-clockwise and pull nutrient-rich waters
to the surface — a prime location for feeding game fish.
“Work the boundaries,” Roffer advised.
Mariano surprised some members of the audience when he told them that he
doesn’t believe lure color is important in attracting game fish. He said using
contrasting colors is best, and that most fish are color-blind at night.
As for using chum to attract fish “sound is quicker than scent,” Mariano
said. “The sound you need to make is between 40 and 400 hertz — low
frequency.”
Added Roffer: “If you have a gear that’s missing and making high-frequency
sounds, the guy next to you is going to catch fish, and you’re not.“