These fish are easy to find and fun to catch, and they taste like heaven on a plate.
The tripletail, also called the buoy bass, blackfish, chobie or sunfish, derives its name because the oversized dorsal and anal fins sweep back toward the tail to give the fish a three-tailed look. First described in 1790, the biologist Bloch reported that anglers discovered the fish in Surinam in northern South America.
Found today in the Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts to Bermuda, and in the Indian and western Pacific oceans and throughout the Gulf of Mexico, the average tripletail weighs from 2 to 12 pounds, and lives around cover like the shady sides of wrecks, buoys and floating or sunken debris. You can catch the fish on live shrimp, pinfish, fiddler crabs, jigs and small spinning lures.
The world-record tripletail, caught in Zululand, South Africa, in 1989, weighed 42 pounds and 5 ounces.
Anglers who carry light-tackle spinning gear with them often can have some exciting tripletail action when they find grasslines in the Gulf of Mexico. Because the tripletail has a relatively small mouth, you may want to let the fish take the bait for a few seconds before you set the hook, if you’re fishing with large bait like cigar minnows or other bottom-fishing baits.
When the blackfish takes the bait, it usually moves back under the grass, and will fight to remain under that cover. However, by applying steady pressure on the rod, you can fight the fish into open waters.
You can’t always determine the size of fish you’re angling for by the size of fish you’ve seen on the edges of the grass. Generally the small tripletail will graze on the edges of the grass, while the bigger fish will hold farther back in the shade of the weeds.
But once the bait hits the water, the big fish either will move out to take the bait or wait for the smaller tripletail to bring it to them.
The tripletail is an exciting sport fish that uses the power in its wide, flat sides to fight against the line, and it will frequently leap into the air.
What makes them even more attractive is that many fishermen consider tripletail one of the most delicious of all the saltwater species to eat, and often refer to them as the bluegills of the Gulf of Mexico because of their sweet, white meat.
Gulf Coast research
“Since 2001, our team has been researching tripletail in the southeastern United States,” said Read Hendon, assistant research scientist with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs. “We started tagging tripletail to learn more about their age, growth rate, migratory pattern, spawning habits and any other information we could find.
“At first, we were studying Florida tripletail to try to determine if management regulations were needed.”
Some states have length and bag limits. However, not all the states on the Gulf Coast regulate the catching of tripletail.
“When we first started tagging tripletail, we expected to see a similar migratory pattern that we’ve seen in the cobia,” Hendon explains. “The cobia tagging we’ve been doing since 1988 tends to indicate they over-winter in the Florida Keys. With the onset of spring, they make a northern migration up either coastline of Florida.
“The group of cobia that comes up the Gulf Coast shoreline of Florida generally shows-up in mid-March to late-March off Florida’s Coast in the Panama City and Destin areas. In mid-April to late-April, they appear off the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coasts.
“We’ve learned that the cobia stay and spawn in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the summer months.
“In the fall, they follow that same route back south to the Florida Keys for the winter. Since we haven’t seen that type of migration with the larger cobia, we think there may be some type of sub-population, primarily the bigger fish that move offshore, remaining in the Gulf, during the winter rather than migrating.”
A couple of years ago, Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, provided satellite tags to enable biologists at the research lab to track the daily movement of cobia. The restaurant chain also sponsored some aquaculture experiments for the cage-growing of tripletails.
“Although we’re still waiting for verification, we feel confident that one of the tagged cobias swam from the Alabama Gulf Coast down the Mississippi-Louisiana coast, the entire length of the Texas coast and south along the Gulf Coast of Mexico,” Hendon reports. “The tag came off somewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula. This fish has made scientists consider the idea that not all cobias make a fall migration east along the Upper Gulf Coast and then south to the Florida Keys.
“We think there may be a population of cobia that makes a complete circle coming from the Florida Keys, going all along the Gulf Coast westward to Mexico and then finally returning to the Florida Keys through the open southern waters.”
The Gulf Coast Research Lab has a problem with tracking cobia because if one of the tagged fish gets caught in Mexico, the Mexican fishermen won’t make international calls to let the research center know where they’ve caught it.
“All our tags are written in English,” Hendon said, “so the Mexicans may not even know what the tags on the fish mean.
“More than likely, the cobias that are tagged and caught in Mexican waters are put in ice chests to eat. As technology progresses, the scientific community can go forward in not only what we know about the cobia but also about tripletails.”
The information the lab has learned about tripletails tells the scientists they may not migrate over as long a distance as cobia, and also may not exhibit that northerly-southerly migration tendency. Tripletails may migrate from offshore to inshore, and vice versa. They may move offshore during cooler weather and inshore as the weather warms up.
“At the end of 2005, we had 980 tripletails tagged and released in the Gulf of Mexico, and 90 recaptures,” Hendon reports. “Most of the data we have so far is only short-term. We haven’t had very-many tripletails stay out over a long period after being tagged before they’ve been recaptured.
“We did have one tripletail that was tagged and recaptured 561 days out. That tripletail traveled a total of 55 miles. The fish was tagged in November 2003 and recaptured 50 miles south of that place in May 2005 in Estero Bay, Fla.
“We’ve only seen two individual tripletails that may be making a migration run like cobia do. We had a tripletail tagged in November 2005 that was recaptured 76 days later in Apalachicola, Fla. That fish traveled 250 miles during those 76 days. The timing of that fish’s movement exactly matched the migratory movement of the cobia.
“Another tripletail was tagged in Florida in March 2002, and then was recaptured 120 days later in July in Apalachicola, Fla. That fish had traveled 245 miles at the same time of year.
“Right now, we need to get more tripletails tagged, released and then recaptured so we can learn more about the fish’s movement patterns.”
The Gulf Coast Research Lab has identified the places tripletails prefer at certain times of the year. The tripletail lives in South Florida during the winter months. An angler there, Nick Drennon, has tagged 650 tripletails fishing around crab and lobster traps out of Englewood and Venice.
“Nick’s primary time to catch, tag and release tripletails is during the fall and winter months,” Hendon said. “His tagging program is another reason we think some tripletails may run the same migratory route that the cobia do.
“However, to date, we’ve not captured a tripletail in Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana that has been tagged in South Florida. The South Florida tripletails may stop at Apalachicola, Fla., and not continue to move westward along the Upper Gulf Coast. We don’t have a large-enough sample size yet to know for sure.”
Hendon comments that the research lab has had only three recaptures in the Mississippi Sound area.
“And none of the fish had been out very long after they were initially tagged,” he said. “Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas have no size limits or bag limits on tripletails. Anglers can catch and keep as many as they want.
“Most anglers who catch tripletails in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi know how delicious the fish are. Therefore, when they catch one, they’ll keep it and eat it, not tag it and release it.
“In Alabama, anglers can keep three tripletails, which must be 16 inches or longer. In Florida, you can keep two tripletails, 15 inches or longer. On Georgia’s Atlantic Coast, you can keep five tripletails, 18 inches or longer.”
What we know
Tripletails do make some type of extended movement as the seasons change but probably don’t move as far as cobia do.
“We think that maybe the tripletails in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas may move onshore during the summer months and offshore during the winter months, traveling north to south, rather than northwest in the spring and southeast in the fall, as the cobia do,” Hendon advises. “We also know sargassum, which is an algae that most sport fishermen refer to as Gulf weeds or weedlines, is an important nursery for young tripletails. We pinpoint many juvenile tripletails offshore in the sargassum.
“However, we’ve also found a good number of juvenile tripletails inshore. We’ve never collected tripletail larvae inshore; however, we have collected tripletail larvae in sargassum offshore.
“The tripletails we’ve collected inshore have all been from 1 1/2 to 3 inches long. The young tripletails we’ve collected have been captured from 75 miles out and farther.
“As a rule, tripletails show up in Mississippi, possibly Louisiana and Alabama in the month of June, and tend to leave as soon as cool weather arrives in the fall.
“Tripletails have amazing environmental tolerances. By that, I mean you can see adults and juveniles 100 miles offshore holding in sargassum. At that same time of year, you can find adult and juvenile tripletails in Davis Bayou, Miss., which has only seven or eight parts per thousand of salt. These fish can tolerate both extreme salt water and brackish water.”
How to catch them
Most anglers use 30-pound-test main line and 70-pound-test fluorocarbon leader, either tied to the main line or attached with a barrel swivel to the main line, and a No. 4/0 or 5/0 offset hook.
When fishing for tripletails, an angler will attach a cork about 3 to 4 feet up from the bait, and let the cork move with the current, beside and behind the buoy marker. You also can use the same hook and line setup without a cork with live shrimp but no weight.
To land a tripletail, keep your motor running the entire time you’re fishing. Then as soon as you hook the fish, shift the motor to reverse, and use the power of the motor’s backing up to help pull the tripletail away from the channel marker to keep the fish from becoming tangled in the buoy chain and breaking your line.
How you can help
Researchers Read Hendon and Jim Franks at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory need your help to learn more about tripletails by tagging and releasing them. Contact them at (228) 872-4202 to receive a tagging kit free of charge.
“We desperately need more anglers to tag and release tripletails so we can learn more about these unusual fish,” Franks said. “We believe tripletails are batch spawners. By that, I mean they come inshore and feed on the Gulf Coast, move offshore and spawn, come inshore and feed again and then move offshore and spawn again.
“They may spawn several times each summer, while moving inshore and offshore from about June through October. However, we don’t know how many trips they make inshore and offshore during the spawning season, which is the summer months.”
For further information, you can write the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at P.O. Box 7000, Ocean Springs, MS 39566-7000, or visit www.usm.edu/gcrl.