Blue runner hooked through dorsal area will tend to dive. Add a float to keep it near surface, or let it swim on down.
May 30, 2025
By Ed Killer
West Palm Beach’s Ron Mitchell has spent countless days on the water during his 30 years as one of the most competitive tournament anglers in the Southeastern U.S. Mitchell has fished tournaments for a wide variety of bluewater species including dolphin, sailfish, wahoo and his chief target, king mackerel.
Recently, the Southern Kingfish Association Hall of Famer shared his advice for catching and caring for blue runners, often called hard tails. These tips for one of the most frequently used live baits by tournament anglers can easily be applied for the weekend warrior planning for a successful fishing trip.
Blue Ribbon Runners Mitchell prefers blue runners as live baits over other popular choices like goggle-eyes, threadfin herring, pilchards, Spanish sardines, cigar minnows and more.
“Everything eats a goggle-eye, so you spend a lot of time catching fish you aren’t targeting,” he told FS. “Bonito, for instance, are relentless; jacks will find them and sailfish, too.”
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Know Where to Find Them When it comes to catching and keeping live blue runners, it pays to know where to find them in the first place.
“A lot of times they’ll school around a shallow wreck, a navigation buoy or can or a small spot with hard live bottom 15 to 30 feet deep,” he said. Mitchell has learned to use his Raymarine Axiom XL2 to identify what kind of bait is marked on the screen. With a high-end transducer, Mitchell can almost tell whether he’s over blue runners or something else. That’s when the chum bag goes out and the bait fishing begins.
Double-hooked blue runner with stinger, popular rig for kingfish and others. Handle With Care When possible, Mitchell prefers self-caught live baits to bought baits, even though there are several reputable bait suppliers. And the proper handling of blue runners—or any other live bait intended to store for any length of time in a bait pen—begins as they come out of the water.
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“I won’t throw a net unless it’s for pogies up north because the baits beat each other up in the net and the net takes off so much of their slime coating,” Mitchell said.
“I’m looking for a 1.5- to 2-pound blue runner. I like to have bigger bait even if I’ll deploy a small bait when I’m actually fishing. I like to use the 15 to 22 hook size R & R Tackle Sabiki. We have one person dedicated to using a de-hooker to unhook the runners into the livewell. We try to avoid horsing them around and try not to grab them by hand, either. We try not to drop the baits into the well, either. Everything we do is to protect their slime coating.”
The same goes for moving the baits from the boat’s livewell to the bait pen and from the pen back to the livewell on fishing day.
“Captain Ray Rosher makes a bait net that keeps a little water in the net to keep from removing the slime from the fish when you are transferring them. Also, we’ll be careful unloading the livewell. It might take us two hours to empty the livewell into the bait pen when we get back because we want to take good care of those baits.”
Mitchell likes to keep the numbers in his livewell manageable.
“We don’t want to overcrowd the livewells, and we try not to mix up the baits either. I have four livewells on my boat and we’ll put the runners in one, threadfin herrings in another and pilchards in another. I want to separate them,” he said.
Mitchell said watch bait when you find them in a school offshore—they’ll swim in a small circle. He said that’s why it pays not to have corners in your well.
Water Matters When an angler gets the bait back to his or her pen or pens, Mitchell said the water quality, salinity and temperature have to be considered.
“We had 200 beautiful blue runners at a tournament in Biloxi one year and the night before the tournament, a cold front blew through and dropped the temperature to 28 degrees. We lost every one of our baits. Where are you planning to put them? You have to consider that. If you have a dose of freshwater from rains running out of a nearby canal or just crummy water in a closed in marina, your baits could suffer or die. All these things will factor into how healthy your baits will be.”
They Are What They Eat Mitchell said sometimes blue runners might need a day or two to settle before they will start to eat. He knows some guys who will catch their baits a week or a month before they need them and feed them until they need them. For him, the diet is simple.
“I’ll use small silversides or little shrimp or sometimes krill we’ll buy at the pet store. Once they start eating, we’ll feed them every day. A lot of times we’ll half-thaw a chum block and put it into a container in the pen,” Mitchell said.
Other anglers will use specially designed feed or high protein fish food to feed their baits.
Fresh is Best The last step in the bait management process is deploying them into the bait spread. Again, Mitchell says minimizing handling often helps ensure you have a fresher, livelier blue runner to offer the fish of a lifetime.
“These predator fish you’re fishing for have excellent eyesight and senses. They can tell when a bait is better than another one behind a boat a few hundred yards away. If our baits don’t look right when we put them out, we’ll get a fresh one right away. It may not mean as much to a guy fishing for the weekend, but if a $400,000 tournament winning payday is on the line, the bait is what separates you from the other guy.”
This article was featured in the May 2025 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe
