Make the Most Out of Menhaden Magic

I’ll never forget the sharpness in my friend’s tone: “Put your hand down!”

As the normally amiable captain idled into the Northeast Florida surf, I stood on the bow and scanned for the telltale fluttering flips that would guide us to the day’s live-bait ammo. The problem arose when my elation at spotting the meatball overrode the confidentiality I had been sworn to uphold.

We had started our morning as countless kingfish tournament days begin — hunting “pogies” in the surf. Diving or low flying pelicans help, but nosing the bow toward the beach and looking often gets the job done.

Menhaden Are Pure Kingfish Gold

As I learned all those years ago, pointing alerts other crews that won’t hesitate to sling a net on what you’ve spotted. In that light, my pal’s inflection was duly warranted. After all, the chunky baitfish known as Atlantic menhaden are pure kingfish gold. Sure, you have plenty of other bait options and, on that day, several other boats had already blasted offshore with a cooler full of brined and frozen ribbon fish and hopes of catching more bait with sabiki rigs. For many, however, the morning me menhaden hunt was — and still is — time well spent.

Hopping over to the Gulf Coast, one of the best tips I got from a Pinellas county kingfish angler involved wind drifting deep flats in the predawn hours and flashing a spotlight across the surface. The sudden illumination would send menhaden (locally called “shad”) into a frenzy that revealed their position.

Capt. Cody Chivas of Indian Rocks Beach has nothing against early rising, but he prefers netting his shad late morning on an incoming tide. Around 10-11 a.m., he finds the shad pop in the high sun.

Put ‘Em To Work

Exceptionally slimy and one of the smelliest baits you’ll put in the boat, menhaden are the kingfish standard for most of Florida’s central to upper east coast. Slow trolled on wire stinger rigs — often aesthetically accented with colored beads or skirts (aka “dusters”) for low-visibility — they create their own scent trail, but dicing or grinding fresh pogies offers instant chum options.

While a lone menhaden on a standard stinger rig — a single live-bait hook with a No. 4-6 treble hook trailing on a 3- to 4-inch wire segment — works well, a couple of creative options also merit consideration.

Double Trouble

If one pogy’s good, two’s better. Start with a lead single hook on a 3- to 4-foot wire leader, connect a shorter wire segment to the lead hook’s eye and attach a treble hook to the opposite end. Complete the rig by adding another short wire segment with a second treble running off the first treble’s eye. Set the lead hook through the nose of your first pogy and hook the second bait on the first treble. With the baits fighting against one another, the active display is sure to grab predatory attention.

Zombie Rig

Leveraging the king’s instinctive feeding competition, as well as its opportunistic nature, my longtime friend and North Carolina kingfish guru Capt. Jerry Dilsaver often rigs a large dead ribbonfish behind a live pogy. A rig that delivers from the Gulf to the Outer Banks, the Zombie setup derives its name from something deceased presented in a way that makes it look like it’s chasing something alive.

The specialized Zombie rig attaches a treble hook and a swivel to the looped end of a wire leader. The treble hook sets through the pogy’s nose, while the swivel dangles a second leader holding a ribbonfish rig (a butterbean jig with a series of stinger segments to cover the ribbon’s length.)

Two main benefits: First, the threat of a stalking ribbonfish makes the pogy struggle and twitch with enticing terror. By extension, the pogy’s movement imparts action on the ribbonfish. When the show catches a king’s eye, the response is often swift and violent.

Other Uses

Moving from kings to silver kings, Tampa’s Capt. Billy Miller has a long history of using dead menhaden (locally called “shad”) for summer tarpon fishing. Working from an anchored position, he’ll spread several rods around his boat and cast bottom rigs baited with half a shad. Scattering chunked shad all along his periphery attracts tarpon, which use their upturned lower jaws to scoop meals off the bottom.

Elsewhere, anglers nationwide — many from Florida’s Gulf Coast — make the long, but worthwhile trip to Southeast Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta. Most of the pogy-related tactics from areas like Delacroix, Empire, Buras, and Venice hold clear applicability throughout the Gulf.

Trout and redfish readily gobble juvenile "peanut" pogies” under a popping cork, while mangrove snapper love ‘em whole, chunked or tipped on a jig — whether that’s sending the bait into a drilling rig's legs or dropping to a reef or bridge piling.

Offshore, chunking around the rigs, deep wrecks and reefs, or prominent ledges and humps might bring an assortment of top-tier pelagics to the boat. Capt. Mike Frenette of Venice-based Redfish Lodge employs dead pogies in various form for tripletail, snapper, cobia, bull dolphin, and tuna. His favorite technique: Cut a pogy into three pieces, save the head and tail for chum, and hide a 5/0 Mustad Demon circle hook in the middle piece.

Clearly lots of ways to use menhaden, but regardless of your targets or techniques, be sure to clean up well after a day of dealing with these stinky snot balls. The very thing that makes them appealing to predators — the smell — is not something you want to bring into your vehicle or your home.

---

• Subscribe to Florida Sportsman magazine

---