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FISHY PASSES
Saltwater fishermen often navigate through a pass while venturing offshore, often passing by their best fishing opportunities!
by Terry Lacoss

The southeastern United States coastline has numerous passes where hard running tides attract a wide variety of saltwater species. Running tides also form sandbars and deep holes where game fish can capture an easy meal, or take refuge during a cold north wind.
Passes are often protected with large rock jetties that protect the deep channels from filling in with silt, allowing boats to navigate safely to and from their safe harbors. Rock jetties are also real "Fish Magnets" and can be fished on foot, or with a small boat.
Without a doubt, fishy passes have saved many a charter captain's day out on the water by providing his clients with a fairly calm day on the water when a stiff sea breeze is blowing. Passes have also saved Southern Kingfish Association tournament teams from returning to the fish scales empty handed and in most cases, fill their wallets with easy tournament green!
Rusty Kennedy hails from Brunswick, Georgia, and when first competing on the kingfish circuit, learned how to fish nearby inlets while chumming back in the early 1980's. His "Rusty Nail" fishing team has won first place honors during the "Golden Isles Kingfish Tournaments" on several occasions. Four first place wins in fact!
Kennedy would find which pass was holding kingfish, while taking into consideration several key factors including water clarity, water temperature, tides, availability of bait fish and the most important factor, kingfish.
Back in those days only a handful of king mackerel fishermen knew the importance of chumming and in fact would pass through the inlets and venture far offshore where schooling kings were much easier to catch while trolling drone spoons, rapalas and feathered jigs.
Meanwhile the "Rusty Nail" fishing team would set up a smelly chum slick close to a tide line, deep hole, bar or right in the middle of the pass and wait patiently for a winning size kingfish to bite. Sometimes it might take all day and lots of patience while small sharks ravaged their kingfish baits and even a tasty cobia or two would venture too close to their appetizing chum slick.
Back in those early days of king fishing, Kennedy would purchase a couple of bags of by-catch from a local shrimp boat captain and sit on the back deck and chop it up into tiny pieces with a long bladed filet knife. Unfortunately meat grinders had not entered the minds of king mackerel fishermen for several years to come.
More importantly the success story that comes with winning four "Golden Isles Kingfish Tournaments" was setting up a steady chum line. Once the "Rusty Nail" began its day of kingfishing close to a pass, it never stopped chumming!
Probably the big attraction for "Smoker" kingfish to passes was the full moon in late May or early June for spawning purposes and the tremendous amount of forage foods that were carried in and out of the passes with the tides. Local shrimp boats also attract kingfish to inlet mouths as they drag their nets along the sandy and hard bottoms. Once their nets were pulled, good eating shrimp were sorted from their catch, leaving the by-catch to be tossed back into the sea. Their bi-catch included small trout, croaker, bluefish, Spanish mackerel and menhaden. This obviously set up an easy meal for a variety of saltwater inlet fish, particularly king mackerel.
Cobia are also attracted to passes during early spring as they hold in deep channels, close to shrimp boats and close to jetty rocks. They often came as a big surprise to fishermen when they swam right up to the boat as if to ask for a free meal, or more suprisingly, follow a hooked fish right up to the net or gaff. In fact fishy passes often hold the largest cobia of the season, weighing upwards of 70- to 80-pounds.
The spring fishing season at inlet mouths also attract big schools of spanish mackerel, jack crevalle and bluefish. This type of angling sets up spectacular light tackle fishing opportunities when large schools of spanish push a school of glass minnows up to the surface and start feeding on them during their aerial assault. I really enjoy spanish mackerel fishing in the spring while tossing a medium size saltwater popper to the school. When the school goes deep, a glass minnow fly works well.
However in most cases, local fishermen enjoy trolling 00 Clark spoons through the surface feeding schools with the aid of a number one planner. With this setup, several Clark spoons are set out in a trolling pattern where multiple hookups are frequently enjoyed.
Black drum hold at passes all year long, with the spring fishing season finding large schools of giant drum beating up the passes. In fact, during the full moon in April, night fishing is popular for drum weighing to 90-pounds. On a real quiet night, fishermen will be able to hear drum, drumming loudly right under their fishing boats! One of the best baits for black drum is a half blue crab fished right on the bottom with 50-pound terminal fishing tackle. Black drum have a fishy taste, but if you soak their filets in a bowl of salted water overnight in the refrigerator, they are delicious to eat.
Some of the best opportunities to catch sharks often come at inlet mouths too. Here black tip, sand, dusky, hammerhead, bull, tiger, shovel-nosed, nurse sharks, and many more toothy species can be found feeding close to passes.
One of the best angling tactics while fishing for deep pass sharks is to simply turn your fish finder on and find a deep hole. Fish right on the bottom with a large chunk of oily fish. Blues and spanish mackerel are ideal. Look for some of the best shark fishing to come during the slower moving tides.
Tarpon can also be found holding close to inlet mouths during the warm summer months as they hold in deep holes too, waiting for forage foods to pass through with the tides. Some of the better months for tarpon fishing throughout the southeast include the months of August and September.
During the fall fishing season, large schools of bull red drum move into deep passes of the southeast and feed on mullet and crabs that are also numerous during this time of year. Some of the best red drum action comes right at the mouth of the pass where deep holes and sandbars are nearby. One of the more popular fishing tactics begins while fishing right on the bottom with a small piece of fresh shrimp. Once a good eating whiting is boated, the whiting is then cut up into chunks and sent down to the bottom. It won't take long before a red drum weighing from 20- to 50-pounds finds this tasty bait!
Another successful fishing tactic includes deep jigging for red drum with a four-ounce bucktail jig, tipped with fresh squid.
Be sure and deflate the air bladder of the red drum when fish are landed from deep holes. If the air bladder is not deflated, the released red drum will float upside down and die.
Rock jetties are real fish magnets attracting multiple species of saltwater game fish including sea trout, flounder, sheepshead, red drum, blues, and sea bass. Rock jetties are also accessible by foot when in the early days of saltwater angling, fishermen would walk out on the jetty rocks with Calcutta fishing poles and fish close to the rocks. When a really large fish was hooked, the jetty fishermen would have to release his grip on the Calcutta fishing rod! Often times large red drum would simply take the pole right out of a jetty fisherman's hands.
Some of the best jetty fishing comes during the last few hours of the falling and the first few hours of the incoming tides. Without a doubt, the best jetty fishing is for good eating sheepshead. Jetty fishermen will often bring along a putty knife and scrape a bucket full of barnacles from the rocks. Next they will toss a few barnacles into their favorite fishing hole next to the rocks, while chumming up nearby sheepshead. A barbed barnacle is then sent down alongside the rocks where a 3- to 10-pound sheepshead is sure to bite!
Without a doubt, some of the best saltwater fishing is found close to shore at fishy passes, make sure that you don't pass up some of the southeast's best fishing opportunities!