The snapper is attracted by the flash of the baitfish as it tumbles down the water column. To spice things up the pursuer of snappers usually adds a bobber-a little colored plastic float affixed to the line 20 to 30 inches above the bait. A small hook baited with a small fish, usually a spearing or a sand eel, is mostly what’s needed. One of the beauties of snapper fishing is its Huck Finn simplicity. Rigging up Luke’s and Felix’s poles was easy. And this iconic snapper pier with its nice wood planking and sturdy rail was feeling fishy. We arrived at Magnolia in time for the very snapper-y last three hours of the flood tide. Which is the precise moment children like Luke and Felix come upon them. When they finally slip into New York estuaries in mid-July, they are ready, actually desperate, to put on as much size as possible so as not to be eaten themselves. Soon they are riding the Gulf Stream past the Slope Sea, all along the way eating, all along the way getting eaten. Their sides grow sleek and silver their backs, blue-green. For 20 days the larvae bounce around the edge of the continental shelf, feeding on copepods and other microscopic creatures and in turn being fed upon by pretty much anything that is just a little bit bigger than they are.Īfter many of the original millions have been eaten, the survivors begin the process of “recruitment,” as fisheries biologists call it-the assumption of size and physical characteristics that make bluefish pursuable by humans. Bluefish begin their lives off North Carolina, where they hatch in immense numbers in two separate spawning events-about a million eggs per female in either the spring or summer spawn. I put my five-year-old son, Luke, in the back seat of my beat-up Honda Civic and next to him put his friend, the slightly older and more experienced Felix.Īs various complaints came from the back seat over the length of time it was taking to get to Long Beach’s Magnolia Pier, I considered how long it had taken the snappers. Word had come in that schools of juvenile bluefish, also known as snappers, were just reaching Reynolds Channel, a narrow strip of water running between Long Beach and the mainland portion of Long Island. Which is what I resolved to do last summer. Getting a child involved in this drama is how you teach a kid to fish in New York State’s saltwater. And then at some point something eats them. They keep on eating everything their whole lives.
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