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How to catch Bluefish
Bluefish feed in 58–80°F water and bite best at 62–74°F. Fish Scouter's season calendar follows them in 15 waters; in October they are at their peak in Mississippi Sound & Mobile Bay, The Golden Isles, The Lowcountry and 7 more.
About
A pack of teeth that arrives with the first cold fronts and blitzes bait in the passes and off the piers. Small ones are good on the grill the day they're caught.
How to fish it
Wire or a long-shank hook — they bite through everything. Cast into the blitz and reel fast. Keep your fingers away from the mouth.
What it eats
Live bait for it
Finger mulletLip-hooked on a 2/0 to 4/0 circle hook and free-lined, or on a fish-finder rig in the surf. Cut mullet on the bottom for redfish and drum.
Pilchards (whitebait)Free-lined or under a cork, hooked through the nose on a #1 to 2/0 circle hook. The one bait that catches everything inshore.
Threadfin herring (greenbacks)Nose-hooked on a circle hook and free-lined, or slow-trolled. Fragile — handle them wet and fast.What to fish it with
the sizes that fish itThe rule
not confirmed hereMinimum size and bag limit apply; confirm at MyFWC.
The current rule →Where it is, month by month
Bluefish are the Atlantic's great roamers. They winter off the Carolinas and Florida's east coast, start north in spring — the Outer Banks in April, New Jersey and New York in May, Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine by June — and spend summer in the sounds and along the beaches chewing through bunker and sand eels. The fall run reverses it: schools blitz down the beaches from Massachusetts to Hatteras through October and November, the big 'gator' blues last, and by December the southern end of the run is chasing mullet off Palm Beach. Spawning happens offshore twice — spring in the South Atlantic Bight and summer in the Mid-Atlantic. Wire leader, keep your fingers clear.