THE "OTHER" LIVE BAIT: THREAD HERRING

Frank Sargeant

Greenbacks

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By FRANK SARGEANT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 13, 2009

White bait or scaled sardines are the rage among snook fishermen from Anclote Key to Naples these days, and the silvery baitfish prove their worth, turning duffers into expert snookers at the drop of a castnet. The baits seem to work a magic on snook, causing them to strike when nothing else well, and that has caused them to work a magic on snook fishermen, who will pursue the baits for hours on end. A lot of anglers simply won't go snook fishing these days unless they can get white bait.

One skipper who views things differently is Captain John Griffith of Tampa, who believes other baits work just fine.

"There's no question that snook take live bait a lot better than even the best lure," says Griffith. "But it doesn't have to be white bait to turn them on. In the winter, they'll take shrimp just as well, and in summer, if you can't find whitebait, other species work too."

Griffith proved his point on the day I joined him on the backwaters of Old Tampa Bay. In about four hours, the two of us hitched up to over 30 linesiders. Most were just short of the minimum legal size, but we also had four that went 26 to 28 inches long and lost several at least that big.

The bait? Thread herring or "greenbacks", which look much like scaled sardines but are often much easier to find.

"These days, there are so many anglers chasing the sardines that they just about clean them out in most areas," says Griffith. "But threads are more abundant, and you can always find plenty of them around the bridges and offshore markers."

He said that thread herring do not come to chum, unlike sardines, and this can sometimes make them more difficult to spot.

"You may have to use a depthfinder and just throw on the area where they're marking, because you won't be able to pull them up to the back of the boat in shallow water like you can with sardines," said Griffith. "But if you look a while, you'll find a lot of areas where there are always greenbacks as long as the water is reasonably warm."

In general, greenbacks tend to be fish of deeper, open water, while sardines are most often seen on the outer edges of the grass flats. And, while sardines actively attack individual microscopic animals, threads feed mostly by filter-feeding, simply swimming through the planktonic soup of the sea and taking what drifts into their mouths.

The greenbacks, not surprisingly, have dark green or gray backs with silver sides. The "threadfin" designation comes because of a threadlike whip on the dorsal fin. The species is actually the thread herring, as distinguished from a much less abundant bottom species, the true threadfin. Thread herring also have a spot behind the gill plate, and their eyes are very small.

Scaled sardines have a silvery body and light tan, almost white backs. They have no thread, no spots and their eyes are much larger than the thread herrings, but otherwise the body shape is very similar.

Scaled sardines survive better in a baitwell than do the greenbacks, but if you don't mind catching bait every three hours or so, the threads will be just as lively.

And, as Griffith proved in our trip on Tampa Bay, snook appear to like the threads just as well as the sardines.

"One of the advantages of threads in the spring is that there are usually plenty of big ones around. The big snook really prefer a 4- to 5-inch bait, and you don't find many sardines that size until late summer or fall," Griffith said.

As with any of the baitfish, he said that a large well holding 25 gallons or more is necessary, and a flow-through aeration/spray system is needed to keep the bait lively.

He fishes the baits unweighted, on size 1/0 or 2/0 short-shank hooks that allow them to swim freely. The hook is placed either through the nose or at the joint of the pectoral fin. About 18 inches of 30-pound-test mono is used as shock leader.

Griffith uses the greenies as live chum and "fish locaters" as well as baits. He pitches handfuls out along deep mangrove shorelines during strong tide flows, and watches them drift. Sometimes, he spots snook 100 yards away as they come exploding to the surface to strike the baits.

"If you know where the fish are and they're feeding well, you don't have to chum. But if they're slow, a lot of times you can get them turned on by throwing out a couple handfuls," he advises.

Griffith, like many guides, is concerned that the growing knowledge of live bait may be making snook fishers too successful.

"Ten years ago, most people felt lucky if they caught three or four snook a day on plugs. Now, a lot of people go out and catch 20 or 30 a day on live baits, whether they use sardines or threads. I think we all need to be extra careful to release those fish that are not kept for the table so we don't hurt the populations," he said.##

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