Few things get an angler’s heart going like a blitz: birds screaming, bait showering, and albies, blues or striped bass crashing the surface. But a blitz is easy to blow. Approach it wrong and you put the whole thing down; approach it right and it is the best fishing of the year.
Approach without wrecking it
- Never run the boat through the school. Ease up-wind or up-current, cut the engine, and drift into casting range. Driving through a feed scatters it, and everyone around you loses.
- Cast to the edges and ahead, not the middle. Predators pick off stragglers on the fringes and below the school.
- Read the feed. A frantic, splashy feed usually means blues or albies; a slower, sloshy feed often means bass. That tells you what to throw.
Match it and move fast
Blitzing fish are often locked on a specific bait, so match the size, small metals and light spinning gear for albies on tiny bait, bigger profiles for bass on bunker. Blitzes are fleeting, so keep a rod rigged and ready, and land fish quickly so you can get back in.
Tip Keep a rod rigged and ready at all times during the fall run. Blitzes erupt and vanish in seconds, and the angler who is already rigged and can fire a cast the moment fish show gets the fish, while the one still tying on watches it end.