Bonito is the fish that anglers love to hate, but it's very useful to attract larger fish

Miami Herald

4 days ago

South Florida anglers have a love-hate relationship with bonito, which are plentiful offshore as we head into the summer.
Most of them hate bonito, but smart fishermen like captain Chris Lemieux love them.
Although bonito are in the tuna tribe, they taste terrible — 'I've tried it twice, and I'll never do it again,' Lemieux said — but they fight hard.
Usually weighing 10 to 25 pounds, they are great sport on 20-pound spinning outfits for Lemieux's customers, who come from all over the world and have typically never caught a fish that big or that tough.
Bonito also make a wonderful bait for species ranging from wahoo and kingfish to grouper and snapper.
'Probably my favorite bait for yellowtails is bonito chunks,' said Lemieux, of Boynton Beach, who added that it's important to keep the bonito's skin on the chunk because that keeps the bait on the hook.
Lemieux, whose Le-Mieux Charters (visit lemieuxfishingcharters.com or call 561-767-6211) specializes in reef and offshore fishing, uses strips of bonito to troll for wahoo, blackfin tuna, dolphin and kingfish.
He uses filleted bonito for sharks and puts bonito bellies on the bottom for daytime swordfish. Chunks of bonito and ground up bonito make a highly effective chum.
One of the most appealing attributes of bonito for those who want to catch them is they bite just about anything — live bait, dead bait, jigs, plugs and flies.
That's also why anglers fishing for other species hate bonito, because they will eat the live goggle-eyes, herring, sardines and pilchards that they bought or labored to catch on their own to use for good-tasting species.
When fishing for mutton snapper and grouper, Lemieux uses a bonito strip 6 to 8 inches long with a lot of meat on it. As he explained, 'Triggerfish will peck, peck, peck the bait without wearing it out. You can fish it for 10-15 minutes.'
Eventually, he said, a wary grouper or mutton that sees nothing bad has happened to the triggerfish will come over and swim off with the strip. He even caught a big lionfish that grabbed a bonito strip intended for mutton snapper.
When trolling bonito strips, Lemieux likes a strip that extends two inches beyond the hook. He will fish a strip behind a Sea Witch or a squid skirt with a quarter-ounce weight in front of a 7/0 hook.
A half-inch piece of wire through the eye of the hook secures the front of the strip and Lemieux pokes the hook point through the strip like he's Texas-rigging a plastic worm for bass.
One of my most memorable trips was fly-fishing for bonito with captain Bouncer Smith. He chummed up bonito behind his boat and all I had to do was cast a fly in the vicinity of the fish and strip it a few feet before feeling the jolt of a bonito slamming the fly.
After catching and releasing a 10-pound bonito, a much bigger fish grabbed the fly and ran out so quickly, it destroyed my fly reel, which was hot to the touch from spinning so fast. Smith had to grab my fly line and pull in the 20-pound bonito by hand.
I thought my fly-fishing was over, but Smith said not to worry because he had a brand-new, one-piece 9-foot fly rod and reel that Penn had just sent him. I hooked another big bonito with that outfit and the reel held up just fine, but the rod wasn't so fortunate.
The bonito took me from the stern of the boat to the bow, then ran under the anchor line, over the anchor line and back under the anchor line. Then the fish sounded and, with a loud snap, turned the new rod into a three-piece fly rod.
Always up for a challenge, Smith told me to keep fighting the bonito while he patiently worked the fly line with his hands back under and over and under the anchor line. In spite of the broken rod, I was able to reel the bonito close enough to the boat for Smith to reach out and land it.
Of all the great catches I have had with Smith, that rod-breaking bonito ranks among the very best.