Few saltwater fish attack anglers' lures with greater recklessness than do jack crevalles or fight so brutally after they are hooked. Big poppers and other topwater lures bring out the best in these very exciting sport fish.
For anglers who enjoy jolting strikes, fierce explosions on topwater lures and ferocious fights, jack crevalles provide some of the nation’s best inshore action throughout the warm months. That’s when big jacks move into inlets in bays throughout the South Atlantic and the Gulf Coast regions. They travel in big, marauding schools, terrorizing shrimp and baitfish.
Fishermen who find a good school of jacks commonly catch multiple fish in the 15- to 40-pound range. In fact, the only real catch limitations when the fishing is hot are the time it takes to get each one to the boat and the number of jacks that anglers are willing to do battle with.
Jacks, however, are widely maligned -- deemed trash fish despite their beautiful, iridescent colors and super sporting qualities. Their strength, oddly enough, is among the things most commonly cursed by anglers, who somehow forget the fun of a brutal fight when they realize their big fish is a jack. Although not appreciated by the masses, jacks are incredibly fun to catch.
When jack crevalles school, the most exciting way to catch them, by far, is with a topwater lure. Throw a
Cotton Cordell Pencil Popper or Heddon Saltwater Super Spook into the melee, and there's almost no way you can get your lure back without having the rod almost ripped from your hands.
The same lures can be blind cast over areas where jacks have been working or are known to cruise and will draw explosive out-of-the-blue strikes. When the fish aren't actually schooling, however, some anglers prefer to go subsurface with a big baitfish-imitating lure like an
A-Salt Bomber or a Magnum Long 'A'.
Arguably, the best overall lure for jack crevalles is a
1-ounce Bomber Flair Hair Jig . A bucktail jig pre-rigged with a curltail grub, a Flair Hair has a swimming action and big profile that jacks can't seem to resist, and it can be swam just beneath the surface or bounced along deeper around jetty rocks, rigs or other structure.
Schools of jacks often give themselves away when they push big schools of menhaden or other baitfish to the surface. Other times, when they cruise shallow flats looking for food, the tips of their narrow dorsal fins extend out of the water. Still other times, anglers let the aggressive jacks find them by casting their lures across well defined rips or close to pieces of structure.
Jack crevalle fishing calls for at least 17-pound-test
Silver Thread , and many angler prefer 20-, 25- or even 30-pound test. An angler also wants a rod that has plenty of pulling power, like a 7-foot, medium-heavy Shakespeare Ugly Stick Custom, matched with a reel like a Tidewater 30A, which has smooth drag system and holds 310 yards of 20-pound test.