There are many ways to fish for pompano and you have a good chance of catching them if you just use some common sense and have a little knowledge about their habits. If you have a shallow draft skiff, you can find pompano schools fairly easily. Run along the beaches, close to the swash channel, on full plane and have someone watch your wake for pompano “skipping”. They have a tendency to jump out of the water when frightened and skip along the surface on their side. When your observer sees this, you immediately turn around and stop the boat so you can began fishing that area. Remember that pompano are schooling fish and where you see one, there are always a lot more. You can take the “blind” approach to fishing for them like many bridge and pier anglers, and just cast your lure or bait all day until a school swims by and you hook up. If you know that pompano love sand fleas, small crabs and other mollusks, you will fish along beaches where there is an abundance of sand fleas. Bridge pilings are another great place to fish for them, where the barnacles have built up over the years and there are a lot of small crabs, shrimp and other shellfish living among the barnacle growth. (When fishing these areas, it doesn’t hurt to use a shovel or hoe to scrape the barnacles off the pilings to create a great chum line. You’ll be surprised at what you will attract in this manner.) Other places to hunt for pompano are around the mouths of passes, particularly those with a drop off or shell bottom near the mouth of the pass. Pass-a-Grill Pass is the prime example in our area, with a large, shallow sandy spoil outside the pass dropping off 18 feet to a hard shell bottom just inside the pass. This is an ideal spot to fish an incoming tide since the pompano and other game fish will be in the deeper water waiting for the tide to wash sand fleas, crabs, and other tasty morsels over the ledge to their waiting mouths. On the outgoing tide you can frequently find the pompano on the top of the spoils rooting around for sand fleas etc.

The right tackle for pompano is a 6 to 8 pound spinning rig. Ten pound tackle is OK, but you lose a lot of the action with the heavier rod. Several baits work for pompano, including sand fleas, (live are best but frozen will work if fresh) fiddler crabs, and bloodworms. Some of you may have another bait or two that you use, but these are the basics. Fish them on the bottom with a weight small enough to hold them down but not so big as to hinder the movement along the bottom with the current. Pompano are always moving along the beaches looking for a meal being swept along with the wave action. Walking the beaches and casting jigs into the surf is another method of fishing for pompano. If you find a spot of beach with a lot of sand fleas then you know that it is a good spot for pompano. Try it for a while and if nothing happens keep moving. Just be sure to remember where you found the biggest concentrations of sand fleas because the pompano might be there tomorrow. As for jigs, the old stand-by is a ¼ to ½ ounce yellow or white bullet-headed jig wrapped with the same color hair cut off at the bend of the hook. There are other jig patterns that will work because technique is the key when using jigs. In our area one local jig company makes “Doc’s Goofy Jigs” and they are dynamite on pompano and permit. You want to bounce the jig on the bottom so that when it falls a puff of sand pops up that looks like a crab trying to bury itself. This will trigger a strike from any hungry pompano in the area. Just be sure when using a hair type jig that you cut off the hair at the bend of the hook. Pompano are notorious short strikers. Our pompano are growing up to be two to three pounds now and they can really give you a good scrap on light tackle. Try a few of these techniques and you will soon become addicted to pompano fishing and eating broiled, stuffed, grilled, baked, or fried fresh pompano every week.

Capt. Charlie Walker