Gold Rush

Mid-Atlantic
Gold RU
Mid-Atlantic anglers have struck a rich
vein with a mother lode of tilefish.
Text and photos By Lenny Rudow
Fishing may be a waiting game, but usually
it’s not this kind of waiting. With my target species lurking in mud burrows
over 850 feet below, just dropping my jig into the target zone seems to take
forever. The five-minute mark slides by, then the six, and it isn’t until just
shy of seven minutes that I finally feel my
jig plop down on the seabed. But I can
take the wait. It’s peanuts compared to
how much time I’ve invested in locating
and catching giant golden tilefish in the
mid-Atlantic canyons.
Unfortunately, I’d managed to score only a handful
of fish in several seasons. This trip, I hoped, would
be different. Armed with a set of numbers that were
pried from a retired longline captain (as it turns out,
mid-atlantic gold: The large
whiskey works quite well as a verbal pry bar), I for
area
of mud bottom found off
once wasn’t fishing blind. No one had tried for
the
mid-Atlantic
states provides
goldens in this spot for more than 30 years.
plenty of habitat for golden tileI pushed the lever drag up to strike, but before I
fish. Anglers willing to make the
could take in any slack, the darn jig started falling
again. Must have been a false alarm — wait a sec, was
deep drops necessary to catch
that a head shake? With a reaction time I would have
these fish have discovered a veribeen proud of 20 years ago, I swung my rod skyward.
table gold mine of fishing action
A bulldog tug-tug-tug confirmed the suspicion — I
providing excellent table fare.
had a monster golden tilefish on the end of my line.
Within 30 seconds the other three anglers aboard
were hooked up as well. It was rags-to-riches fishing; after years of prospecting for hot spots, we
had finally struck gold. That afternoon ended with four golden tilefish topping 40 pounds and
two topping 50 iced down in the fish box.
70 SALTWATERSPORTSMAN.COM MARCH 2011
RUSH
MARCH 2011 SALTWATERSPORTSMAN.COM 71
Stake a Claim
is simple —
you need a good spot, and then you just need to keep your
bait right on the bottom,” says Capt. Ron Callis, captain of the
Shelly II, who held the IGFA world record with a 59.6-pound
golden until last year (the new mark sits at 63.8 pounds).
“You’ve got to use enough weight to keep it right down there. If
your bait gets pulled up at all, you’re not going to catch them.”
Callis is one of very few charter captains who’s taken the
time to hone his golden tilefish skills, and he’s charted each
and every golden tilefish caught on his boat. As a result, he’s
had his hands in dozens of colonies of fish (too bad he doesn’t
like whiskey). A glance at his charts confirms that these fish
cluster close together, and few are caught away from the main
concentrations. In fact, most of the colonies inhabit amazingly small areas, often no larger than a football field. “You
can catch them from 600 feet on down,” he says, “and I’ve
pulled them up in water as deep as 844 feet. But if the position of your boat is off even by a little bit when you drop, you
“The secret to catching giant golden tilefish
72 SALTWATERSPORTSMAN.COM MARCH 2011
probably won’t get bites.”
Though he’ll use cut fish or squid, Callis’ favorite bait is sea
clams. “They stay on the hook well, and the tilefish seem to
really like them,” he says.
When you get into a colony of tilefish, however, Callis
stresses restraint. “The big fish take a long time to grow and
might be 15 to 35 years old. It’s all too easy to fish a spot out.
So we stick to a one fish per person limit and try never to take
more than six or seven in a single day.”
Buried Treasure
of course, is finding those
hot spots in the first place. Drifting blindly in the proper depth
range is one way to do it; prospecting the bottom is another. Cap
the end of a 6-inch iron pipe, drag it across the bottom and then
check it to see if you’re over a sand, shell or mud bottom. Tilefish
like the mud, and most giant-golden hunters, Callis included,
think tilefish prefer green mud bottom above all others.
The tough part for most anglers,
65- to 80-pound braided line
150-pound barrel swivel
g
SW s T a c k l e b o x
Mid-Atlantic Tilefish
80-pound mono leader
f 12" g
Tilefish live
in colonies on mud bottom,
so find the mud and you
may find the fish. Some
captains think tiles prefer a
bottom of green mud.
work the mud:
10/0 to 14/0
circle hook
Three-way swivel
Strip bait:
bonito/bluefish/
albacore
f 16" g
TIlefish can be targeted in one of two ways. The first and most common
method is to use multihook meat rigs, which are essentially grouper high-low deepdrop rigs fixed with 10/0 to 14/0 circle hooks and weighed down with 2 to 4 pounds
of lead. Hooks can be baited with whole squids, clams, or strips of bonito, bluefish or
albacore. Meat rigs tend to catch tilefish of all sizes, as well as a few bycatch species,
including black-bellied rosefish, hake and the occasional shark.
å
f 12" g
f 16" g
Live or frozen squid
10/0 to 14/0
circle hook
Three-way swivel
f 12" g
32- to 64-ounce
sinker
å
The second method for tilefish success is to drop extremely
large jigs with treble hooks added to the bottom ring. Giant-golden
sharpies will bait the top hook of the jig with a strip of oily fish and the
treble with a whole squid laced over the three tines of the hook. For
some reason giants over 40 pounds seem particularly attracted to the
jig, and it’s rare to take tiles under 20 pounds on them.
What about finding golden tiles
on the ’meter? It won’t happen,
since they’re sitting in burrows. You
can, however, occasionally mark
black-bellied rosefish. These 1- to
3-pound snapperlike fish tend to
congregate in the same areas as
tilefish and are seen as tiny marks
within five or 10 feet of the bottom.
Areas they show up in are worth
some attention. Will it take you a
while to prospect the bottom, try
promising areas and locate a gold
mine of your own? You bet. But
the first time you strike it rich, the
energy invested will undoubtedly
seem worthwhile — and just
think of all the money you’ll save
on whiskey.
750-gram Shimano Slidend Butterfly jig
10- to 16-ounce Crippled Herring jig
Rods: Heavy conventional in the 40- to
80-pound class or medium-heavy jigging
rods rated for 65- to 80-pound braid.
Reels: Conventional reels — the higher
the gear ratio, the better, since highspeed reels allow you to reel in the fish in
less time.
Lines: 65- to 80-pound braid. Monofilament is not usable in these depths due to
excessive line stretch.
Lures and baits: Sea clams; tuna, mackerel, skipjack or bonito chunk baits; or squid.
750-gram Jerk That Jig jigs or similar-size
butterfly or diamond jigs.
MARCH 2011 SALTWATERSPORTSMAN.COM 73
g
SWS p l a n n e r
Mid-Atlantic Tilefish
Golden tiles live in colonies and
don’t migrate, so catching one usually
means catching many. That explains why
such a high value is placed on a good set of
numbers, but while this result may be great
for an angler who lucks into a hot golden
tilefish spot (or knows how to spend his
money wisely in a waterfront bar), it
doesn’t work out too well for the colonies
that are discovered by commercial fishermen. Long before recreational anglers
ran to the edge of the continental shelf,
commercial fishermen were dropping their
hooks on tilefish in Baltimore, Poor Mans
and Washington canyons. In fact, their
harvest dates back to the late 1800s. But
it ballooned from 125 metric tons in the
74 SALTWATERSPORTSMAN.COM MARCH 2011
1960s to over 3,200 metric tons in the late
1980s. Golden tilefish were officially declared overfished by the NMFS in 1998, and
restrictions went into effect. That’s given
the colonies time to recover — and for individual fish to grow to epic proportions.
Up until a few years ago, most midAtlantic recreational anglers were not only
unaware of goldens, they also couldn’t have
cared less. Thick schools of yellowfin and
bluefin tunas roamed the inshore lumps off
the Delmarva Peninsula coast, providing
anglers with all the action they could handle.
Starting in 2007 and 2008, a few explorative
anglers started hitting the docks with tilefish
in their coolers. Big tilefish. Record-breakers.
The gold rush was on. Current federal
regulations are: From the North CarolinaVirginia border north along the East Coast,
eight fish per person per trip, no minimum
size. However, state regulations differ along
Delmarva. Virginia’s limit is seven tiles per
person per day, and a special recreational
permit is required. Maryland’s is seven fish
per person per day. Delaware does not have
any regulations, so abide by the federal regs.
What: Golden tilefish; black-bellied
rosefish are the most common bycatch.
When: Any time of year. When water temperatures drop below 52 degrees, however,
spiny dogfish often swarm in the same
areas. Dogfish usually take your baits so
quickly it’s impossible to catch the goldens.
Where: Submarine canyon edges and the
alan kikuchi
edge of the continental shelf in the midAtlantic region in 600- to 850-foot depths.
Golden tilefish are found from New England
to Florida and in the Gulf of Mexico, but south
of Norfolk Canyon, giants over 40 pounds are
exceedingly rare.
Who: Few charter boats are experienced at
catching giant goldens, but those that have
taken the time to learn the drill are reliable.
OCEAN CITY, MARYLAND
Capt. Ron Callis
Shelly II
410-726-4829
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
Capt. Jake Hiles
Matador
757-749-6008
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