The Travels of Tripletail: Tagging Will Help Researchers Study Blackfish

By Al Jones, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.

Sep. 10–OCEAN SPRINGS — The Mississippi Sound is home to some of the best fishing the Gulf of Mexico has to offer. From cobia to redfish, anglers have a smorgasbord to choose from.

Add blackfish, also known as tripletail, to the mix.

One of the best-eating fish in the world can be caught from nearshore waters to the offshore waters underneath weedlines, floating debris, a plain old bucket or a piece of wood.

The fish is given its name for having what look like three tails. It actually has dorsal, caudal and anal fins, and also goes by the names of drift fish and leaf fish.

Little is known about this saltwater fish that looks like an oversized freshwater panfish, but the tripletail is a world traveler that drifts with ocean currents. When hooked, the fish will jump out of the water, often acting like a billfish.

With that in mind, Read Hendon, a biologist for the Gulf Coast Research Program in Ocean Springs, is asking Mississippi recreational fishermen to help out with the lab’s tag and release program.

“I am pleased with the way the program is going,” Hendon said. “We do hope to get more anglers involved and learn more about their movement.

“Most of what we have has come from Florida and we would love to learn more about Mississippi.”

Hendon hopes the Tripletail Tag and Release Program, funded by the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources in Biloxi, will eventually catch up with the popular Cobia Tag and Release Program that has drawn attention from the East Coast and across the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Through the help of fishermen, the cobia program has helped with migrational patterns from the Florida Keys in the winter to the mouth of the Mississippi River in the spring and early summer.

“From what we’ve seen in Florida, where the bulk of our information comes from, tripletail don’t seem to follow any distinct pattern,” Hendon said. “They seem to stay in the same spot, but others do move like from the Naples area north to Tampa Bay. It’s hard to say what the driving pattern is.”

The tag and release program began in 2001 and the longest-traveled fish has been along the east coast of Florida. The fish, tagged off Port Canaveral, Fla., last year, was recaptured 104 days later off Top Sail Beach, N.C., covering 510 days and three different states.

“That’s the first fish that we’ve seen move from one state water to another,” Hendon said. “We’ve had more tripletail tagged and recaptured than cobia when we first started.

“We’ve had 400 tripletail tagged and 32 have been recaptured. That’s a higher percentage in 18 years with cobia. We’ve had six percent of cobia recaptured and nine percent of tripletail. They are a hearty fish and have handled the tagging procedure really well.”

In Mississippi, the longest-traveled tripletail was reported this year.

Jason Lemus, a graduate student at the Research Lab, tagged a seven-inch tripletail near the Biloxi Channel last year, eight days before Hurricane Katrina. The fish was caught this June in Herron Bay in Ocean Springs.

The fish had grown five inches in 11 months.

“They are capable of long-distance migrations,” Hendon said. “Just not to the extent of cobia, as of yet.

“Jason’s fish is the first one that we think left Mississippi and returned the following year. It suggests the tripletail did leave and come back, quite possibly because it was born here. We just don’t know.”

Tripletail normally show up in the Mississippi Sound in June and remain in the area through the fall.

Since the fish are common to all waters, fishermen with smaller boats have the opportunity to catch tripletail. In the Sound, channel markers, weedlines and floating debris attract tripletail and large dead or live shrimp works best as bait.

One angler getting in on the fun is Dennis Meins of Ocean Springs, who recently caught two nice tripletail — one 28 pounds and 34 inches long and the other 24 pounds.

“I also caught one that weighed 12 pounds that had a tag in it,” Meins said. “Turns out it was a fish I caught earlier and tagged. I’ve caught 10 to 15 fish over 20 pounds. But I stress to people that if the fish isn’t bigger than 8 to 10 pounds, they should stick a tag in the fish and release it.

“I’ve been fishing tripletail for 20 years and they are a unique fish.”

Remarkably, just like other species like speckled trout and flounder, tripletail don’t appear to have been affected by Katrina.

“It’s really hard to say,” Hendon said. “I haven’t seen any detrimental effects as of yet. The water came up so fast and went down so fast that the short-term effect is short-lived.

“There may have been a disruption of normal patterns and habitat in sone cases. Fish have a better sense of what’s going on in the water than we do. They take proper action when it’s needed.

“In terms of tripletail in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, it’s been a banner year. It could be a number of things and we are not able to detect why it happens, but it could be an annual variability in fish population where they change from one year to the next.”

Regardless, tripletail fishing is growing in population and the Gulf Coast Research Lab is seeking help from recreational fishermen. Hendon knows, since there are no regulations on tripletail, it’s hard for anglers to tag and release a fish that’s second to none in terms of table fare.

“The thing that amazes me about tripletail is you can catch the fish in the middle of the Gulf under a weedline or a floating bucket,” Hendon said.

“Then you can find them in a crab trap in Fort Bayou. It’s amazing the different habitats the fish can use. We are getting more anglers fishing Mississippi waters involved and several in the Mobile Bay area. The more anglers we get tagging the better, and that allows us to learn more about the tripletail.

“We would also love to get more bluewater anglers involved. My guess, not based on any tagging information, the fish move offshore in the winter and that’s why we need more fish tagged by bluewater anglers.”

To get a tagging kit, call Hendon at 872-4202.

“All in all, we are pleased so far,” Hendon said. “We have a great fishery, we just need to learn more.”

Al Jones can be reached at 896-2351 or at afjones@sunherald.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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