This time of the year, you don’t need to be an expert to catch a sailfish

The weeks leading up to and after the Super Bowl are historically the best times to catch a sailfish in South Florida. In fact, Florida’s official state saltwater fish can be so plentiful this time of year, you don’t need to be a sailfish expert to catch a few.

Just as there’s plenty of playoff football hype these days, there’s just as much hype about all the things an angler has to do to catch a sailfish. But the truth is that you can simply go offshore on your boat or a friend’s boat or a party boat or even a kayak, cast out a dead bait on a spinning outfit, drift with the current and get a sailfish to bite.

That’s quite a difference from serious sailfish tournament anglers. They catch their own live bait night after night and store their goggle-eyes, herring, sardines and pilchards in pens that they keep in the water next to a boat dock. They feed those baits ground bonito to get them fat and healthy, and when they head offshore for a tournament, they’ll bring some of each of those baits, typically 10 or 12 dozen in all.

The experts usually put up two fishing kites, each with three fishing lines, to get the live baits away from the boat and splashing on the surface to attract sailfish. The crew will also put out several flat lines with live baits on the surface, along with a couple of deep baits.

Having all those lines in the water can be difficult to handle if you don’t know what you’re doing, but that’s how top tournament boats catch and release 20 or more sailfish on a good day.

If you’re after only one or two sailfish releases, you don’t have to go to all that trouble. Capt. Wayne Conn of the Reward Won and Another Reward party boats at Bayside Marina (www.fishingmiami.com) said his anglers often catch sailfish while targeting other species.

“Sailfish bite dead baits,” Conn said. “Anything from a sardine on a three-hook rig to a ballyhoo. It kills me that young captains tend to think that Gucci baits are what really work. I’ve cleaned a sailfish or two in my life, and I’ve found needlefish in their stomachs. I’m not talking about one, I’m talking about five or six.”

Capt. Bouncer Smith, who runs charters on Bouncer’s Dusky 33 out of Miami Beach Marina (www.captbouncer.com), said that when he was a mate on drift boats early in his career, “We caught a lot of sailfish on a three-hook rig with a sinker and a ballyhoo or a jig and a ballyhoo. Or if you were fishing in the very bow of the boat, just float a ballyhoo out free with a single hook. They were all very, very effective for the sailfish.”

Smith added that when he fished for sailfish with Bill McDonald on his 30-foot Scarab Sport, they’d bring live blue runners or mullet for kite baits and a dozen dead ballyhoo, which they rigged on a 5/0 J hook and a 50-pound leader on a spinning rod. One year, Smith said, they caught 18 sailfish — 10 on dead ballyhoo and eight on the kite baits.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fish with live bait if you can, whether you catch a few baits yourself or buy some.

Although goggle-eyes, which can sell for $250 a dozen during tournament season, are the preferred live baits for sailfish, pilchards and herring are highly effective. Blue runners, little bonitos, mullet and pinfish also will catch sailfish. In the Florida Keys, where ballyhoo are abundant, a live ballyhoo is the top sailfish bait.

Kayak fisherman Joe Hector of Pompano Beach (www.extremekayakfishingtournament.org) goes sailfishing with five or six live pilchards that he buys from a bait shop. He puts them in a five-gallon bucket with a battery operated aerator in his kayak, heads offshore, then casts out a couple on spinning rods and catches sailfish more often than not.

“When a sailfish comes up to a goggle-eye on a kite, it’s a super-active live bait,” Conn said, which means the sailfish might miss the bait or tangle its bill in the leader trying to eat the goggle-eye. “With a herring or pilchard, the sailfish swims up to the bait, swallows it and swims away. You give me 10-inch herring or a big giant pilchard when the sailfish are coming through and I’m not going to miss a fish.

“Any older guy who’s smart will tell you that if you don’t think outside the box, you will never be the best you can be. Those fish don’t know the rules that you made.”

And when they’re in the mood to eat, you can fish with just about anything and have a super day.