But for most of us, when we think of inshore chumming, we think of its application on flats shallow enough for sight fishing. Bonefishers have depended on chumming since the sport took off over 50 years ago. Veteran bonefish guides popularized it, by necessity because they routinely guided anglers who did not see, or cast to, these flighty fish particularly well. A handful of fresh, diced shrimp tossed downtide (preferably to a white sandy spot) of an anchored or staked out skiff was all it took to bring ’em into range, and the angler could either toss bait, lure or fly to the sighted fish. Though many seasoned bonefishermen claim that a handful of fresh, diced shrimp fanned out over as wide an area as possible puts more scent over a wider area, nowadays many anglers opt to place shrimp, or maybe crushed crabs, in a mesh bag or a PVC chum tube to prevent unwanted baitfish from stealing the chum. Some use a small wire mesh basket for the same reason.
Diced Shrimp provide a scent trail.
Sometimes it’s wise to toss an anchored mesh chum bag to a spot, then anchor your boat well off to its side so as not to spook fish that zip into the chum line. This works particularly well for notoriously skittish targets like permit and bonefish.
Chum can work magic, but it makes little sense to just stop in the middle of a barren flat and chum. Since the idea behind most flats chumming is to bring fish into shallow water from a likely holding area so that they can be spotted and cast to, standard practice is to either stake out a skiff with a pushpole or small flats anchor on a flat uptide of a channel, deeper basin, or “travel lane” fish use to enter and exit. Also, it doesn’t pay to chum where there is little current.
Many veteran bonefishermen feel that falling tides are ideal chumming tides. They stake out on a flat just close enough to a channel dropoff to allow them to spot fish that pop up over the edge. Once they deploy the chum, current carries the scent to deeper water where they suspect bonefish are. Then there are those narrow, “toothpick” flats that are surrounded by deeper water. There, one can chum fish from deeper water on either tide.
But flats chumming isn’t just for drawing fish from deep to shallow water. Who hasn’t had the frustration of fish that refuse to take an artificial, or just won’t let you get within casting distance? In that circumstance, rather than stalking in the normal manner, stick the pole in the bottom, break out the chum and see if that little incentive doesn’t convince them to open up and say “ah.” In fact, chumming might be the clincher on days when the water temps are either too high or too low for the fish’s liking. Chumming can pay off big time on cold winter days and hot summer days alike when bones, permit, reds or whatever are slow to eat.
Not many anglers think of seatrout or weakfish as targets for chumming, but veteran inshore angler Bill Bisbain of Wilmington, North Carolina believes in chumming for them. In fact, when trout and weakfish are found in large concentrations, and anglers are catching them with live shrimp in large numbers, he believes fishermen are actually chumming but don’t realize it. “Many times I’ve anchored on a spot and caught 30 or 40 fish without moving my boat,” he says with conviction. “I know it’s a good place, and the fish are there. But frequently the later catches during a bite are more aggressive and easier to get than the first biters. I’m convinced that’s because for every trout or weakfish you catch, the shrimp you used for bait normally is knocked off a hook, and/or a fish regurgitates food from its stomach. That shrimp and stomach contents act as chum, holds a school in the area, and keeps them in a feeding frenzy.” Bisbain feels that this happens too frequently to be coincidence, and he habitually tosses a few dead shrimp as chum when anchored and catching a few trout or weakfish.
