Navigational aids attract bait, which in turn draw various fish including Spanish mackerel and cobia.

They’re benevolent in that they keep us from running amok, and they often show us where the fish are. Sounds like many of our fathers, grandfathers or other angling mentors, but we’re actually talking about inshore markers.

Scattered throughout bays, inlets and the Intracoastal Waterway, markers stand as stoic monuments to man’s need to know where he’s going on the water. Made mostly of wood or metal, these buoys, range markers, tripods and various other Aids To Navigation may have been stationed to identify channels, shoaling, obstructions and restricted areas, but many pull double duty as fish magnets for shallow-water anglers.

On a recent excursion in lower Tampa Bay, Capt. Art Paiva delivered a textbook lesson on marker productivity. Launching from Bahia Beach Marina, we loaded the livewell with pilchards and threadfin herring caught on a metal-framed marker not far from our launch site. The gamefish awaited us at a range marker about a mile away.

Fortunately, we had this one all to ourselves, so Paiva was able to anchor exactly as he wanted about 20 feet upcurrent of the structure. Before dropping anchor, he affixed a buoy to his anchor line—a tactic that would clearly demonstrate its purpose in short order.

Armed with medium-action spinning rods, we freelined live threadfins in the current, while Paiva went to work setting up his advertising campaign. Markers attract fish without embellishment, but a frozen chumblock hung from a stern cleat combined with a few squirts of menhaden oil will quickly attract a crowd. In a matter of minutes our chum line attracted a thick wad of baitfish. Predators such as mackerel, snapper, cobia and sharks can sniff out a lone chumbag, but when they pick up the scent, sight and sound of a scaly buffet, it’s an easy sell.

Emergent wreck.

Part two of Paiva’s marker-chumming plan involved chopping fresh sardines into nickel-sized chunks and dropping a few pieces downcurrent every minute or so. Such snack trails give distant quarry a clear path to your baits. We found willing participants in no time. Paiva’s heavy-action spinner bounced twice, then bent like a willow in a hurricane as a sizeable shark blistered the reel for a quick 100 yards before biting through the leader. Not to worry, though, for, as Paiva noted, once you get the sharks going, the action can last for hours. Sure enough, another shark bait soaked for maybe 10 minutes before the rod bent willow-like again. This time, the connection held and when the 5-foot blacktip showed no signs of slowing, Paiva cranked his outboard, tossed over his buoyed anchor line to gave chase with his angler winding frantically on the bow. After subduing the toothy opponent, Paiva motored back to the range marker, reattached his floating anchor line and resumed fishing at his original spot.

Grass patch.

Paiva said he anticipated the initial shark strike when the mackerel that had been swarming his chum suddenly vanished. “I can tell when the sharks are around because the mackerel bite will stop. We usually hook up with a shark within a few minutes of the mackerel disappearing.” No surprise, then, that Paiva’s favorite bait for marker sharks is a chunk of Spanish mackerel.

Prior to the shark attack, we enjoyed tugging on several of the chunky macks that swarm Tampa Bay markers and ravage area bait schools. Consummate predators, these biting machines seldom make any effort to conceal their presence, and on this day there were plenty of classic indicators, including showering baitfish, sudden whitewater boils and surface bursts. Our live pilchards met with eager reception as did silver squid spoons or white bucktail jigs, all rigged with wire leaders.