September remember! That old adage was mostly intended for the arrival of hurricanes and other tropical storm systems, but it can also be interpreted in a lot of other ways.

Such as back to school, the imminent onset of autumn and the commencement of the American football season. For the angler, it hails the final phase of the local fishing season, often with the best fishing to be had anywhere at any time.

As the weather and oceans start to cool off, the offshore action will pick up. The tuna will be on the move, taking trolled rigs again even though chumming will still be effective especially for the blackfin that revel in the season’s warmest waters. The same cooling trend will see pelagic fish that have made it considerably farther north, heading back this way. While on their way, these fish will be feeding, which means that the fishing action should be good.

With juvenile mackerel abundant, this offers the migrants a ready source of one of their favoured foods and, despite their desire for southern climes, the presence of this bait will cause them to linger in the area. It is safe to say that every pelagic predator eats small mackerel with relish and it is only a matter of time before the schools currently inshore move out over the reefs to the deep blue water.

For those unable or unwilling to go out onto the ocean, reef fishing is also pretty good at this stage. It is often possible to catch frigate mackerel in these areas and, as live baits, there are reef-dwelling fish quite willing to inhale any such offering. Rockfish will not turn their noses up at a normally pelagic bait and there are bonitas and ambers that would positively delight at such an offering. Do not be deluded into thinking that all reef fish are small to medium sized and unable to swallow a whole mackerel.

Finally, for the local suffering from marlin fever, the local billfish scene is winding down quickly. Apart from the shift in effort away from these near mythical creatures to more useful species like wahoo and tuna, the fish themselves are simply not as thick as they were. Whether they have gone off their feed or simply moved on is open to conjecture, but this does raise a question in the minds of those who mull over such conundrums.

For some time now the world has been led to believe that billfish are approaching the endangered species mark. This cry has been so effective as to bring about the removal of marlin from many menus worldwide and a shift from “kill” tournaments and practices towards “catch and release”.

Naturally, the naysayers have always maintained that even after a quick release most marlin that were caught die shortly after their release. There is some evidence, largely from electronic tags, that the fish do not die and go on to make thousands of mile-long migrations.

Of course, there is a caveat here. Most of this information and virtually all the tagging information comes from the recreational fishing fleet. The commercial fleet pretty much remains out of sight, figuratively and literally, and probably indulges in practices that have been banned or at least discouraged. How this has affected billfish numbers will probably never be known.

What does seem apparent is that there are an awful lot of billfish around. Following the successful tournaments held here in Bermuda, other tournaments have gone on to account for record numbers of fish and even now, some venues like the Dominican Republic are having boats catch as many as ten and more blue marlin in a single day. It is not so long ago that many an angler merely dreamed of maybe, one day, having a shot at a single fish, even when fishing a recognised hot spot. The accepted expectation of multiple opportunities on a single day is mind-boggling.

To what can this be attributed? Has the reduction in recreational-fish mortality done the business and helped the species resurge to great numbers? Has the commercial fleet really given up on catching any billfish despite their techniques being very effective on billfish species?

Perhaps natural changes have seen a huge increase in marlin populations or it could have something to do with global warming. Perhaps other factors beyond our ken may be responsible. It may be a short-lived phenomenon soon to be replaced by a dearth of billfish for which there will again be no definitive reason.

Perhaps such musing is best saved for the long, wintry nights that are not all that far in our future. For now, taking advantage of any good weather to get offshore should be the plan. Once the present opportunities disappear it might well be a long while before the amateur can even try for some Tight Lines.