Jumping fish?

my3cents

Anyone any idea if any particular species of salt water fish is know for jumping out of the water?

The reason I ask is that I regularly (maybe once a month) see fish just jump out of the water when I'm out walking along the beach. Last night a fish that was at least a foot (30cm) long jumped out of the water straight up to about 2ft then dropped back in again.

I also see otters and seals and have even seen fish jump when a seal is chasing them but on most occasions when I see fish jumping there is no sign of anything else in the water not on the surface anyway. The area is known for bass fishing.

We occasionally get decent sized shoals of mackerel when the water "boils" with fish but this is just the odd fish and I'm fairly sure its not a mackerel.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

These are usually sea/white trout.

stylie

Mullet do it a lot, Garfish too. Sea trout as mentioned. Bass when chasing food.

madred006

my3cents wrote: »

Anyone any idea if any particular species of salt water fish is know for jumping out of the water?

The reason I ask is that I regularly (maybe once a month) see fish just jump out of the water when I'm out walking along the beach. Last night a fish that was at least a foot (30cm) long jumped out of the water straight up to about 2ft then dropped back in again.

I also see otters and seals and have even seen fish jump when a seal is chasing them but on most occasions when I see fish jumping there is no sign of anything else in the water not on the surface anyway. The area is known for bass fishing.

We occasionally get decent sized shoals of mackerel when the water "boils" with fish but this is just the odd fish and I'm fairly sure its not a mackerel.

Quite possibly mullet seen them at it last year in clifden area actually thought they were salmon from a distance large shoals of them boiling on surface and odd one jumping .

Budawanny

straight up in the air.. definitely sea trout..

my3cents

Thanks guys, I'll go with sea/white trout because when I normally see this behavior its within 500m of a small river so I think that sort of fits, although I'd happily believe the one last night was a bass. I saw it on a spot that one local says is a good spot for bass at the right tide. At low tide there's a sort of shallow valley in between the rocks which is covered with the surrounding rocks only at very high tides like last night.

Budawanny

Thats a high class problem you have there , trying to find out if your local jumping fish are sea trout or bass :-)

my3cents

Budawanny wrote: »

straight up in the air.. definitely sea trout..

I was looking for otters which I see quite often at that location when its a high tide so my eyes were focused on the spot when it happened it give or take a couple of degrees the fish jumped straight up in the air.

Budawanny

sounds great. sea trout tend to shoot vertically up in the air.. whiles a salmon takes more of an arc when it clears the surface.
not sure about bass and mullet though. im guessing sea trout might be fairly unique.

madred006

my3cents wrote: »

I was looking for otters which I see quite often at that location when its a high tide so my eyes were focused on the spot when it happened it give or take a couple of degrees the fish jumped straight up in the air.

A secondary theory that attempts to explain mullet's strange jumping behavior is that the fish are in the process of escaping a predator, such as a seal, shark, whale, dolphin or simply a larger species of fish that wants to feed on them. If you encounter a school of mullet that all are jumping out of the sea at the same time, the likelihood that each individual fish is trying to rid itself of a parasite is low. Instead, this behavior is usually a sign that the school of fish is trying to avoid a larger predator that lurks just beneath the surface and leaps out of the water to avoid being captured and becoming prey.

my3cents

madred006 wrote: »

A secondary theory that attempts to explain mullet's strange jumping behavior is that the fish are in the process of escaping a predator, such as a seal, shark, whale, dolphin or simply a larger species of fish that wants to feed on them. If you encounter a school of mullet that all are jumping out of the sea at the same time, the likelihood that each individual fish is trying to rid itself of a parasite is low. Instead, this behavior is usually a sign that the school of fish is trying to avoid a larger predator that lurks just beneath the surface and leaps out of the water to avoid being captured and becoming prey.

I should have mentioned that this activity is always in fairly shallow water say 3ft and close in to the shore over a bed of rocks and some sea weed. Last night it was just lucky I was looking at the spot when it happened. Normally I just see what looks like a fish jumping out of the corner of my eye so by the time I'm looking right at it all I see is the fish as its landing back in the water.

It often surprises me how little people see when looking out at the sea. I point seals and otters out to people and if I hadn't they'd never have noticed them.

The rare times we get shoals of mackerel close in we see the seals chasing them, but not seen many seals this year heard some stories about a good few washing up shot further down the coast.

my3cents

Budawanny wrote: »

Thats a high class problem you have there , trying to find out if your local jumping fish are sea trout or bass :-)

I don't fish I do know that if it was a sea trout then it was one of biggest you'd ever get around here. I watch the river regularly and despite local claims of historic catches the biggest thing in the river is never more than about 6 inches long and that would be a big fish.

If there were any decent fish in the river we'd get poachers and that's one curse we don't have.

As for bass I'd take some convincing that there are many, I've walked the same stretch for over 10 years and seen some decent catches of good sized bass but unless you anglers are hiding the bass as soon as you catch them and telling me stories there haven't been many caught in the last couple of years.

uch

We used to see this on the East Coast a lot, they looked like Bass to me, and if you were able to get in the water you could get pretty close to them to identify them, so I'd go with Bass

chopper6

Small and medium sized mullet will jump occasionaly,larger ones less so.

Schooling bass are also a possibility as are seatrout.

If its mullet you'll often see them rolling on thier sides too..flashing thier bellies.

munsterjock

Any clue as to what county and where this is occurring? PM me if you want to keep it private.

munsterjock

Any clue as to what county and where this is occurring? PM me if you want to keep it private.

munsterjock

Any clue as to what county and where this is occurring? PM me if you want to keep it private.

munsterjock

Any clue as to what county and where this is occurring? PM me if you want to keep it private.

dmc17

I've seen this too on a few occasions. If I'm ever spinning in the late evening and it's calm. Just before it gets dark, close to the shore in shallow bays I've seen fish jumping. No idea what they are though.