Most people prefer to fish for pompano in the surf. Under the best conditions they’ll carry their surf casting rigs to the beach, dig around in the sand to root up some sand fleas, toss the bait out and wait for a marauding school of pompano to swim by. I prefer fishing for them in the river. Pompano have a weird habit of “wake skipping.” When a boat passes near them they leap out of the water and skitter across the wake on their sides.

Our method this time was to run along the outside of the main channel with our eyes peeled for skipping fish. We probably ran for a few miles without seeing anything, so we finally stopped at the confluence of the main channel and a long dredged channel leading to the Ocean Harbor Oceanographic Institute, a place I’ve nabbed pompano in the past. We started casting flashy little green jigs and I drifted a live shrimp on a cork behind the boat.

We got action, just not the action we wanted. Ladyfish were out in numbers and jacks—a relative of the pompano but not nearly so tasty—were plentiful, too. But no pomps. The best fish of the day was a six-ounce baby grouper that bestirred himself to attack Jack’s jig. In another five years or so, he’ll be a prize catch. The grouper, not Jack.