Jacks are among the most ferocious predators that fly fishers can tangle with in salt water, but they are not managed by state or federal agencies and very little is known about their populations or their migration patterns. (Jay McLaurin photo)
February 28, 2025
By Blane Chocklett
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This article was originally titled “Jacked Up” in the February-March 2025 issue of Fly Fisherman. Click here to subscribe.
It was zero dark thirty as we headed out on the water, and I was mentally “jacked up” knowing what the daylight might hold. I’d spent the previous day in New Orleans at a science symposium hosted by the American Saltwater Guides Association (ASGA) , and we planned to do a field study of our own and produce an educational film about crevalle jacks to help shed light on these amazing fish.
With me in the skiff was guide Ty Hibbs from Whatever Bites Charters and videographer Ben Meadows from Dorsal Outdoors. As the sun began to creep above the horizon, the marsh came to life. Birds took to the air, porpoises rolled in the distance, and even the smell of the marsh seemed to change with the addition of sunlight.
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Our mission was to focus on jacks, but Ty decided to stop at a productive redfish flat to get things started. As I stepped onto the bow, the sun rose far enough to allow us to see into the water, and I knew it was going to be a bluebird day. Immediately we spotted some redfish and sheepshead, and I caught a couple to get things rolling. Nice and easy. These slow-moving fish often give you plenty of time to make the right cast.
On the bow, I calmly scanned left and right for the next target. Out of nowhere, a lightning-fast jack crevale exploded through a clump of baitfish right in front of me, in less than 3 feet of water. I didn’t see it coming—and neither did anyone else in the boat. I flinched and was momentarily stunned. For a split second I thought I was getting attacked myself! I certainly didn’t get to cast—before I could regain my composure the fish was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
As we pushed forward, we saw a couple more redfish and caught them both, while Ty kept gazing into the distance at some diving birds. He rounded a point and entered a small bay. As Ty poled around the corner the glare became a problem, and I could only scan the area about 20 to 30 feet in front of us. Almost immediately I spotted 15 to 20 large jacks, but they were already spooking away from the boat. I made a hurried cast toward the fleeing fish, but to no avail. Our adrenaline levels were high, but the jacks were proving difficult.
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Jacks inhabit diverse habitats. Fly fishers can find them on shallow sand flats; in grassy salt marshes; around structures like bridges, oil rigs, wrecks, and trawlers; and in deep water in large schools that may be migrating or feeding on baitfish under birds. (Capt. Cody Rubner photo) We decided to leave the shallows and head toward the birds, and in just ten minutes we could see chaotic splashing under them. As we approached, the throbbing beat of one of my favorite songs—Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”—began playing in my head. Slowly at first, with that iconic beat as the thrashing unfolded in the distance, and then the powerful crescendo of guitars when I could see baitfish leaping into the air, giant wakes from predators moving at the surface, and cannonball-size holes in the water.
My heart began to race, knees shaking as I stripped line from my reel and prepared to cast into the tumultuous white water. Ben was already filming as I made a cast with my 6-inch white Hybrid Changer. When the fly hit the water I started a two-handed retrieve, and boom! my fly was smoked. But I couldn’t keep the line tight in the mayhem. I got hit again as I continued my strip, and by the time the fly was at boatside, the jacks were boiling all around us, even hitting the hull with dull thumps as baitfish tried to find shelter under the boat.
Instinctively I started a figure-8 maneuver—it’s something we use on muskies all the time, and it has worked for me on many other gamefish all over the world. On the second cycle at the surface, a 30-pound-class jack crushed the fly on an outward turn just 2 feet outside my tip-top.
This time the hook stayed buttoned. Everyone started shouting as the line ripped out of my hands and backing began to melt from the reel. And all I could think of was Hetfield’s lyrics “we’re off to never-never land.” I did my best to hang on for the fight of my life and slowly gain line until the powerful fish began to spiral around the boat. I began a dance to avoid breaking the rod on the gunwales when the fish surged, guiding my line around the outboard several times until my shirt and brow were drenched with sweat, and my lower back began to spasm with exhaustion. When we finally boated the fish my arms were weak and shaking when I held up the fish for a photo.
When I released it, the fish swam away seemingly unscathed, pissed off that I had interrupted its breakfast. But I was completely jacked up. If you’re looking for a fight, jacks are the very definition of strength, carnage, and chaos. Not only will they hurt you physically, they will break hooks, leaders, fly lines, rods, and reels, testing the limits of your fly tackle.
Crevalle Jack The crevalle jack (Caranx hippos ) is widely known among American anglers as jack crevale—with one “l,”—but elsewhere it’s also called common jack, black-tailed trevally, couvalli jack, black cavalli, yellow cavalli, and more. It’s perhaps the best-known member of the family Carangidae, which includes all the trevallies, including the renowned giant trevally. People travel thousands of miles and spend tens of thousands of dollars to catch giant trevallies, affectionately called GTs.
Jacks are equally powerful gamefish and similarly fierce predators, but all too often they get little respect, at least in America. In hopes that all they need is a cool nickname, I’ve started calling them JCs—I’m willing to put them on a pedestal up there with GTs.
This jack has a Floy tag placed by ASGA. Each tag carries a unique code, and the fish must be recaptured and reported in order to collect information about survival and movements. ASGA is also raising $200,000 for acoustic telemetry tags and receivers that track fish movement using underwater listening devices. (Dorsal Outdoors photo) JCs can live up to 20 years—they are relatively slow-growing fish. They’re found in temperate and tropical waters along the East and Gulf coasts and down into Central and South America, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea and along the west coast of Africa. They are beautiful creatures, with large eyes and a yellowish hue that bleeds into silvers, pinks, and sometimes purples. Their powerful sickle tails propel them with speed and stamina. They can grow to 50 inches and more than 70 pounds.
JCs will kick your ass, and their big mouths can consume anything smaller that gets in their path. They often feed in shallow water, where they provide fast-moving and sometimes persnickety targets. In deep water they often feed near the surface, trapping bait balls between the sky and their teeth. In any location, JCs make the perfect fly-rod quarry.
I was amazed to discover that most state agencies do not classify jacks as gamefish. There is no state or federal management plan, and there are no restrictions on harvest for sport or commercial fisheries. In other words, it’s open season on jacks. When the trawlers are one day finished removing menhaden and other species from the oceans, they could easily circle their nets around schools of these incredible fish and use them for cat food or fish oil.
The ASGA has decided it’s time to change this non-policy. With help from partners including Dr. Jennifer Rehage at the Florida International University (FIU) Institute of Environment, and Dr. Marcus Drymon at the Mississippi State University (MSU) Marine Fisheries Ecology Program, ASGA is helping to gather scientific data to guide government agencies to implement regulations regarding management of jacks. ASGA is raising money to fund tagging and research of jacks because, at this point, little is known about their populations, breeding cycles, and migrations.
We need to know more, and we need to protect these fish to ensure that my kids and your kids and their grandchildren can experience what we have today. In partnership with sponsors such as Yeti, Costa Del Mar, Scientific Anglers, Nautilus Reels, TFO rods, Patagonia Fly Fish, Rather Outdoors (Quantum Reels), and Dorsal Productions, ASGA is producing a film to document the fledgling studies and shed more light on these wonderful gamefish.
“We can’t wait for fisheries management to understand the value of crevalle jacks. So we are doing something about it ourselves,” says ASGA Policy Director Tony Friedrich. “Starting in the spring of 2025, ASGA will partner with MSU, FIU, and dozens of guides and anglers to deploy more than a hundred additional telemetry tags from Texas to South Carolina, traditional Floy tags from Texas to South Carolina, and catch data from the Got One app, as well as collecting DNA for stable isotope research.”
Dr. Drymon adds, “We’ve heard what the guides in the Florida Keys are saying about declining jack populations. Now we have a chance to learn more about jack movements and migrations to ensure the declines seen in the Keys don’t occur throughout their range. Understanding where these jacks are going is a critical precursor to establishing effective management measures. This program ensures that tags are broadly distributed across the range of the species, from Texas throughout the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast of the United States. In addition, this tagging program is a great way to engage fishermen in the scientific process, while capturing their local ecological knowledge.”
“Jacks are underestimated and undervalued by too many anglers, but some of us appreciate them tremendously,” says FIU’s Dr. Rehage. “We know so little about them. We tagged jacks near Key West that were barely 5 pounds, mostly because big jacks are so rare on the flats there these days. Our research showed that these little guys made it all the way to Louisiana and Texas. We were just astonished. Their range is impressive, and they deserve some protection.”
Studies already in progress by Mississippi State University and Florida International University use acoustic telemetry to track U.S. jack crevale populations in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. In the spring of 2025, the American Saltwater Guides Association will work with these researchers to deploy more than 100 additional telemetry tags to learn more about the species. Fishing Techniques I’ve been able to fish for jacks in Florida, Louisiana, many other states, and in other parts of the world. They are a hardy, adaptable, and voracious species, so you can encounter them in many different situations. I have walked beaches on Florida’s Gulf Coast and in Mexico and seen them cruising in the surf zone in singles or in small packs.
In South Carolina I have seen schools of them surrounding bait balls, or giant singles creating mayhem in schools of large bunker. I’ve also had the pleasure of targeting them in big migrating schools along the east coast of Florida in the spring and summer. Another cool scenario is targeting them in inlets and passes around bridges and walls.
Florida is perhaps the best state for finding jacks year-round.
I’ve also fished for JCs in Louisiana marshes in skinny water, where singles or small groups can be as viscerally engaging as finding permit on a white sand flat. Texas has an amazing fishery, and watching them daisy chain or crash bait always gets me jacked up.
Finding fish in big, migrating schools is definitely the most exciting way to catch jacks. This is generally fast and furious fishing—if you can set up ahead of the school to make a long cast. Start a two-hand retrieve as soon as the streamer or popper lands, to produce constant movement and to maintain the best ready position to set the hook. You can’t possibly strip too fast, because you need the line tight to set the hook. Once a jack has homed in on your fly, you can’t get it away from them. This situation can be frustrating—the fish often eat coming toward you, making it harder to set the hook. It helps when they turn after eating the fly, pulling the hook into the corner of their mouths. The good news is that big schools give you lots of opportunities.
Jacks can get pressured, and like any fish they can get wary and hard to fool, so long casts are important. Using a teaser or hookless popper on a conventional rod to get the fish excited can help if the fish seem wary. A teaser can be launched far away and draw the jacks closer, and they are usually in a frenzy when they come within casting range. A teaser can also pull JCs up from deeper water and away from wrecks, ensuring that your fishing becomes a surface-oriented visual game.
Tackle & Gear I use heavy tackle for JCs, starting with Scientific Anglers 50- or 100-pound XTS gel-spun backing . This ensures that there is no weak link when a big fish takes a lot of line—the extra drag in the water can’t compromise the system. Connect the fly line using a doubled figure-8 loop on the backing so there are two loops of backing to connect to the fly line loop.
A Scientific Anglers Sonar Titan GT line is a great choice for quick turnover of big flies. This intermediate line is useful in most situations where you encounter jacks. When you encounter jacks near the surface, cruising the flats, or blitzing bait balls, an intermediate line puts the fly in the correct zone consistently.
When you are targeting jacks on reefs, structure such as bridges or wrecks, or anywhere there’s a current, a sinking line helps get the fly down into the fish’s field of awareness. In these situations I cast a Scientific Anglers Sonar Titan Pelagic line . This line also has a strong 65-pound-test core and a 6-inches-per-second sink rate, allowing the fly to descend quickly into the strike zone, even when tidal current is flowing around a bridge abutment. Another advantage to using such a line is that its weight and density help carry larger flies with less effort.
I keep the leader simple—minimizing the number of connections can help eliminate any weak points. With a sinking line, I use just a straight 40- or 50-pound length of abrasion-resistant fluorocarbon .
Keep your leader lighter than your fly line or backing by at least 15 pounds. I have lost fish by putting too much pressure on the fly line when the leader was stronger than the line. Unless you’re after IGFA line-class records, I wouldn’t use less than a 30-pound-test tippet. It’s an injustice to these great predators to fight them to exhaustion. You want to feel their power. Buckle up, use a heavy drag, and go to work. I guarantee these fish will leave you saying no mas.
For the flats, I use a floating Amplitude Smooth Titan GT fly line and a simple three-part leader made from 5 feet of 60-pound, 2 feet of 50-pound, and 3 feet of 40-pound-test fluorocarbon.
Your reel needs to be smooth, with a bus-stopping drag. The reel should have plenty of backing capacity and a large arbor for quick line recovery. My favorite reels for all big gamefish are a size 10-12 Nautilus GTX reel or CCF-2 or Silver King . There are plenty of other proven saltwater reels out there from Ross, Abel, Tibor, and others. Hatch sold a limited-edition Iconic 9+ reel with custom artwork to support ASGA’s saltwater research efforts. Any reel you use for tarpon will work for jacks.
A weeklong trip for jacks can be where rods go to die. A lot of guides recommend a 10-weight, but that’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Yes, you can do it, but I prefer 11- or 12-weight rods. The hardest part of the fight is when your drag is tight and the fish is close to the boat. This is where rods get deformed and sometimes blow up. I use a 12-weight TFO BC Big Fly or an 11-weight Blitz , but your current tarpon rod can do the trick—unless you do something silly like grab the rod above the cork to try to lever the fish. Also beware of sudden lunges at the gunwales. I’ve also seen rods get wrecked when they wrap around an outboard motor. When you fish for jacks, bring a backup rod for your backup rod.
Fly selection can be as broad as the JC’s migration range. In general, jacks aren’t super picky about what you cast to them. However, sometimes when they are on the flats in clear, shallow water, a stealthy presentation and a realistic imitation can make a big difference. Flies that imitate mullet, menhaden, shrimp, and crabs work well. Be sure the flies are tied on strong hooks—they will be tested on big jacks. I like Ahrex SA270 Bluewater hooks .
Flies for jacks range from imitative shrimp, crab, and mullet patterns on the flats, to larger baitfish imitations and poppers in deeper water. This fish took a white Jerk Changer. (Blane Chocklett photo) Poppers are the most fun, and seeing a popper get smashed by one of these brutes is unforgettable. Don’t head out for JCs without a good selection of big poppers that move water and make noise. Pole Dancers and Not Your Average Poppers are two of my favorites surface flies.
Poppers are great when the fish are schooled up in deeper water. But on the flats or anywhere you find jacks alone, I recommend 4- to 8-inch Hybrid Game Changers or Jerk Changers. Beast Fleyes and Hollow Fleyes —designed by the late, great Bob Popovics —are fine choices, as is a Lefty’s Deceiver . Color schemes can range from all white, to gray-and-white, black, olive-over-white, tan-and-white, chartreuse, or black and purple.
Before it’s Too Late Jacks have all my respect. They are beautiful, ferocious, and they fight like there is no tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow, we need to get engaged to ensure there is a tomorrow for these currently unmanaged gamefish. The science is now being done to help get a better idea of where these fish go, how and where they spawn, how many there are, and whether they are all connected or there are several distinct populations.
It’s time to start being proactive instead of reactive. We need to start saving our gamefish resources before they become endangered. We can help give JCs a brighter future by protecting them and getting regulations in place in all coastal states. We need to make sure our kids and their kids get to see what getting jacked up is all about.
Blane Chocklett guides for trout, smallmouths, muskies, and stripers. He’s a Fly Fisherman field editor, and his most recent story was “Freshwater Stripers” in the February-March 2024 issue . He is the author of Game Changer: Tying Flies that Look & Swim Like the Real Thing (Headwater Books, 2020). Find him on Instagram: @blanechocklettfishing
