Suspending a bait under a popping cork is one way to fool a tripletail on the Gulf’s waters. Photo by Pete Cooper Jr.

When you get right down to it, there's never just one way to catch a fish -- any fish! Some ways are certainly more effective than others, and some are definitely more fun than the rest. Then, at the right time and the right place, a rare few are both better and more fun.

With some popular fish species, though, time and place have little bearing on the productivity of certain techniques. One or two patterns simply work best whenever a particular species is involved. And if you want to have fun catching them, you'd best adhere faithfully to the tried and true!

There's always the possibility that one of those "patterns" may be a bit unorthodox as well.

Take tripletails, for example.

I have been infatuated with these fish ever since I met my first one over three decades ago. That's not to imply that over those 30 years, I've been consistently successful in catching them, just that I've hit on a couple of ways to catch them on a reasonably regular basis.

And for me, that's rather noteworthy, since tripletails tend to become quite temperamental at times!

On the other hand, when they aren't so predisposed, they strike some fairly radical offerings.

Rather than furnish you with data for those offbeat instances, let's look at two techniques that are effective on most occasions.

LIVE SHRIMP
As an overview of sorts, tripletails often seem to need a little time to decide whether they want to eat a particular offering. That could be a direct result of their habit of holding tightly to some form of structure and their unwillingness to leave it.

For consistent success with tripletails, your offering must be presented slowly. Keeping it in their faces for the longest time, apparently, helps convince them to eat it.

This is rather difficult to accomplish with a chuck of bait or a jig-and-soft-plastic combo, since those tend to sink rather fast or plummet into the depths when you pause them during the retrieve. So for the most consistent results, such an offering should be suspended beneath a float.

I prefer a 3-inch weighted red-and-white popping cork.

Over the years, it's become apparent that tripletails much prefer rising to strike than descending. Therefore, I suspend my lure only a foot or so beneath the cork. It doesn't depend on water clarity -- clear or grungy, that setup works best.

The bait of choice is a fresh shrimp of medium size. If it's a live shrimp, so much the better. Tripletails also merrily munch on small finfish, as well as not-so-small blue crabs. But for this consistent technique, shrimp rate at the top of the list.

Dead shrimp can be threaded onto a 1/4-ounce jighead. Live ones should have a bare hook run through the base of the horn.