Finding gulls feeding on the Mississippi Sound is the ticket to boating some good trout. Photo by Polly Dean.

The sun had risen just enough to expose its entire circular shape on the horizon -- a perfectly round ball of glowing orange. Cruising across the Mississippi Sound, its water slick as a pane of glass, conditions were ideal. Birds of all types were on the move, flying leisurely about. The mix included gulls, terns, and pelicans, each on a mission to locate their specific morning snack.

Running along a stretch of marsh grass that tailed off into a large shallow cove, something caught my eye. At first it seemed to be a flicker of white here and there, but as we neared, it was obvious that our morning was starting out on a high note. On further inspection, we saw that what we were speeding toward was a thick concentration of gulls whose aerial antics made it easy to see that they were in a feeding frenzy.

Knowing the water under the frantic birds to be less than 3 feet in depth, we made a point of shutting the engine down while 50 yards out from the surface activity and proceeding to the action with the trolling motor. Standing just behind me were Buck Cunningham and John Hammett, both armed with 12-pound-test spinning gear rigged with popping corks and soft-plastic minnow imitations.

When just within casting distance, we saw revealed on the water's surface shrimp jumping frantically in all directions. As they skittered across the surface, hungry gulls from above swooped down to quickly snatch the doomed crustaceans as they fled. However, the cause of this surface melee was an enormous school of speckled trout that, traveling en masse, was scavenging its way across the bottom, chasing up any bait that crossed its path. Swirls and strikes on the surface made it clear that the gulls were not the only ones devouring the shrimp.

No sooner had the two anglers' rigs hit the surface than the bobbers plunged or took off horizontally across the water. At this point there wasn't much need to pop the corks to attract hungry fish. As a matter a fact, the bright chartreuse-hued corks were periodically attracting strikes; by the end of this day, the new corks looked as if they'd gone through a grinder -- worn pretty much down to the white Styrofoam underneath the paint and full of puncture holes from the trout's fang-like teeth.

The action remained steady for quite some time; cast after cast, Cunningham and Hammett set the hook on what seemed to be starving speckled trout. As the school worked its way closer to the shoreline on the edge of some thick subsurface grassbeds, an aerial act began took the watery stage: Having homed in on schools of anchovies spawning in the thick grass, the fish grew so excited in their feasting that, in pursuit of the minnows, many somersaulted into the air as if they were rainbow trout.

Once over the thick grass, we switched to topwater baits, and exceptional surface action followed. Trout eagerly chased MirrOlure Top-Dogs skittered across the surface. Swirls were apparent beneath the moving lures, followed by the smack of a bigger trout. The anglers were kept busy with specks coming to the surface and shaking their heads wildly to rattle the lures' tandem treble hooks.

If not for the aid of the gulls, this incredible fishing action might not have occurred. It was a classic example of how birds can be used as your "eyes in the sky." All along the Mississippi coast, many anglers are well aware of the potential of "bird fishing" -- and the smart ones take every advantage of the situation.