Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
Keeping abreast of what the weather is supposed to do for any outdoor activity is important, but it can be downright critical to those involved in offshore fishing, particularly if their adventures take them many miles and a few hours away from the inlet. A beautiful day can turn ugly real fast, and while it’s one thing to be out in the bay when a storm blows up and you get soaked to the skin during a 15-minute ride back to the dock, it’s a whole other story when you’re 60-miles offshore and the wind kicks the seas up to a monstrous size and you have to beat your way home hoping that nothing critical on your boat breaks or malfunctions!
Thankfully, due to improved weather reporting boaters rarely get caught in severe conditions that aren’t forecast. Anglers fishing off Delmarva pretty much have two marine forecasts to take into account. The first would be the “Cape Henlopen to Virginia Beach and out 20-mile report” which most of us call the “inshore report”. The other is the “Baltimore Canyon to Hatteras Canyon and out 100-mile report,” known as the “offshore report”. Anglers can often look at the inshore report and get a good idea what it’s going to be like even if they’ll be fishing as much as 60-miles out because the winds 1-20 miles out aren’t usually going to be much different from what’s going on 50-60 miles from the shoreline. However, sometimes conditions are very much different, so anyone heading out to the canyons should definitely review the offshore report and see what’s called for, while keeping in mind that the offshore report covers a very large swath of ocean and it’s not uncommon to have strong winds and rough conditions in one part of the forecast area and calm conditions at the other.
Reading the offshore report can be downright scary at times, particularly when it’s reporting 20-25 knot winds and seas at 10-15 feet. However, anglers must consider that the forecasters are taking into account waters 100-miles offshore and well beyond the edge of the Continental shelf, so much of the predictions are for areas that few anglers will ever find themselves. That’s why the 20-mile, nearshore report tends to be a more reliable indicator of what it’s going to be like in the waters that you are most likely to fish. Even though the forecast is supposed to only be for the waters out to 20-miles offshore, it’s usually a safe bet that the wind speeds out in the canyons won’t be much (if any) more than about 5-knots.
Everyone has their own comfort level, but as a rule of thumb, when they call for winds that are “light and variable, 5-10 knots,” or “10-knots or less,” you can expect very calm and pleasant conditions. A 10-15 knot forecast means it’s going to be choppy, but not so much that many folks would likely reconsider going out unless the actual breeze is holding more at the 15-knot side of the scale. The resulting seas from a steady 15-knots breeze would likely have more boaters calling conditions “rough” than just “choppy”. A true 15-20 knot breeze will usually keep many at the dock because at the very least it’s going to be rough, and if the wind actually hits 20-knots most will figure it’s going to be downright miserable offshore and not worth the effort or the pounding. But these descriptions are very subjective because every boat and every angler has their own likes, dislikes and thresholds of punishment they’re willing to take.
Almost as important as wind speed is the wind “direction”. For anglers fishing relatively close to the beach, even a strong “northwest” or “west” wind can be fishable because the land itself will shelter the waters from becoming too rough. The key, however, is not to get too far from land. Every season, a lot of novice fishermen are lured into running too far offshore during strong westerly winds because they have a following sea on the way out. The problem is, at some point they’ll have to turn around and pound their way home straight into that same sea, which by then could be quite formidable. Throughout the summer the predominant winds tend to be from the southwest.
Unfortunately, because our coastline doesn’t run exactly north and south, a southwesterly breeze gets almost no break from the land so there’s no place to hide from it except just north of the inlet and very close to the beach. Likewise, there’s no hiding from winds out of the northeast, east or southeast.
Finally, when interpreting marine weather reports, boaters must keep in mind that the “predicted” wave height might have very little to do with the comfort level of an offshore voyage, because even though wave heights are usually created by local winds, they can also be generated by severe weather from far away. For instance, a tropical depression hundreds of miles offshore can create huge swells that travel into our forecast area even if there’s no appreciable local wind. In such a case the marine forecast might call for seas of eight or more feet but the waves arrive so far apart that boaters might hardly notice them.
The success and safety of every offshore fishing trip hinges on a skipper’s ability to accurately interpret marine weather forecasts and determine how it applies to their own area of operation. Getting it wrong can be a costly mistake.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
