Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
A friend of mine has a boat that he’s really quite proud of. Actually it’s not the boat so much as the electronics he has installed on his vessel that he just can’t quit raving about. At 22-feet it’s not a huge boat but he has it rigged-out with enough 12-volt “stuff” that the console looks like it should be mounted on something ready to be shot up to the space station.
A couple years ago I was striper fishing with this guy and the fish were being a little obstinate. We trolled all over the ocean but just couldn’t seem get on the fish. My friend wasn’t about to give up though; with his eyes bouncing around his colorful array of LCD screens he kept us in the hunt as we zigzagged our way up and down the coast. He just knew that at any moment one of his trusty machines would locate some fish and have us hooked-up and happy.
At one point I looked back and saw some terns diving about 200-yards back in our wake. At my suggestion that we might want to loop around and troll where the birds were working he told me, “I didn’t see anything on the machine when we came over that spot, there’s nothing there.”
So we trolled on-and-on-and-on. Later I saw a whale blow about a half-mile away. “Did you see that?” I shouted as I pointed to the north.
Momentarily lifting his face from one of the screens “What-where?” he squawked.
“Out there,” I said, again pointing in the direction of the spout that was, by then, gone.
“I’ll find it. “ He said with confidence as he returned his gaze to the console and started pushing buttons and turning knobs.
The fact was he never did see the whale, even though it spouted about three more times as we trolled past it about a quarter-mile away. He also didn’t see the group of gannets diving inshore as we made a turn to head south and back to the inlet after he declared, “I can’t find anything – anywhere, there’s no fish out here today!”
I don’t have to tell anyone how incredible marine electronics are these days. They’ve made boating much safer for mariners of all skill levels and certainly have the ability to make us more efficient at locating fish. Unfortunately, a byproduct of all this technology is that many anglers are losing the ability to do things that require more than the push of a button or a tap on a screen. I’m already surprised at how many mariners are willing to leave the dock these days without real “paper” charts aboard because their GPS units have electronic charting capabilities. Modern marine electronics can only “enhance” not “replace” the need for common sense and practical experience in both navigation and fish-finding.
Last week, my wife and I hopped in our little boat to spend the last couple hours of the day casting to bluefish and shad near the inlet. The evening before, we were there and the fish were so thick that we had one on almost every cast. We were hoping for a repeat of the fun, but when we arrived, even with the same state of tide, it was obvious from the start that the bite wouldn’t be the same. No birds, no schools of baitfish, no fish jumping out of the water, nothing going on. On that particular boat we have no electronics so we only could guess what was going on below the surface, but from all that we could “see” it looked like it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the day before - and we were right.
We drifted along and did some “blind-casting” just in case the fish were there but just not showing. Our attempts were to no avail until we spotted a couple terns make a quick dip and a couple circles about 50-yards to the south. We moved the boat close enough to get off a couple casts just as more birds were moving in and bluefish started to break around the boat. The fish were only up for about 30-seconds but the five-minute advance tip-off by the birds gave us plenty of time to move within casting range – no electronics necessary.
Electronics can be great for finding fish, but anglers will often find Mother Nature to be a much more reliable source for clues to what’s going on above and beneath the waves. But to recognize the signs anglers need to know what to look for and that takes a little bit of knowledge about the surrounding environment. In the case I just described the birds we saw were “terns” which are a common and relatively small species of seabird that feeds primarily on small fish. Unlike the big herring or black-back gulls, terns aren’t going to get all worked up over a floating bluefish carcass or a dead crab. If terns are diving, they’re over little fish that are being chased to the surface by bigger fish underneath.
Terns are good birds to see working either inshore or offshore. Gannets will usually be offshore and are the big diving birds with long pointed wings, head and tail that we see mostly in the cold weather months. They’re also live fish eaters and great indicators that predators like big bluefish or rockfish might be in the area. Gannets are known for diving from great heights straight down into the water and then swimming even deeper to catch their meal. Armed with this knowledge, anglers should know that fish below these birds could actually be quite deep and not necessarily willing to come to the surface to take a bait.
A white egret standing on the edge of a marsh and peering intently into the water can be a good indicator of baitfish below. If the marsh is adjacent to some deep water, the bait it’s watching and hoping to grab could be being pushed up by some type of predator fish below.
Whether they’re schools of big bunker offshore, shiners under a bridge, bull minnows in a marsh, or grass shrimp around a dock, seeing natural bait can be a good indicator of the presence or absence of big fish if anglers are able to properly interpret what they’re seeing. A “happy” school of bait that’s just casually swimming around or holding in a current might indicate that there’s nothing in the area that has them worried. It’s possible that big fish could be close by and just waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting bait, but anglers probably shouldn’t waste too much time fishing around happy bait.
On the other hand, when bait schools are broken up and the little critters can be seen dashing haphazardly about or maybe periodically “showering” out of the water, fishermen had better get their lines working fast because some kind of carnage is definitely going on below. Of course what can be seen from the surface may only be the tip of the iceberg as to what’s going on below so anglers should pay keen attention to even the smallest little flip of a tail, swirl, or splash they observe because it could be the only indication of big stuff happening underneath.
Slicks can be one of the greatest things to encounter while fishing because they not only show that fish are in the area but they also indicate that the fish are feeding. Slicks are nothing but a sheen on the water created when some sort of oily fish has been ripped apart by another fish. But not all feeding activity creates slicks. Of course it takes an oily bait to make a slick, but it also means the feeding fish must tear-up its prey if the oils are to be released. A bunker will probably be slashed-up and release a lot of oil if it’s taken by a bluefish, but that same bunker might not release any oil of it’s swallowed whole by a rockfish. Therefore, slicks can help anglers understand both what’s being eaten as well as what’s doing the eating.
Modern electronics will certainly help put fishermen over fish, but anglers can miss a lot of opportunities if they don’t balance the time they spend staring into LCD screens with that which is spent paying attention to what Mother Nature has to show.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
