Hey guys I am about to be new to this offshore fishing thing soon. In process of getting a bigger center console and plan on doing more offshore fishing than inshore. Not wanting any numbers or anybody honey holes, just want to know what i look for to have a chance to catch like vermillion snappers, triggerfish, black sea bass, porgies, grunts and other fish?? Pretty much i guess structure but is it a certain depth i need to target?? Just want to get some general knowledge so i can use that to gain my wisdom on doing offshore fishing… Any help will be appreciated…
75-100 feet. Get a Maps Unique chart to get started!
'90 Maverick 18.5' Master Angler/'18 Suzuki 140 '14 Hydra Sports 3400/ 2 350 Yammys
Someone once told me you go out on the water to escape reality, so I thought about it and said no, I get on the water to find relaity
90’… bottom structure is easy to see on sounder, lots of B-liners,and BSBs
45-328.8
60-333.9
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The gardens is one of the better closer areas to fish. A lot of numbers for the area, but if you get out there and watch your finder you can find some good areas easily. This is 80 to 100 ft 20 to 30 miles off. This area is natural live bottom and not a man made reef like most of our spots. It’s much easier to find the good spots out there then some spots. My favorite area to bottom fish is out by the ledge 150 to 200ft deep. Bigger fish and less pressure in this area. The DNR has a list of popular numbers that hold fish and a lot of people start with. If you’ve never been out on your own before I’d start with some nearshore and work my way out over a couple trips. The weather and water conditions are much more important to pay attention to then when inshore.
Appreciate the insight
Appreciate your insight. Yeah want to start getting into offshore fishing. I usually go to Panama City Beach, Fla and fish offshore. You know in Florida you can go 1-3 miles out and catch vermillions and all. A whole different world out there…
Appreciate that 40inchreds. Thats definitely true about the weather and water. Been out in the jettand seen how ugly it gets out there so i can only imagine out there that far out…
If you going out further than you and your crew can swim…buy an EPRIB…might save your lives. Did I mention renting/buying a life raft if you going 20-30-70-??? miles offshore? That’s a long way to swim. Cheaper to buy those fush at a fush house…but…not as much fun.
The ENTER-NET Fisherman
GF, I sent you an e-mail regarding this subject matter.
david
GF- I started getting into Offshore about 4 years ago. I still consider myself pretty new to it and a still absorbing and learning every time I go out. The first recommendation I’d make before even considering going offshore is to like someone already said, make sure you have the proper safety equipment on board. At the bare minimum, get yourself some orbital flares, a handheld VHF capable of providing GPS location, an EPIRB/PLB, and an offshore First Aid kit.
Second, familiarize yourself as much as you can with the varying weather reporting services out there. Fishweather/Sailflow is good place to start, as well as windfinder. I look at both and look at the trends… If it’s blowing 30 with 8 foot seas the day before it’s predicting 2 foot seas at 8 seconds, the likelihood of it flattening out that much in a 12 hour period is pretty low…I always look at the 2nd day after a front moves through. If it’s looking like two days of calm seas, the second day will always be better. You also want to understand when the next front is moving through… and make an observation as to when the wind is expected to pick back up… You don’t want to be stuck out there when it starts blowing 20-30 and you have a 60 mile ride home. Weather changes quickly out there, so just make sure you’re timing it right and know before you go…
Trolling: If you’re bottom fishing, ocean temps don’t make as much of a difference as if you’re planning on trolling for dolphin, wahoo, tuna, and billfish. However if you do plan on trolling, take a hard look at the varying Sea Sufrace Temperature charts that are available out there. Warm currents moving over known structure areas, i.e. SW Banks, Georgetown Hole, Edisto Banks, 226 Hole, etc… create upwellings of water from deep which is super nutrient rich…attracting baitfish…which in return attracts gamefish. The SST charts will show where these currents are most likely forming based on warm water (backflows,fingers) shooting off of the
To expand on what S17 said regarding bottom fishing…
In general the cost along our area of the Atlantic is most a gently sloping sand covered flat bottom (i.e. no structure). But over the past millions/billions of years the ocean was at different levels. At some point it was 45’, 60’, 90’…, lower than it is todays. And just like the beach erosion we see today, millions/billions of years ago the same water/land interface (what today we would call the beach) experienced the same erosion only further off shore in what today is 45, 60, 90 feet of water.
Along our cost the hard bottom areas (rocks, ledges, stuff other than flat sand) will occur at the depths of 45’, 60’, 90’… The areas between these depths will basically be just flat sandy sections with no structure to attract fish (bait or predators).
Call Chip Berry with Maps Unique and get the electronic version of the program. Download the numbers onto an SD card and put that into your machine. Upload the numbers, pick a waypoint and go fishing. A lot of the numbers are a central location and you’ll need to make a few passes around the area with your sounder on to locate the better spots. Lots of artificial reefs around to get a feel for what you are doing. The maps also have live and hard bottom areas that do not see the pressure the artificials have and tend to have better quality and quantity on them.
Learn to tie a chicken rig with 60-80# test mono (I tie a surgeons knot loop into the top and bottom with dropper loops in the center for hooks), get some 6oz bank sinkers and 6/0 circle hooks (I like the VMC’s). Use squid, cigar or cut bait. I typically rig a bottom set up by tying a short Bimini into my braid and attaching a coast lock to it with a cat’s paw connection. I hook the chicken rig to it and slip on the bank sinker to the bottom loop. This way, you can change out the rig when a shark bites it off or something messes it up. You then have to just slip on a new one. I keep a portfolio with pretied and hooked rigs in zip-lock bags to make it simple, quick and easy to get back into fishing.
You can drift the areas until you find a spot that produces bigger fish and then anchor up on that spot. Learn to use the sounder to mark your spots. If you use the chartplotter screen to mark a waypoint, you are already past the spot you saw on the sounder. Using the sounder, you can scroll back to mark that specific hump, depression or ledge which makes it easy to find again.
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Best thread on here in a while. Nice work gentlemen.
Have you got that 36’ yet?