The
Wreck Hunters
Find your own secret spot and cash in on the
rewards, season after season.
By RICK RYALS
"Dad, we have a problem."
The simple sentence roused us from our
afternoon daydreams as effectively as ice water down our
backs.
Some 20 miles off the coast of
Jacksonville, Dennis Young was speaking from the helm of his
father's 26-foot Sea Dancer. We were nearing a wreck that
Dennis, Sr., had reserved especially for this day.
But there was a problem. Just off the
bow, another boat was heading for the same spot. Its crew
was obviously trolling from charted reef to reef, barely
noticing the sunburned ballyhoo skipping from their
outriggers.
"I think he's gonna past just west
of it," Dennis, Sr., answered. "Just to be on the
safe side let's crowd him just a little."
What followed reminded me of the old WWII
movies, where the submarine crew holds their breath, while
the bad guys pass directly overhead, never knowing what was
well within range of their depth charges.
Here we were, four so-called adults,
pretending to be trolling as we eased the other boat ever so
slightly off course. Suddenly, the rules changed.
"Oh no!" Dennis, Sr.,
exclaimed. "Don't eat that awful ballyhoo, not now of
all times."
As the other boat passed within yards of
the wreck, a pod of big amberjacks, clearly visible to us
some 150 feet away, moved into attack formation. The jacks
followed the washed-out ballyhoo, threatening to crash the
baits and expose Young's secret hideaway once and for all.
A collective "Whew, that was
close" signaled an end to the crisis, as the shadows
vanished from behind the baits. Oblivious, the merry sailors
held their easterly course, unaware that they had passed
within mere feet of a piscatorial sunken treasure.
"Man, how lucky can you get?"
Dennis, Sr., asked no one in particular. "If those guys
had looked at their fishfinder, or behind their baits, or
just at the activity on the surface around their boat, we'd
be out of business at this honeyhole."
That's how it is when you're fishing
secret numbers. You've not only got to worry about where you
are, you've got to make sure nobody catches you on a spot
you want to keep secret. That's why it was a good long time
after the invaders had left the area that Dennis pulled up
to the wreck, and ordered his son to drop the marker
overboard.
We rigged up heavy bottom-fishing rods
with 8-ounce dropper rigs, baited with live sardines and
runners. Junior was first to the bottom, and it didn't take
long to confirm what we all expected. "Whoa, he's a
rooting," was the first thing we heard as something
very large engulfed his bait and headed back to the safety
of its lair.
Pandemonium broke out seconds later.
Instead of the big snapper or grouper we expected to see
Dennis wrestle to the surface, it looked more like the
invasion of the bottom dwellers. Not only did the 45-pound
cobia Dennis had hooked come to the surface, but an escort
of seven more followed and started circling Sea Dancer as if
in a wagon train.
Jeff Weakley, already tired from an
all-night trout fishing vigil the night before, grabbed a
rod and immediately hooked a second cobia. Dennis, Sr.,
gaffed his son's fish, but ordered Jeff to keep his in the
water while they went to work trying to hook another cobia
from the pod still lingering beneath the boat.
"Sorry, Jeff," he said when he
got around to gaffing the 25-pounder. "Here, just hold
this rod a second and relax."
"Relax?" was the last word we
heard from Jeff as one of the biggest schools of amberjack
I've seen in years erupted on the surface after his sardine.
The one thing that was abundantly clear
was that nobody had fished this wreck in a long, long time.
It was one of the many out-of-the-way
spots hidden beneath northeast Florida offshore waters.
There's a 60-mile shelf here, mostly vacant sand bottom, but
anglers who take the time to look find much more. The
Jacksonville Offshore Sport Fishing Club has historically
been a leader in artificial reef placement, with over 125
confirmed drops, many marked with buoys. That means there's
already a wealth of areas for anglers to troll for kingfish
and other pelagics, or bottom fish for snapper and grouper.
But the technology exists to help you
find your own secret hideaways, where you can return again
and again to enjoy the kind of fast-paced fishing that we
were experiencing aboard Sea Dancer.
One of the easiest ways to find new
wrecks and reefs is simply to monitor your fishfinder while
moving between known sites. Scouting for bottom structure at
running speeds necessitates first of all a quality
fishfinder, but equally important is where you mount the
transducer. On Sea Dancer, a 26-foot center console, Young's
transducer is mounted thru-hull right beneath the helm
station. This is far enough aft to stay underwater at
running speeds but still ahead of the turbulence of the
prop.
Outboard engines present a different
situation. Capt. Roger Walker, another local veteran, runs a
26-foot twin outboard boat. His transducer is flush-mounted
with his hull ahead of his transom, but still far enough
back to stay in the water at high speed. This gives a clear
picture while running, without picking up motor interference
from the outboards.
"I'm rigged so I can read the bottom
machine while I'm running, and I never go anywhere without
watching my scope," explained Walker. "One key is
to never go home the same way twice. When I leave an area to
run to another, I'll troll a half-mile south first. The next
day I'll try a quarter-mile north. The key is to always be
running over new bottom.
"I'd say out of my top-50 snapper
and grouper spots, I found at least half of them myself. On
my boat, I turn down the sensitivity on my scope ever so
slightly as we get up on plane. The first thing I look for
is the bottom line on my scope to thicken. That means we're
on good hard bottom. We may or may not be close to a ledge,
but hard bottom is essential for good fishing."
Recognizing a ledge at high speed takes
some getting used to. At 25 knots, any rise or fall you see
on your bottom line is a sandhill. The speed at which you're
passing over the bottom makes hills look just like big
ledges. When you actually run over a ledge, it'll look just
like somebody turned your scope off, and turned it back on
at a different depth. The actual ledge will be imperceptible
until you circle and go over it slowly.
Bait schools, which commonly gather
around structure, show clearly at high speed. It just looks
like the school is skinnier the faster you go.
"I've found thousands of great bait
spots just running along over hard bottom, and spotting
schools on my scope," said Walker. "But the truth
is I found a lot of my favorite spots before I had my scope
set up to read at high speeds. If more guys would just keep
an eye out for turtles, spadefish, schools of bait, or the
kinds of striking fish that hold over structure, they'd
greatly increase their inventory of secret spots."
Fishing aboard Sea Dancer, I couldn't
help but notice Young was really quiet behind the wheel.
"I guess sometimes my charters think
I'm antisocial" he laughed. "When we're running
from spot to spot, I'm locked in on my scope, but I'm also
watching the surface for baitfish, turtles and other
life."
Indeed it had been a school of sardines
holding over a patch of hard bottom that had provided our
bait supply the morning of our trip. While Jeff, Junior, and
I were busy reeling in baits on sabikis as fast as we could,
Young fired a double-hook bottom rig to the bottom with a
pair of sardines hooked through the eye sockets. Despite the
fact that the little patch of hard bottom held no takers,
its location was noted for future reference.
"November's coming--we'll look at
that little spot again," Young commented. "Lots of
little out-of-the-way places will seem dead now, but in the
fall and spring they'll definitely be worth a look."
Snapper and grouper along this part of
the coastline spend winter and summer out in the deep water.
But in the spring and fall, they move onto small pieces of
structure in 60 to 90 feet of water.
The Youngs have perfected a method aboard
Sea Dancer that allows them to fish over something as small
as a discarded water heater. When Dennis runs directly over
the spot he wants to fish, he gives Junior the word and a
10-pound sash weight attached to an antifreeze bottle with
heavy twine is dropped over the side--the same side each
time. Once the weight hits bottom, after taking a quick wrap
through the bottle handle and a couple of half hitches
around the main line, the spot is marked. It's important to
have no more scope than necessary for the jug to hold
bottom. With too much line out, swept by the current, the
marker can be misleading. There are a number of buoys on the
market that stop paying out line automatically as soon as
the weight hits bottom. In addition, lots of fishermen who
are getting comfortable with differential-equipped GPS no
longer use a jug to figure their drift. The GPS simply gives
them the course back to the ledge.
Once Young is happy with his jug's
placement, he'll pull his bow right up to the buoy and kick
Sea Dancer out of gear. For the next few minutes he'll watch
how she drifts away from the marker, judging the wind and
current by checking his course back to the spot. Always
making sure to pass on the same side he threw the jug from,
Young will choose the length of his anchor rode depending on
how deep the water is, as well as sea conditions. As a
general rule of thumb, start out running twice as far as
your depth past your spot to set the anchor. On a calm day
in 80 feet of water, drop your anchor 160 feet beyond the
spot you want to fish. Just remember, the rougher the
weather the more scope you'll need.
Anchoring may be the most common way to
fish a small wreck, but the slick calm conditions we
encountered on Sea Dancer gave us the rare treat of being
able to power drift most of the day.
Easing the bow up to the jug from a
downcurrent position, Young kicked the engine out of gear.
As we all dropped our lines, Young kept one hand on his rod
and one hand bumping the boat in and out of gear, to hold us
on the wreck.
Power drifting allows you to fish
directly over the spot, without the hassle of retrieving and
resetting the anchor every time. The drawback is that many
veterans believe drifting a school of snapper or grouper
spreads them out and makes them harder to catch.
Once you've got a few sweet places logged
in the book, you never want to anchor on a spot long enough
to spoil it.
"We only sit on each spot a few
minutes, so you sure don't want to miss a good bite,"
said Dennis, Jr. "We use heavy tackle because many of
our spots are some kind of wreckage. It's imperative you
gain an immediate upper hand if 'Bubba' comes to call."
Junior practiced what he preached. Every
rod on our trip was solid glass, combined with a 4/0 reel
loaded with 60-pound-test mono. The leaders consisted of 48
inches of 80-pound mono with a 3-way swivel on each end,
with two 18-inch droppers snelled to either 5/0 or 7/0
offset hooks. Keeping the two droppers shorter than half the
distance of the main leader cuts way down on tangles.
Not surprisingly, such heavy tackle is
far more effective when fished over areas that don't see
much fishing pressure. Over the last few years, several
northeast Florida anglers have learned they can still catch
good fish over much heavier trafficked areas by switching to
a longer leader made of 30-pound test fished from lighter
tackle. A word of warning though--if you're gonna try
30-pound line for grouper, make sure you take plenty of
hooks, 'cause you're gonna lose a lot more big fish than
you'll ever be able to pry off the bottom.
Junior was clearly the top hook on our
trip, pulling the biggest snapper and grouper off the wreck.
Once his line hit bottom, he took on the appearance of a
bird dog on point. With his rod pointed down, and no slack
in his line, he would react instantly to a bite with a big
sweeping upward hookset that would hopefully not only bury
the barb, but would raise the fish from the bottom, and
start it in the right direction before it had time to react.
After we had each engaged in some great
battles, but long before the bite was over, Young proclaimed
we'd taken enough fish from that spot for one day.
"There was a time we'd have stayed
there till the sun went down," he said as we pulled
anchor. "We'd have caught everything we could, and
taken it all to market. Things are much better now. I'm
convinced if we take care of our spots, and keep tough
limits in place, we've still got good fish for the future.
Guys just have to spend time looking for their own
honeyholes. I know I've got hundreds of spots I've found
over the years, but each new one we find is like Christmas
morning."
Getting started on your bottom-hunting
career is a lot easier than it's ever been. The Jacksonville
Offshore Sportfishing Club publishes a chart with both the
TDs and GPS coordinates for dozens of good starting points,
and the Hot Spots book published by the Jacksonville
Scubanauts pinpoints over a hundred natural as well as
artificial spots.
"I sure hope nobody finds this
spot," Junior added as we departed. "We've only
got another hundred or so we haven't even checked this
year." |