by Cap't. Ralph F. Mariano
rmariano@streport.com

Info on Florida Saltwater Fish - Rules & Fishing Tips


Black Drum

Black Grouper
Black Grouper

Bluefish
Bluefish

Blue Marlin
Blue Marlin

Bonefish
Bonefish

cobia
Cobia

Dolphin
Dolphin

Flounder
Flounder

Gag Grouper
Gag Grouper


Gray Snapper

Kingfish
King Mackerel


Mutton Snapper

Permit
Permit

Pompano
Pompano

Redfish
Redfish

Red Snapper
Red Snapper

Sailfish
Sailfish

Snook
Snook

Spanish Mackeral
Spanish Mackerel

Tarpon
Tarpon

Trout
Trout

Wahoo
Wahoo


White Marlin

Yellowtail Snapper
Yellowtail Snapper

Yelllowfin tuna
Yellowfin Tuna

american_shad_sm.gif (2852 bytes)
American Shad

Swordfish
Swordfish 

Greater Amberjack
Greater Amberjack 

 

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."    

 

 

 

 

 

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