Maybe fish are where you find them — but you’ll find them a lot more often if you take a little time, always, to study both the habits of the fish you’re seeking and also the water where you hope to find them. The old oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf, are mighty big places; in fact, some of the harbor, bay and marsh areas are plenty big enough so that if you fish just “by-guess and by-luck”, the odds are against you from the start on hitting good average fishing. And particularly if you’re fishing offshore in the ocean, possibly out of sight of land, unless you know “where you’re at”, so to speak, your chances are even more unfavorable.
How, as a beginner, can you learn about a salt water fishing area? Well, it is not as hard as it might first appear. Number one suggestion is to get a good Government chart of your fishing area. This will show the depths of water at mean low tide; where the submerged rocks and reefs are; even weedy areas are so designated, as well as whether the type of bottom is mud, marl, gravel or sand. Right there you have a lot of knowledge that is helpful, before you even see the area (we’ll suppose it is new and untried ground we’re fishing this trip.)
These charts are a mighty good investment for fishing success, regardless if you’re just starting out on the shore close to home, trying some New York fishing, or if you’re an old hand that finally gets to take that Alaska fishing vacation trip.
When looking for good saltwater fishing tips for an area, start with those that help you learn the water you’re fishing as well as the habits of the fish you’re going after.
For example, we’ll say that you’re after flounders. Even the briefest description of the habits of these fish will include the fact that they prefer sandy bottom. Check your chart for this type ground and you’re off to a good start. Pollack, cod and haddock all like a hard or gravelly bottom: check the chart for offshore reefs and bars and you’re most likely to hit pay dirt for these bottom feeders.
Let’s suppose that you’re surf fishing for bluefish, weakfish or striped bass along an unknown sandy beach. The chart will show up any inshore holes or deep spots, and the fish are apt to lie in these deep spots, foraging out from there for food. Or if the chart shows an offshore bar and then a deep cut or hole on the shore side of that bar, there’s a honey of a spot, probably best on the coming tide. As the water rises over the bar it will stir up crabs, shell fish and other food, a fact which the fish well know. Then as there is enough water over the bar — it might be completely out of water at low tide — the game fish may work out of the deep cut and range about over the bar for bait fish which might work in or along the beach with the rising tide.
If by chance you hit a new beach, and forgot or didn’t have a chance to get a chart of the shoreline of this area, then you’ll have to use your eyesight. If there is a good surf running, you’ll quickly note that on the offshore bar the water will break, while on either side of the bar the waves will keep on mounting until they reach the beach. Those offshore white water spots can be bonanzas. Even if there are only a few feet of water, these surf game fish will feed right in what may look like nothing but a mass of white foam.
Or if you have some high dunes near the beach, get up on top of them and look over the entire stretch of beach. Dark spots can mean either deep water or weed beds, both good fishing areas. The lighter colored water will be the shoals. Incidentally, a good pair of sun glasses will greatly increase your visibility into the water. Also, you may find certain places along the beach where there is an indentation. This is very apt to mean an inshore hole where the greater depth of water has allowed the incoming surf to cut further back into the beach. Such a deep cut could very well be a good spot at low tide, with the bars on either side of it good high tide territory.
Along most ocean beaches there is a flow of tide along the shore as well as an upward and downward rise and fall of the tides. This parallel tide to the beach may not be too evident to the naked eye, but where there are shoal spots you will note swirls and eddies, called tide rips, and this is excellent fishing water. In fact, you may find these rips especially strong around promontories or points, and at the mouths of harbors.
While we’re on the subject of tides, we should add that the best time to look over new water is at the low tide stage. Then you may find bars, rocks or weedy areas completely out of water and you can mark them down for good high water fishing grounds. In some places, the fall and rise of tide may be as much as from six to twelve feet, so an area which is “dry” at low tide could hold fish on the flood tide. Also, remember that there are times of the year when the tides are abnormally high and low. Check any good almanac, the local residents, or tide tables, and you can find out when those very low tides occur and make use of this for study of the area.
Another way to locate fish is to watch the herring gulls and terns. They are perpetually on the watch for bait fish and mighty quick to gather when such schools of bait surface. Many a time we have been fishing along the shore from a boat when everything was flat: no fish, no bait. Then you might see a lone tern hover and dive, coming back up with a finger-long slim bait fish in his beak. Within seconds there may be three gulls, then thirty, then actually hundreds of birds dipping, diving, and screaming their heads off. Not always, but more often than not, these bait fish have been pushed to the surface by bigger fish feeding under them.
In fact, when blues, weaks, pollack, mackerel, channel bass or stripers are really on the feed, the surface of the water can be slashed into a mass of flying foam. Your job is to get a lure into this area just as fast as possible. If you’re casting from the beach and you see such a commotion several hundred yards down the beach, run like thunder to within casting distance.
Or if you’re in a boat, get to the excitement at once, but don’t ever — positively never — drive your boat too close to surface feeding fish or through them, or you’ll put the bait and the game fish down and they will stop and scatter. Ease your boat to within casting distance, cut the motor and cast.
Or if you’re trolling, cut your boat around the outer edge of the school of fish, lengthen your trolling lines and cut your boat back around the school so that while the boat is away from the fish, your lures will troll through or at the outer edge of the fish. Such feeding does not last very long, as a rule, so it’s wise to get there fast and make the most of it. If the fish disappear before you get to them — and that can happen — hang around a little while as they may come to surface again.
And that brings us to the “patience” part of this musing. It seems that everybody and his brother is taking a crack at the stripers in New England between May and November, at one time or another. Yet I’ve heard men, time and again, say that they have yet to take one of these fish although they have been after them for one year, two or even three years. Inquiry into their fishing usually proves that either they had made only one trip a year, or, more often, had just “gone fishing” without regard to time, tide, weather or anything else. They had read in the local paper that someone took some stripers at Lookout Point, so they flocked to Lookout Point, fished an hour or so, gave up and went home.
When you stop to think that there are whole days when you can fish over areas which you know hold thousands of bass and not get so much as a strike, it stands to reason that the guy who goes as often as he can and stays with it until he has to come home, is the guy who is going to score most frequently. Fishing is full of theories, but if there is one fact that stands out, it is that patience really pays off in salt water angling, no matter what species you’re seeking.
A couple of inveterate bass fishermen tell how they had fished from dawn until dark without so much as a strike, but just after dark – and when every one else on the beach had gone home disgusted – they hit into a school of fish and took two each that hefted the scales down over the thirty pound mark. Remember that just a few minutes can make a whole day’s trip over into a red-letter day that you’ll talk about for winters to come.