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Weekend Warrior
Tactics
Got limited time for fishing? Here are some things to help maximize your
odds of success.
Background
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Fishing Reports
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Moon&Sun
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Maps&Stuff
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Put It Together
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On The Water
Where the Fugawi?
Results of the 2004 & 2005 season...
If you've ever read the fine print on the back of these fishing spot maps,
you know that they are not intended for use as navigation aids. They
may not have current hazard, buoy, or shipping lane information on them.
However, that's not the reasons we use them. We also don't use
them for the coordinates of the fishing spots (we already have that data stored
as waypoints in our GPS).
Our primary use of these charts is to keep track of current fishing
information. We typically plot fishing reports on top of these
charts to help identify potential movement of the fish. Since these charts are
typically produced in a smaller format than standard charts, we fold them
up and take them with us on the boat.
There are many off-the-shelf fishing charts
available for the Southern California area, as well as specialized GPS map
cartridges, and books or websites with coordinates. (See our
sidebar article for a list of some of the print and
web resources covering Southern California fishing spots.) We've found that the
books and websites are usually easier to deal with when trying to collect
data for entering into a GPS. If you can't find the coordinates of
a spot, try posting the question to your
favorite fishing website.
How Hot is It, Johnny?
Sea Surface Temperature charts (SSTs) can be invaluable
tools for offshore fishermen. You can use them to identify area where
water temperatures are optimal for the species you are targeting, but more
importantly,
SST charts can help you locate temperature / current edges,
along which fish will accumulate or migrate.
In the SST to the right, temperature edges are clearly evident
where warmer water (yellow / orange) collides with cooler water (green /
blue).
Most of the SST maps are based on infrared imaging data available from NOAA.
This data is public domain and can be downloaded for free, and
NOAA provides some free software so you can view the data yourself.
So if there's all this free data and software available, why should you
bother going to a for-fee service for SSTs? There are several
things that for-fee SST mapping services provide that you don't get
using the raw public domain information, or the base NOAA software:
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Data cleanup - According to Jeff Gammon, owner of
Terrafin (one of the largest SST map providers), it is
not unsual for raw data from NOAA to have some significant
errors. Two of the most common errors are temperature errors
from atmospheric anomalies, and mapping coordinate errors. Terrafin, for
one, cleans up the data, and filters out anomalies.
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More maps - Free NOAA SST data only covers certain times of
the day. In many areas, there are seasonal weather patterns that degrade
SSTs during these times. For-fee services such as Terrafin and
Offshore Satellite Services purchase additional
data from other periods of the day when the weather pattern clears (see
below).
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Added value services, such as map playback loops (so
you can see how the temperature breaks
are moving), mileage calculators, map coordinates displayed while moving the mouse over
the map, and/or temperature contour lines might be provided by
the SST mapping service.
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There's no need for you to maintain software or keep large amounts of data
on your computer.
In North America, there are two major competitors:
Terrafin, and
Offshore Satellite Services Terrafin is primarily
west-coast focused, but offers maps for all US coastal areas, Baja
California, and selected areas worldwide. Its maps do not have
contour lines. Offshore Satellite Services focuses on the east coast,
and offers contour plots and other added features such as a mileage
calculator. There are also a number of smaller operations in the US, such as
Tempbreak.com, and
HotSpots Charts. For people in Australia, the
website
Seasurface.com offers SSTs for Australia and New Zealand.
Be aware that infrared SST maps have some fundamental limitations,
the biggest being that infrared satellite sensors can not look through
heavy marine cloud layers or fog.
In Southern California, where we live, a marine cloud layer and / or fog is a
common occurence in the morning during summer months. This causes
large blank areas areas in SST maps from morning satellite
data, but many times the areas of importance are clear of
fog and are clearly mapped out.
And even if the SST map for a particular area is affected by
clouds or fog, a map for the same area later in the day, as weather
conditions change, might show a lot more detail. While
the temperature values may be a little different due to natural warming during
the day, temperature breaks will still be apparent.
How Green is My
Garden...
Cholorphyll
maps plot chlorophyll concentrations in the ocean in a
manner similar to SSTs. Our understanding is that these maps have been
available to commercial fishermen for some time, but only recently has this
type of data been available at a price that recreational fishermen can afford.
Why should you care? You should care because chlorophyll
content can be used as a possible indicator of baitfish concentrations.
Chlorophyll is the green stuff in plants , which means it
is present in algae. Where there is algae, there are plankton. Where
there are plankton, there are zooplankton. Where there are zooplankton,
there are baitfish. And where there are baitfish...you get the idea. Find
the food, find the fish.
Used in conjunction with SST maps, chlorophyll maps can be
used to look for "high probability" areas for gamefish.
If you see high chlorophyll concentrations on or near a temperature break, this
would probably be a good place to fish. Compare the Terrafin chlorophyll
map shown above, right, with the Terrafin SST map.
Weather and Swell Data
Weather and swell data are two other pieces of
information that we consider when planning trips. Obviously,
approaching weather fronts can affect safety, and might
adversely affect fishing conditions. Less obvious, but perhaps
just as important to us skiff fishermen, is that weather and
swell conditions can sometimes be used to our advanatge when laying
out our travel plan for the day.
For example, we've found that fairly large swells can be easily handled in our
skiff, as long as the period of the swell is "long". For us, a
long swell period is something like 12 - 15 seconds for a 6 foot
swell, 6 - 8 seconds for a 3 foot swell. Under long
swell conditions, driving around has a roller-coaster feel
to it, but we can maintain a reasonable speed (15 - 20 knots). If the
prevailing long swell is coming from the west, but there is short-period wind
chop coming from the south, it makes sense to head out going west. By
going west, we can slide over the long-period swells, as opposed to trying to
run south, where we will have to fight the short-period wind chop head on.
Similarly, if westerly winds at 10-15
knots are forecast for the afternoon, we would really rather be heading in to the harbor on a
northeasterly or easterly course, which allows us to run in front of the wind chop, rather
than a due northerly course, where the wind chop will be
striking the hull directly on the port beam, with spray potentially blowing in over the
port gunwhale. Or, worse yet, have to head due west, and run
directly "uphill".
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