Fishing

Once, my son and I were cranking in the calico bass as fast as we could cast the bait to them and Cal kiddingly said, “Mark an X on the side of the boat so we can come back to this spot.” Of course I did much better than that, I hit the MOB button (man-overboard) on my GPS.

But the whole incident brought up the question, how in the world did the old sportboat skippers of the early 1900’s consistently get to the good fishing spots. They fished for rock cod 10 miles to sea in 200 to 600 foot depths. They fished over large rocks, wrecks or other unknown and unseen structures. They went back to these spots daily and with pinpoint accuracy. All of these spots were places for certain species of fish. Rock cod are always found over pinnacles that jut up from the average depth of the bottom area. Bass and other pelagics like barracuda and yellowtail are found around wrecks and large stones on the bottom. They did it without LORAN, GPS and depth finders.

Gear used:

DEPTH FINDERS
Raytheon L470
Garmin 240
Humminbird Wide Paramount

GPS
Garmin GPS map 180, Chartplotter
Garmin GPS map 185, Chartplotter
Magellan GSC 100

You don’t need to be told the Pacific is a vast aquatic desert and the old timers did get to the favorite spots in the middle of no-where? They did it mostly with triangulation from land bearings. But if it was hazy or foggy they obviously couldn’t triangulate and that normally allowed them only about 3 days out of the week for clear skies, if they were lucky. So they used compass direction, engine RPMs, and time, to get to their spots and they did it with astounding accuracy.

Now, with the influence of all the electronics anybody can go back to the good spots. When you hit that “MOB” button on the GPS it is automatically saved into the memory. Recently I have been converting all of my LORAN bearings to a GPS and it’s been very interesting. Repeatability with a LORAN isn’t very accurate and normally land bearings are necessary with very small rocks. I have a “Bearing Book” with drawn pictures of my land bearing displayed page by page. On each spot I have recorded the LORAN numbers. The conversion process is done by finding my way to a spot with bearings and LORAN numbers. When the rock appears on the depth finder I immediately push the MOB button. The important thing is to recognize when you are directly over the rock because the depth finder can be metering hard bottom 30 feet away. Since you have to be directly over the spot the best procedure is to circle around many times over the area and watch for the best reading of the depth finder. Then record the MOB.

When you return to the spot for a fishing adventure make sure you “zero” out the GPS, because it’s very accurate, much more accurate than LORAN. I have also found that recording spots given to me from other fishermen friends are never as accurate as finding them and recording them myself directly on the spot. The new combination chart plotters and depth finders are also amazing. They are as accurate as any regular GPS and you can see where you are in relation to the entire area. It is very important to have a very narrow beam angle off your depth finder transducer. This means that when you see it you are definitely there and not off the mark by 30 yards, especially in deeper water.