Fishing Structure Part 2- Bays
Fishing Structure Part 2- Bays
By David Heinke In part one of this series we took a look at the structure provided by tidal creeks and river mouths. This week we are going to look at the fish-holding structure of bays. Bays-either fresh or salt water- are special places to fish. The crossroads of many fish traveling from estuaries to the open water and back, bays provide a unique environment for fishing. Often protected from open water by land, bays usually will remain calmer and provide fishable water when the open water is too rough for fishing. Bays are usually shallow in comparison to offshore water, but some bays can have water over 100 feet deep. When rivers flow into open water via a bay, you can count on a formula that makes bay fishing most productive. Fresh water streams will provide a source of food for larger fish and a place of sanctuary for others. Whether it is fresh into fresh or fresh into salt, the mixing of two waters is always a good place to investigate for fish. The location of a given bay will determine which species of fish might inhabit the water, and therefore dictate your approach to catching those fish. As stated above, bays tend to be protected bodies of water, so you can look at the bay as the almost ideal place to fish. To fish a bay, a boat from 15 to 20 feet will work well, depending, of course, on the size of the water and the prevailing weather conditions. I would feel at home on a 14-foot johnboat on a small bay in the Great Lakes, but a twenty footer can feel small on a body of water like San Francisco Bay. Always take safety into account and never fish water from a vessel not suited to the conditions that might develop. Before leaving shore, you should always make sure you have at least the Coast Guard's minimum requirements aboard. In addition, three items will make for a more productive day on the water and potentially save your life: A VHF radio is very useful if there are other fishermen on the same body of water as you. On Monterey Bay in California, the local fisherman will help each other track down the elusive schools of salmon or albacore. There is a lot of water along that coast and if it wasn't for fishermen working together on the radio, to find fish in such a large body of water would be akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. A fish finder is essential when fishing in water over five feet deep. I rarely use a fish finder specifically to find fish, but rather as a way to find the structure that might hold fish. Depth sounders will also help by giving the surface water temperature and can be tuned to show a thermocline in the depths. An area of different water temperature relative to another is a form of structure, and fish will usually congregate near a point(s) where the waters meet. Fish are very sensitive to water temperature and will hold in water that is the most comfortable. Also, an area where water of different temperatures meets is also where life in the form of plankton will most likely develop. The base of the food chain, if you find the plankton, you will find just about every other fish within the chain. Now that GPS plotters have become affordable, I can't think of a more useful device developed for fishing in the last ten years! Whenever I find a hot spot and then use the plotter to return to the location time and time again, I always feel like somehow I'm cheating. That's how easy modern plotters make navigation. If you troll, you can use the plotter to graph your trolling patterns and to mark items like bait balls seen on the sounder or the place where you hook a fish. For drift fishing, you can graphically see on the screen how far and in what direction you have drifted. Of course, any device that can aid in finding a safe port is also an excellent safety tool to have aboard. Fishing bays usually means you will encounter fish larger than found in rivers and ponds. Also, depending on depths, more weight might be needed to get the bait down to the desired depth. A conventional casting reel and a medium to heavy action rod can really help with line control. Casting reels tend to have stout drags compared to spinning reels and, as a result, will be more appropriate for the more rigorous demands of bay fishing. Binoculars are absolutely a must for any fisherman. You can scout for feeding birds, check out if Joe Bob is hooked up or just dancing to the music on the radio, find that elusive harbor entrance in dimming light, or, of course, check out bikinis on the beach. Anytime I see a disturbance on the water's surface; I'll grab the binos and check out what's happening. I have gotten into more fish otherwise overlooked as a result of a pair of binoculars than any other tool onboard my boats. Charts are essential unless you have over 30 years experience on a particular bay and you know from memory every rock, dock, reef, channel and other sorts of fish holding structure, along with lights and buoys for navigation purposes. A chart will help you find the areas of water that might hold fish and of course areas that seem to be devoid of any type of structure. By eliminating where you don't want to fish and focusing on the areas that look interesting, you will have a far greater chance of improving your hook-up ratio. Studying charts of the water you intend to fish at home will give you a head start on where to begin your next piscatorial adventures. Find areas that look promising, then jot down the latitude and longitude numbers of the areas. Next enter the numbers into your GPS to navigate to the area. Finally, use your depth sounder to pinpoint the structure you want to fish. While fishing, enter waypoints into your GPS of areas that have produced fish, and then take those numbers home and mark them onto your chart. Study the chart more, and before long you will have a good idea of what the bottom composition of your water is like and where to find the fish. Bridges and pilings are also great sources of structure. If there are currents flowing in your bay, then you can be assured that game fish will hold in the eddies formed on the down current side of pilings. The currents will bring food past the pilings and the fish can easily slip into the current, grab the food and then dash back for cover in the safety of his piling eddy. Other benefits of bridges are the fact that they provide shade to the water. The shade can help lower the water temperature, provide cover to ambushing fish and, finally, areas where bridges tend to be built are at narrow points in rivers and bays. As water moves into the narrows, it will concentrate the current and, of course, the food in the current also becomes more concentrated. As a result, a bridge piling is an ideal place for a game fish to hang out. Shade, easier swimming, and concentrated amounts of food delivered to your door four times a day! I believe this is why fish caught around bridges tend to be better fighters. Wouldn't you fight hard too if you found a great place to live and somebody tried to pull you away from your home? Oyster bars, points, river mouths, tidal slicks, bridges, pilings, docks, channels and many other items make up structure in bay waters. Some will hold more fish than others will, but the key is to check out where the structure is located and then concentrate your efforts in those areas. You will find that not all areas of structure will hold fish all the time. It is important to observe the prevailing conditions-tide, sun, moon, temperature, barometric pressure, water color, time of year, etc.-when you find fish. Many times, replicating these variables on another day will mean fish. There is a lake in Central California famous for big striped bass. I fished this lake for over twelve years and found certain patterns to hold their weight in water. In the fall of each year, as the water temperatures began to cool down, the stripers would leave the sanctuary of the deep channels and venture onto the flats of a bay on the lake. The stripers were in search of smelt that were proceeding to start their spawning activities in the shallows. If you arrived at this lake in October at sunset and waded out twenty feet from the shoreline, stripers feeding with reckless abandon on smitten smelts would soon surround you! The key to successful fishing is observation and, of course, keying in on fish holding structure. Hopefully this week you will have a better idea of the types of structure to be found in bays, and will add a fish or two on your next outing. Next week we will take a look at structure that can be found in open water. Until next time, Go fishing! This article is printed with permission from West Marine. Visit their website, http://www.westmarine.com for more boating supplies and information.
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