There are numerous man-made reefs and shipwrecks off of our immediate coast. Were it not for them, the bottom would be mostly barren stretches of sand slowly sloping out to deeper water and the "ledge" 45 miles offshore. There is some live bottom scattered about, and for those who have located some, the GPS numbers for them are closely guarded secrets.
I have some live bottom numbers, and I have a few "private" reefs - those that were illegally man-made a number of years ago by some enterprising commercial fishermen. The ones I have were given to me by an old, retired commercial red snapper fisherman. On a week day when the boat traffic is light, I will fish those locations. In heavy boat traffic, I tend to stay with the public sites, protecting my personal honey holes.
Like any other fishing I do, my offshore exploits are not simply a lucky stab. I plan my trip, partially to cover the most possible ground in the shortest running time, and more importantly today, to conserve fuel expenditures! Many years ago I would have crisscrossed the ocean back and forth running on a whim from one site to another. At fuel and oil prices running $4.00 a gallon, I can't afford to do that any longer.
The trip plan for today was to head northeast into the Atlantic and lick up bait at the closest artificial reef. Many artificial reefs have the name "Nine Mile" up and down the Atlantic coast. That's because the particular reef is located about nine miles off the beach. In my area, that means about 60 feet of water - give or take a few.
Baitfish - Spanish sardines and cigar minnows - school over the artificial reef bottom, and are easily caught with a Sabiki rig. Once we filled the live well with bait, we head northeast for about another six miles to our first fishing destination.
We fished an hour before pulling anchor and heading to the next reef. And we did this in an orderly fashion until we found what I was looking for. When we found the reef that was covered up with black seabass, we stayed and filled out our limit.
Had we not found fish where we did, we would have continued our orderly trip. Plotted on a map it was a big semicircle that had us heading back in from a southeast direction had we gone to every reef in the plan. As it was, we only hit three reefs and found the fish we were after. So, we headed straight beck in from that location.
So - why am I going over this? Well, even if I had caught fish on a particular reef yesterday, there is no guarantee that those fish will be there the next day. In fact, I find more often than not that I do not catch fish on the same reef on successive days. They move - and they don't hand around very long. Tidal currents, wind, and baitfish patterns dictate where they go. If we had all that information ahead of time, we could avoid a lot of running and save a lot of gas!
I have a lot of friends who take me out fishing, and it seems as if they wait until they are clearing the inlet to ask me, "So, where do you think we ought to try first?" That's when I used to really get anxious - they did not do their homework!!
Fuel is too expensive, and time too precious to simply take a stab at a fishing location. I harp on it a lot, but it's true. You have got to have a plan BEFORE you head out if you expect to be successful and catch fish!
