Quote:
Originally Posted by taggermike
I may disagree about some of your observations. Bait fish tend to swim in to the current and most bait fish are extreamly strong swimmers for the size. Dines and chovies are filter feeders and moving in to the current provides them with a new feeding oportunity continuously. Strong currents will move the bait backwards even though they are swimming upcurrent.
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Fair enough. I'd say bait doesn't experience current in the same way we or even predator fish do. I remember one day we were anchored in Santa Monica bay in 120ft of water fishing seabass. I watched school, after school, of sardines go by right under the surface, huge balls of thousands of sardines. My buddy was like where are they all going? and I said Nowhere! Everywhere! To them they aren't moving at all! They were just swimming in circles in one place, and it was the current that's moving them.
To them the water wasn't even really moving because they are just floating with it. The next school that came by I pointed out to him that the dines where swimming in a huge lazy circle and at any point almost half of them were swimming against what we perceived as the current and the others were swimming with it.
Since that time I kind of think that bait movement is not so much about where they are trying to go but where the current takes them.
Similarly one day I was skiff fishing the 14 mile bank working on a pic of Dorado and YFT. It was dead calm no drift and we were just sitting off a kelp paddy not even moving soaking sardines. Suddenly out of nowhere a round buoy smacked into the side of the boat spun us around that trailed off past the paddy ripping through the water at about a three knot clip.
It was like a scene from Jaws. My buddy was like "WTF" "Is there like huge shark on that thing?" It took me a minute to wrap my head around it but I then realized it must be a prawn trap, and though it seemed like we were not moving at all the whole ocean around us was moving SE. at about a three knot clip. Sure enough I checked the GPS track and we had been moving steadily south the whole time we were there, but you would never known it.
The world turns but I'm sitting still in this chair. I guess it's all a matter of perception.
The scenario I described in the post at la Jolla is of course different.
Essentially there you have a huge rise in topography caused by the point. This concentrates both bait and current as the water moves in from deeper water and crosses this rise. As a result you have a lot of perceivable current as that water moves through kelp, past traps or over the bottom. Just as the current increases as water is forced over this rise, the bait in the water is concentrated and pushed through with that current.
Say you have a strong current ripping from the north. Dines or Anchovies may be able to swim against current to an extent, but they are not going to be able to turn around head north and then fight that current far enough to hide in the Canyon. They may try but the odds are against them.
Essentially once they are that flat being pushed south by a strong current they are running the gauntlet, and that is why the fish are there to feed on them.
Macks of coarse are a different thing. They can move uphill, but I find I usually don't get the majority of my fish when they are chasing schools of mackerel, I catch most of my fish even when using macks as bait when that are feeding on anchovies dines or squid which are all far more vulnerable to current then Macks, or the predator fish that feed on them.
Jim