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It's funny bc I think there's a conventional wisdom from the old schoolers who never even had GPS, uphill both ways, in the snow, without mirage drives, saying to get your nose out of the screen and watch the water for conditions....
I feel like this approach almost requires a level of commitment to keeping one eye on the screen so you're ready to go at a moment's notice and get the bait where it's supposed to be in a very narrow window of opportunity.
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For sure. It's also a matter of preference or style. Some people, including the Sea Samurai himself, really like the sight fishing style. There are many visual clues on the surface of the water that tell you all kinds of things. Bird behavior is a total system that goes much deeper that just watching for diving or swirling birds. Their behavior has a whole spectrum in and of itself. Some of the most critical visual ques I look for aren't even from the vertebrates... the planktonic language of the ocean is deeper than any other. I won't go into that here, that's graduate level lurking.
But I think of it from a statistical point of view. What percentage of the water column is visible on the surface vs what is in its depth? Devoting 50% of your attention to 1% of the column seems like a disproportionate strategy. Also, you don't see whales and dolphins coming up to the surface to hunt do you? They aren't even using sight underwater nearly as much as they use echolocation which is just sonar built into their brains. I like the technological aspect of it, but believe me I can find fish without the tech. Definitely certain times of year the sight fishing will outproduce the meter, but that also requires the right surface conditions and a certain amount of luck... not to mention a good pair of eyes.
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Something I've always been fascinated with is how people became effective without just randomly dragging a bait *prior* to all of this technology.
I remember getting out to one of my rockfish spots and having my battery go bad on me with just enough time to triangulate and hold the structure blind for about an hour... It's pretty wild nowadays to imagine *finding* those spots blind, a mile off shore as well.
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Using triangulation with landmarks and a heavy iron you can find reefs pretty will. Just keep bouncing that thing until you feel the clink of rocks or your jig gets stuck. But I also feel like back in those days, there were more fish around as well.
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I'm wondering if, aside from when the temp makes surface fishing viable, there's a way to read the water much at all aside from guess work and current.
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Watch the plankton and the bait. They will tell you when the conditions are right for surface action. It's definitely not a water temp thing. Those foamers I had in this video were very active on the surface in 59-61 deg F water.