Deep Dropperloop Fishing

[chris138]

Originally Posted by ProfessorLongArms

Just got to this one in my watch queue. Way to make it look easy!

Here's a question-

I follow you and Nakada to the letter when I'm targeting (mostly) WSB and (less so since I'm further north) YT....
I've noted there's a lot of watching for marks and dropping on them, be it either a bait ball or a mark that actually looks like a big fish.

How often would you say you end up *seeing* those marks on a given trip?
Bait balls I see all the time, but I feel like I'll go a number of trips without seeing big slugs in my meter.
Sometimes I wonder if it's a matter of being more attentive to the depth finder?

Or would you say finding those marks can be a bit of a longer waiting game?

Good question. I hope to go into more detail about this in a future video. The first point is, being able to be sure about what is actually a good mark/marks. There are so many aspects to this. Obviously you need to be on the right frequency and have the settings dialed in pretty well. We've covered that in some other videos and threads, and it can vary between units, but generally speaking you are on the lowest frequency you have and you have the gain/sensitivity turned up enough that the bottom marks very hard on the "hottest" color in you palate. The biggest indicators of a fish are:

1. Thick and solid mark with definitive boarders, with the thickness being relative to the depth scale you are in. In 20 feet of water a big greenback looks like a yellowtail in 100', and in 180' of water a yellowtail looks like a greenback in 50'. The screen only has so many pixels, and the scale of the mark is relative to the depth and resolution of the display.

2. Fast moving fish look like "arches" slower moving fish look like "worms". But they will rarely mark as a straight boomerang, unless the fish is way out on the perimeter of the cone. The boomerang shape is caused by the doppler effect. So keeping that in mind you can apply that to the behavior of predatory game fish. These fish are very seldom sitting still. So, as you are bobbing up and down in the swell, your depth is constantly changing by a few feet which results in the "waviness" of the bottom on your screen. If the worm you are looking at follows the bottom contour, that means it is sitting stationary relative to the bottom, that means it is pretty much just hovering in place and a gamefish will rarely do this. The right kind of marks change in depth independently of the bottom contour wave action.

3. Fish in a school will usually change depths independently of each other. So instead of a bunch of parallel worms stacked on top of each other neatly, a school of fish will look all tangled like spaghetti. A big school will rarely look like parallel stacked marks, especially if they are also parallel with the bottom.

[chris138]

So given all that, I probably see at least a good mark or two on every trip. That doesn't mean it was for sure the right kind though. Could be that it was a shark, or a ray, or some gnarly cormorant hunting at depth. Seeing a single or a pair of good marks is fairly common. I'll always drop on them but a single usually wont result in a hookup. A huge indicator of the right kind is if they react to your bait. Whether its the yoyo or the dropper loop, gamefish will almost always come check out your bait. Most of the time they wont bite it, but they will react to it.

Seeing a school of the right kind is a different story. I probably only see schools like 1/3 or 1/4 of the trips. Your chances of getting hooked up on a school are higher, because as they have more of a reaction component to the bite. Once you have multiple fish checking out your bait, they have the instinct to compete with each other and will be more aggressive typically... unless they are in a spawning behavior.

So to answer your questions, yes I see good mark on pretty much every trip... but much less frequently I see the REALLY good marks of a school where I'm 100% sure of what I'm looking at.

[chris138]

Also, regarding the bait balls. You can infer a lot about what's going on from the bait balls as well. When the gamefish are really feeding aggressively, chasing that bait, they don't linger as long and sometimes don't even show up on the sonar. The behavior of the bait can be just as important. So if you have these big columns of bait, and instead of slowly dissipating they "wall off" sharply, that means something was chasing them. If its a huge wad of bait, the edge of the wad wont be on your screen. So the bait that is on your screen is reacting to the behavior of the school, not necessarily the gamefish... hence the reason you don't see the slug on the meter. It's pretty obvious what mode the bait is in, whether it's comfortably shoaling, feeding, or being chased. Try to get the bait wads to react to your bait on the meter and pay attention to how its behaving.

[socal.beach.bum]

I was skunked my one and only time out there this year, but reading all this is making me eager to make another drive down there very soon.

[GregB]

Really great information. Thanks!

[FullFlavorPike]

This info is 1000x more valuable than any "the bite is hot" report from yesterday.

[ProfessorLongArms]

Thanks Chris!

Yeah I'm on a little Echomap, and I definitely watched your vid on settings more than once. I didn't even know about the real-time metering until I'd watched your videos and that's made a huge difference for reacting quickly as something big shows up on screen.

I am definitely dialed in on certain things like knowing when I'm over a school of calicos, bait balls, etc.

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.

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.

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.

[chris138]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.