BigBendFishing.Net

Hello All,
I have recently bought a 17' Cape Horn w/ 2006 90hp Evinrude ETEC (which has made all my dreams come true!), and so i have started fishing some public numbers off of St. Marks, with no luck. What is a good way to get started fishing offshore. I have extensive fishing experience inshore, but i haven't done too much offshore fishing, and i have no numbers (other than public ones). Should I just continue to run out to the public spots and bottom fish (i have been using frozen sardines and squid), or should i just start trolling a stretch 30 at 20' depth until i come across something? I know what the standard bottom rigs look like, and the basic techniques (all from Florida sportsman), but i am having ZERO luck. I am not frustrated yet, I just want to find out how everyone else got started . . . . Thanks,
Tom

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Welcome Tom !
A year ago my situration was like yours...Only numbers I had were public ones like the reefs...Early in the summer we started venturing further and further out fishing bait, ect...Then started trolling..The whole time keeping a close watch of the bottom and structure and marking spots that showed fish or unusual structure..By late summer and early fall I could pretty well figure on picking up some grouper using the numbers I had saved...
Best advise I could give you is to cover as much bottom as you can and keep a constant watch for anything out of the ordinary on your bottom machine and mark it...Another thing, every time I put a fish in the boat I marked that spot too....That gives you an idea of how you might profile an area that holds fish....Also most of the fish I caught were by trolling stretches, ect...
Hope this might help....I still have a lot to learn myself....

Shallow water grouper have been hard to come by this year. Hopefully it'll get better in the spring.

You got good advice from both JT51 and Sundown. If you're going to work 20 to 25 feet of water, I would suggest you downsize to a Stretch 25.

The public numbers are a good place to start. Oar built a lot of the reefs. They'll tell you a good reef needs desirable bottom. An artificial reef will actually sink below the bottom in sand or mud. That said, go to a public number, throw a stretch out the back, and go in any direction, continually watching your bottom machine. If you see good bottom, mark it. There might not be fish on it when you find it, but eventually it will hold fish. That's how I found more than half of my spots.

tin can wrote:Shallow water grouper have been hard to come by this year. Hopefully it'll get better in the spring.

You got good advice from both JT51 and Sundown. If you're going to work 20 to 25 feet of water, I would suggest you downsize to a Stretch 25.

The public numbers are a good place to start. Oar built a lot of the reefs. They'll tell you a good reef needs desirable bottom. An artificial reef will actually sink below the bottom in sand or mud. That said, go to a public number, throw a stretch out the back, and go in any direction, continually watching your bottom machine. If you see good bottom, mark it. There might not be fish on it when you find it, but eventually it will hold fish. That's how I found more than half of my spots.

Half his spots!! 1 produces 1 doesn't.

Jumptrout51 wrote:

tin can wrote:Shallow water grouper have been hard to come by this year. Hopefully it'll get better in the spring.

You got good advice from both JT51 and Sundown. If you're going to work 20 to 25 feet of water, I would suggest you downsize to a Stretch 25.

The public numbers are a good place to start. Oar built a lot of the reefs. They'll tell you a good reef needs desirable bottom. An artificial reef will actually sink below the bottom in sand or mud. That said, go to a public number, throw a stretch out the back, and go in any direction, continually watching your bottom machine. If you see good bottom, mark it. There might not be fish on it when you find it, but eventually it will hold fish. That's how I found more than half of my spots.

Half his spots!! 1 produces 1 doesn't.

I'll have you know I have a total of 4 now.

Tom,
One more bit of advice I could offer would be for you to go back to the archives of this forum under offshore reports and read every one of them..I read them so many times I can almost tell you what they say before I read them but what I've learned is invaluable..Information from members like this is what makes BBF so great.....
Also don't be afraid to throw up questions....I've asked questions on here every since I became a member and the answers I've gotten have sure helped me to make some decisions...esp on equiptment , things like that..

What Sundown said.. If you go out to the public numbers and start searching a short distance away from them, say a mile or so, you can find bottom areas, this was how I found the first couple spots. They do not deploy artificial reefs in the middle of a barren waste land, if it was all sand then sooner or later it would get covered up, or just sink, watch the bottom machine...

Thanks everyone, I will definitly try out the hints. And i will go to that meeting as well, Im sure it is a good time!!!!