There are lots of ways to prepare for a charter trip, but it all starts with the right mindset.
There are no set rules in how the act of fishing goes down. We all develop our own styles. Our hook sets are different, how we stand is different, how we hold the rod. We all pay attention differently as well to what is happening around us. I’m not sure that saying those of us who are more in sync with this are better at fishing than those that aren’t. But I do see my share of basic fishing mistakes.
The beginning boat angler, one who either fishes on a friend’s boat, a head boat, or charter boat, is in a near-constant state of learning. But that learning is what makes fishing fun.
Paying Attention
On a boat we should be paying attention all the time. Without question, the person in charge of running the boat has to be, more or less, operating at a fairly high level of observation. And, there are levels within this. But if you’re just grabbing rail space on a head boat or grabbing a corner of your friend’s center console, you also should be paying attention. Most of what I’m saying here is about drift fishing for fluke and sea bass, stripers, scup. Each person around you is holding their own rod in their own little sliver of space on the boat.
What I see a lot of with the people I bring out, either clients, friends or my own kids, is that most of them don’t really pay enough attention. A fairly common scenario is this: a group shows up to the boat, college buddies, all getting together for their 10-year reunion. They have some beers, snacks, sandwiches. They are ready for a good time at sea. Stories flow, one after another as they catch up on their lives. The banter on the ride to the fishing grounds doesn’t let up once the fishing begins. A sea robin comes over the rail, high fives and chest bumps. Then a short fluke. A short sea bass. What usually happens, and I see this all the time, is one or two people start to lock in. It might take a drift or two but they begin to understand that to catch they need to be present at the rail. Usually, the one or two guys catching fish go more or less silent. Fishing has gone from a passive activity to an active one.
Achieving this level of focus has many layers. I focus on what my rig is doing on the bottom. I focus on the angle of my line. I focus on the fishfinder. I focus on what the others in the group are doing. Are they missing strikes, are they hooking fish? Have four out of the six anglers barely changed their bait in the last 30 minutes? My head is basically an antenna, I’m gathering information. Much of this I broadcast to the group in a constant staccato of sentences. “Fish on the screen!” “He just lost a good fish!” “If you haven’t gotten a hit in a while reel up and change your bait.” “Thirty minutes to slack water” and on and on. Basically, you want to picture your rig dragging across the bottom. You want to be connected to that image. Never assume all is well down there. But always assume a hit could come at any moment, imagine that a group of fluke is following along. This almost seems a contradiction.
This basic practice keeps you sharp and interested, keeps you in tune.
Timing: Readiness Is All
We all fish against the clock. Time can be short. Eat and drink when the boat is steaming back up drift. Tie a few extra rigs so you don’t have to do it when the bite is on. In short, try and be ready to fish. I’ve seen people take breaks at imperfect times, like when an 8-pound fluke comes over the rail. Fishing, especially for bigger fish, happens in waves and patches and a trip is often deemed good based on one or two drifts. The same things happen with big sea bass and scup and blackfish. The big ones are not always reliable.
Last fall, a husband and wife came out with me. Each had some fishing experience, mostly on head boats. They had picked up a lot of info on YouTube. We were anchored in a spot where I knew the blackfish bite wouldn’t last too long once it began. This spot was good on the first hour and half of tide. The blackfish came. Some good ones. I kept saying, good fish here. The bite is on. The woman stayed with a simple one-hook tog rig, the one I had given her to use. But the husband—I think he got overcome with too many YouTube videos dancing in his head—kept messing with things. I kept telling him to get down on bottom. But he wanted the FG knot to be perfect. Then he kept changing jig sizes. Then, after I offered him a regular tog rig, he said he’d tie his own. This took him too long.
During all the husband’s fussing, his wife hammered a double-digit and two pushing 10 pounds. The current kept picking up then the bite trailed off. People often think that a bite is uniform and constant. Sure, sometimes it is and the fishing, whatever it may be, is great from start to finish. But so often it’s a grind and the trip is made in 30 minutes. Those 30 minutes are when the fish got active, the rest of the time we are trying to get inactive fish to hit, which does work but it sure does hurt when you botch a hookset.
Form
Beginners tend to hold the rod in a way that doesn’t command a lot of confidence. Are you ready for a bite? Are you using your hands to better feel what is going on 40, 50, or 60 feet down? The rod is no different than a tennis racket, baseball bat or hockey stick. There is a right way to hold it and a way that just doesn’t look right. Be poised and ready. I like two hands on the rod. On a conventional rod, my left hand is above the reel and my right hand is at the bottom on the butt. Sometimes I tuck under my arm, sometimes I have the rod more down by my elbow. The key is to hold the rod in a balanced position. Not both hands below the reel seat or one hand way down on the butt.
I see a lot of dropped fish because of rod posture. Keep it in a ready position, with the hands spread out. I like the tip to be low but not so low that it’s in the water. A hookset should be a nice upward stab with an immediate reel-down of any slack line. Once you’ve got the rod bent, you can slow down and reel the fish to the boat. I see most fish dropped in the first five seconds. The angler sets the hook and the rod points skyward. Then drops the rod tip down. This puts slack in the line and the fish swims away. Keep the line tight but don’t be frantic in doing so. Many people have this mindset that a fish needs to be removed from the sea in a hurry. Slow down. Keep things smooth, keep them hooked.
The Methods
I tend to start most beginners off with bait. I choose the lead size. I give them the rigs. I like a single-hook dropper loop bait rig. It’s basically the high-low rig with the top hook removed. I let them get the feel of this. Many people miss tons of fish with a bait rig but most end up catching plenty of sea bass, sea robins, scup, dogfish, and short fluke. Keeper fluke can be difficult for a lot of people. The way a fluke hits a rig is often hard to feel. And any fish that is hard to feel is hard to hook. The angler’s hands aren’t used to the fluke’s style. If a fluke has a lot of time to follow the rig and there aren’t a lot of other fluke in the area, then the bite is often missed. Fluke fishing gets easy when the fluke are competing with each other. Again, this behavior of active feeding, this willingness to attack bait, does not last as long as we would like. Bottom fishing used to have the stigma of lazy fishing, filling coolers. That’s changed. Now to catch big scup or fluke or sea bass makes the cover of fishing magazines. A good bottom fisherman is often a very good fisherman, fully engaged and ready, fully aware that the bite can go cold or heat up at the flick of the switch.
Then, invariably, someone wants a lure. They’ve decided that bait fishing isn’t fashionable. This is where things can really change. A beginner with a jig can push the limits of everyone’s patience. It all seems so easy at first: drop and reel. But it’s the motion of the boat and the direction of the current that throws people off. Depth too. This isn’t casting a Jitterbug off a dock on a summer evening, where the person can see it all unfold in front of them; casting off a stationary platform with a floating lure, they see the wake, all is good. On a boat they can’t see the jig; they can’t see the current; they have people standing next to them, trying to do the same thing; they have me barking orders about watching the line and telling them reel up three cranks the second the jig hits the bottom. At that point, they may long for the summer dock. But when the person digs deep to find that focus, follows my instructions, feels for what I’m telling them they should feel, and then – BOOM – that first hit comes… it’s a win for both of us.
| CLIPPING THE CURVE |
| A lot of people take a charter trip because it’s their one big fishing trip of the year, but a growing number of hardcore anglers are graduating to new fisheries, tog, tuna, albies, nighttime stripers. There’s a lot to learn before a recreational boat owner can motor out for any of these species with complete confidence that he or she has all the right gear, knows where to find the fish and how to catch them. This is where taking a few charter trips can really help you round the corners off on a new species or technique. Charter captains do this every, single day and they have seen it all. They choose their gear because it’s efficient and reliable, and they understand water and their spots better just about anyone. If you want to learn, go with a pro and pay attention, the lessons will be more than worth the cost of admission.
–D. Anderson |
I try and keep artificials simple, the less instruction the better. Drop the jig down and jig it. The problem is often where I fish. I like fishing artificials in places where the current flows hard over tight contour lines. These places tend to stack all kinds of fish from jumbo scup to big stripers. The price however is a sea state that is often without harmony. There are often too many variables at once; current, waves from several different directions, a pitching boat, and me, the instructor, trying as hard as I can to hold everything together—maintaining the drift, making sure everyone is fishing right, making sure everyone is ready.
There are times when the fish are jacked up and off bottom… blues and stripers and big sea bass all up high. This makes it much easier. The less finesse required, the easier it is for most. Start with heavy and move toward light. Try and be on the side of the boat, ideally the stern. I usually position the jiggers separate from those fishing bait rigs. Some people will stay jigging working hard to figure it out. Others, head back to bait. Bait is deadly, you can shut the mind off a bit more with bait, tell the story to your friends of the girl you met on the new dating app, the Celtic’s game you went to. In the end we all go fishing for fun, right? A little prep goes a long way
