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Groundswell: A popular, new Approach to Offshore Action
By Lenny Rudow Published: May 1, 2007  Print  Email You want to try something new and exciting? Enjoy a different kind of species in your own home waters? Taste a kind of fish many anglers have never even heard of? Then you’d better work out your cranking arm—it’s time to try an Creatures of the Deep Growing up to 50-lbs. or more, golden tilefish are the cream of the deep drop crop. They live off of a mostly crustacean diet that includes frequent meals of lobster. Steam this fish without any spice, dip it in drawn butter, and it tastes exactly like lobster. Gray tilefish will also be captured from the deep, even though they’re more numerous in 300’ areas than they are in the 600’ to 800’ depths goldens are most usually caught from, and although they do not taste the same their flavor is still incredibly good. What else might you hook up with when dropping your baits hundreds of yards below the surface? Four-spot flounder, monkfish, sea bass, and ling cod are common catches. Even grouper are a possibility for many Mid-Atlantic anglers. Get lucky, and you could even pull up something really bizarre like a conger eel, or a hag fish. Finding where these fish live is fairly easy: just go to the canyon edges, and drag your baits from 300’ down to 800’ or more. In the shallower end of this depth range you’ll catch mostly grays (which usually run one to six pounds,) sea bass, and ling cod, and below 600’ or so, all bets are off. To specifically target the large golden tilefish in numbers you’ll need an extremely good fishfinder, one that can show fish on the bottom in these depths. Amazingly, tilefish as small as three pounds will show up on a good quality 1,000-watt unit set to zoom on the bottom.Sometimes after a 10 or 15 minute drift with no hits, you’ll reel up and all your baits will be gone. When this happens it’s time to change spots because the area is probably full of small ling cod, which steal your offerings. (Put on a 1/0 or 2/0 hook and a small bait and you’ll catch them, but often these are just six to ten inch fish—hardly worth all that cranking!) Another way to locate tilefish is by keeping track of the bottom composition. Tilefish live in burrows in mud bottom, and most folks agree that they like green mud the best. You can see those burrows, which appear as a series of indentations on the bottom, on a high-quality fishfinder. But when choosing a spot to drop, remember to stay clear of lobster pot gear. There are lots of lobster pots set at the edges of the canyons, and even when the big orange float appears to be a quarter mile away, they have so much line out down there that tangling them remains a possibility. Queer Gear Deep drop rigs are essentially glorified bottom rigs with at least four or five hooks; you want multiple hooks simply to get numerous baits Weights usually range from three to five pounds—yes, pounds—depending on the speed of your drift. Even with all that lead on the end of your line, it will take six or seven minutes before your bait hits bottom in 800’ of water. A cheaper alternative: fill a coffee can with concrete, and put an eye hook in the top. Regardless of how much weight you use, it’s absolutely essential to use braid or a modern super-line. Monofilament will stretch so much you will hardly be able to tell when the lead hits bottom, much less if a fish is hooked. With braid, however, you’ll feel the nibbles 800’ below the boat. While choosing a rod is up to each individual angler, one must remember that reels with high speed ratios are a great asset. A slow ratio reel can significantly increase the crank-up time—and put a serious hurting on your right arm—so choose your weapon carefully. Many anglers like to use electric reels for this type of fishing, and there’s no doubt that they do make life easier. Precision Auto Reels, which can be adapted to the Senators and GTI levelwinds you already own, allow you to get a deep drop rig going for a few hundred dollars. Other electric reels are available from companies like Kristal Fishing, but they cost between one and two thousand dollars. Once you get your offering down to the bottom, think of this as Extreme Flounder Fishing. You want the rig to drag across the bottom, and if you let it ride up off the bottom as you drift, you won’t enjoy much success. Now’s a great time to try deep-dropping. These fish can be caught year-round, so they offer you an unusual chance to fish offshore even when the tunas and billfish aren’t in town. In the heat of summer they still feed strong, so when a morning of canyon trolling fills the fishbox, deep dropping offers a nifty change of pace. On the flip side, when pelagics aren’t biting a few tilefish in the box will certainly save the day. So—you ready for an entirely new fishing experience? Try deep dropping for bottom fishing gold. ***You can find more specific Atlantic coast, bay and ocean hotspots and how-to/where-to fishing information in Rudow’s Guide to Fishing the Mid Atlantic. It features 38 custom-marked charts which detail over 300 hotspots from View Comments (0) |
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down, so that missed strikes don’t require you to reel in and re-bait, which can take up to 20 minutes. 4/0 to 8/0 circle hooks are good, and often they can be enhanced with a small plastic glow in the dark tube or bead at or near the hook. The hooks can be baited with whole squid, fish chunks, or sea clams. Squid are considered the “norm,” but some anglers swear by clams.
