How to: Reading the water

[surfstix1963]

Sloughs or troughs:

Another good holding spot is slough or trough.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the fish use this to feed against the inside of the bar.

Sometimes you have a situation when the wave is rolling over the bar into the trough, but flattens out all the way to the beach. This is when the trough in front of the inner bar has a rising hump in the bottom midway to the beach and a drop off in front of it.

So you have:
a) the sandbar,
b) the trough in front of that(fish holding here)
c) then the hump
d) and a drop off between the beach and the hump.(fish holding real tight to the beach.)

This is why you never lift your plug out of the water -- keep reeling until it is on the sand.



Another thing... don't step in the water when you first get there because:
#1- theres a drop off and you will take a swim
#2- thats where some of the fish will be, and they will get spooked.

You can only identify this at high tide by the wave action.

At low tide you will see these humps as you walk the beach.

If you can imagine what these humps look like at high tide you will see the uprising and a deeper depression between two of them.

The bait and fish like to lay in the deeper spots between the two rising areas.

You can feel these as you walk at the lower tidal stages at night if you can remember what they felt like when you walked on them at low tide during the day.

I don't try to reach the outer bar too much in this situation, because the fish like to get inside the trough at night.

I like to work the trough and bring it into the drop off right to the beach.

Stay out of the water! Remember #1 and #2 at night.