How to: Reading the water

[killie]

no need to read the water, call Bob.

[DarkSkies]

no need to read the water, call Bob.

What happens when your cell phone doesn't work one day and ya can't find Bob?

Pssst - Word on the street has even odds that if ya don't get that special plug (you were given last year) painted in the next 30 days... ya might get lost in the shuffle and not be able to find the path to the promised land any more.

Better fire up the compressor and the airbrush, dude.

[surfstix1963]

Outer Bar & Cuts:

Another way to identify cuts when the waves aren't around is to look for foamy water or just a difference in what the water looks like as it exits.

This will be vertical to the beach.

You need to look a little harder but you will learn to see it.

I feel the larger fish stay on the outer bar right near the opening of the cut. As the water naturally comes in and recedes through the cut, there will be a current or eddy formed because of the surrounding sandbar on both sides of the cut.

This forces the water and the bait to be washed in and out of the narrow opening. Easy pickings...big bass are lazy, and they didn't get big by being stupid.

If you can reach the outer bar I like to fish my bucktails real close to the bottom in these cuts. Just my .02 cents

[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.

[surfstix1963]

I'll just give a quickie on inlets because I cannot educate NJ jetty jockies. I may learn much from you guys.

An inlet is basically a hwy from the bay to the ocean for bait and fish to get from one to the other.

Current is the big factor in the inlets.

It brings the bait to the fish where they lie to feed in the various structure...rocks, eddies, and rips.

The fish will feed on the inside when the current is moving in and vice versa when going out.

What you need to know tide and current are 2 different things.

I don't know how many times someone has come up to me and asked why the tide is going in or out.

It was supposed to be doing this at this time according to the tide charts.

Well it is doing that, but the current continues until the bay water and the ocean water equalize or level out. The tide may be changing, but the current will still be running for another 1-2 hrs. Depending on the size of the bay it is filling or emptying.

I think the best fishing for me is the 2 hrs. from tide change to the current change as the flow slows down

I feel this is also when the fish are on the move opposite of where they were. I'll let the jetty guys fill in the spaces.

[surfstix1963]

OK gotta go my back is shot hope this helps you new guys out.

[Dreaminofishin]

As a result of reading these threads I'm going to be spending a lot more time studying the water instead of throwing and hoping. When you fish an inlet do you always throw your plug/jig upcurrent and let it come down to the fish?

[buckethead]

This is a great thread for the younger or younger angler to review periodically.

[surfrob]

This is a great thread for the younger or younger angler to review periodically.

or ... us seniors fighting off dementia

great thread.

I can say I'm still mystified about the south jersey marsh system(s) near me and I'm (re) learning to read what otherwise are flat featureless beaches.

There is almost *no* hard structure on the beach I fish, but there is concealed soft structure. When I stumble upon something, it's the ticket.

The backbays are completely different than anything I'm used to, or rather the back bay/river system where I used to live, stymied me (almost) as much or more
than the backbays here. I was able to unlock a few secrets there while down here I'm still looking at the vault's user guide.

"When the water is moving the fish are feeding. Marsh systems can be very long and meander endlessly, like a freshwater stream. So, how do we locate fish? What do we look for? Well, the key word is structure. Structure can be anything that helps shelter fish or bait. It could be rocks, deep holes, rips, ledges, channels, undercut banks, logs, depressions, sand bars or the channel itself. Fish it like you would a river. Look at your favourite marsh at low tide and it will open up all of its secrets."

Problem is there are systems down here that are vastly more complicated than just "structure". It's "structure" "bait" and "predator" movement in combination.

You can find predators looking for structure (I know of some places), but equally important is where is the bait at a given time/season in the tide relative to those structures.

Some things are a given anywhere mostly because well, bait is bait. Docklights at night. I mean, c'mon... if you can get out at night and don't check docks you're really striking out. But "reading the water", more to the point, is as or really more complicated in the backbays than it is on the open beach.

ah, just realized I'm rambling a bit...

[porgy75]

I was curious if any of you guys here have any tips on reading the water in monmouth county now that all the beaches have been bulldozed and filled in with sand. Is there any hope to get the cuts and openings back or will that take years and years. Thanks.

[surfstix1963]

I don't fish NJ but the bottom line is structure is structure if you know how to read it.It's either there or it's not,a beach void of good structure is a waste of time.They can spend all your tax money but they cannot fight Mother Nature the storms will remove most of what they are doing it's like the proverbial pissing up a rope.Montauk is fighting a similar battle right now with beach replenishment.

[surfrob]

I was curious if any of you guys here have any tips on reading the water in monmouth county now that all the beaches have been bulldozed and filled in with sand. Is there any hope to get the cuts and openings back or will that take years and years. Thanks.

The beach repleshment itself disappears in about one big storm. By spring, you will see a lot of that $ missing. However, in my experience several things happen as a result. The worst is that a beach-long bar forms near the edge of casting distance with no cuts. This trough can last for much of a season and is just a relative dead zone through much of a tide since it's all pumped in sand, devoid of much life. However, eventually that too gets cut and dissipates and life returns. Best bet is to hit areas with remnants of rock piles.

[DarkSkies]

Bump for a great thread. Thanks for the thoughts people, feel free to add any more.

[baitstealer]

This is a great thread for the younger or younger angler to review periodically.

I go back and look at this thread every winter. have learned a lot from it, thanks guys.

[porgy75]

X2 I have learned so much from it as well.when you really start to get into it and study, you can see all your mistakes. When I first started I really knew nothing. According to the way some of these diagrams are I was fishing a flat beach at low tide with no possibility of ever catching.