Other than a report about where fish were yesterday, the one piece of information that helps offshore anglers locate their targets is knowing where to find water the fish prefer.
Remember the Gulf Stream is a current, much like a river that courses through the ocean and is affected by winds and bumping into sea bottom structure. For bluewater anglers, it’s helpful to track the movements of the Stream and warm-water eddies that spin off from it.
Today, satellite imaging is the best technology to track the movements of the Gulf Stream and its eddies. In the early days of this technology, it was called “satellite thermal imaging” because only heat images were used to monitor (usually) warmer water.
As the technology progressed, scientists and fishermen could find and track salinity, water color, altimetry and other characteristics. By learning more about the preferences of various offshore fish, more factors could be analyzed to locate them.
The initial technology for satellite monitoring of the oceans has existed for roughly 25 years and continues to make improvements. One of the keys in locating productive offshore water surely is water temperature, but advances now allow anglers to use multiple factors. When a location has all the favorable factors, the odds are good fish will be there.
If the system has an Achilles heel, it’s technology and weather. Unfortunately the technology is designed to gather its information from water, and it reads the first water it encounters. However, if clouds are between the satellite and a body of water, the technology won’t penetrate the clouds but tries to analyze the water/water vapor/ice crystals in the clouds.
The bottom line is this incredible technology doesn’t work well when heavy cloud cover exists. Sometimes enough information is gathered during a lightly cloudy day to be useful, but some piecing together will be required.
Many folks make the error of trying to use information gathered during only one day’s overhead pass of a satellite. That will show current conditions, but knowledge of the past few days and how current relationships formed is almost as valuable as knowing current conditions.
The Gulf Stream’s movements and exact location are affected by numerous factors. Two of the easiest to see are wind (velocity and direction) and colliding with undersea structures.
Scott Meister, a reef fish biologist with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, monitors water movements near and at the edge of the Gulf Stream. He noted the Stream’s path changes. For example, odd movements have pushed DNR tracking buoys (deployed off the Palmetto State’s coastline) to the beaches at Long and Onslow bays in North Carolina. Occasionally a buoy gets caught in a backloop eddy and moves inshore and south of its point of deployment, a few to Georgia or Florida.
During a mid-1990s February, while tracking the Gulf Stream for 10 days to find water suitable for yellowfin tuna, the Stream moved inshore. Its nearshore edge flowed above the Big Rock. The current sheared off by that collision formed a huge backloop eddy of 72-degree water inshore of the stream and well south (west) of Frying Pan Tower, approximately 100 miles from the Big Rock.
Meister also had thoughts abut how are the drought conditions affected the movements of the Gulf Stream? He was concerned that with the reduced outflow from the rivers in North and South Carolina, the Gulf Stream might be creeping a little closer to shore than in past years. With this in mind, anglers should pay more attention as long as the drought continues.
One of the first companies to make extra efforts to understand the information and benefits satellite imaging could reap for fishermen was Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service, Inc., of Melbourne, Fla. Dr. Mitchell Roffer was a fisherman who saw some of the correlations and developed a means to receive and translate the data into fishing ready information. He added daily reports from anglers in the areas to augment his diagnoses and verify his analysis. Many satisfied fishermen and hundreds of tournament winners attest to the validity of a ROFFS analysis.
ROFFS is located on the internet at http://www.roffs.com, and by phone at (321) 723-5759 or 800-677-7633 or by e-mail at fish6@roffs.com.
ROFFS is a subscription service where professionals watch the movements of water as it offers complete analyses. Roffer’s information has an excellent reputation and is regularly used by oil companies and other business ventures in addition to anglers.
ROFFS’s chart analyses are available for sea surface temperature (SST), priority or water color priority (CHL) and its written synopses take other factors into account.
A ROFFS analysis offers labeled charts (black-and-white by fax or color by e-mail) and a separate page with detailed analyses and suggested hot spots for chosen targets. It takes into consideration many factors, including the water temperature, how long the water has been at that temperature, how long the water has been holding at a specific area, water color, presence of bait, catches from the area during the past few days, years of experience, and other information.
Dr. Mitchell A. Roffer will lead a team of investigators from ROFFS, National Marine Fisheries Service (John Lamkin) and University of Massachusetts (Frank Muller-Karger) that were selected by NASA’s Ecological Forecasting Program of the Earth Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate for a three-year research project. The title of the project is “Improving the NOAA NMFS and ICCAT Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Fisheries Management Decision Support System.”
These scientists will evaluate the effects of the ocean environment on the distribution of adult bluefin tuna and their larvae during the last 20 years in the Gulf of Mexico in the hope to improve the stock assessment of the bluefin. This project is the second project funded by NASA where Roffer and Muller-Karger were principal investigators. These two scientists are finishing another research project concerning the effect of the environment on the movements and catch of mahi-mahi in South Carolina waters and king mackerel off Tampa Bay, Fla.
Gathering the where and when information before leaving the dock is always a smart move. The free information is better than none, but the subscription services usually go one better. There’s a charge for this information, but in these times of fuel exceeding $3 a gallon at the marina, expenses can be made up with a direct route to a better bite.
Several web sites offer unfiltered data at no charge. We’re not promoting them but their availability as tools for helping locate fish.
Two of the free sites are the Rutgers University Marine Science site at http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs and the Hotspot Charts, LLC site at http://www.sstcharts.com. Several charts at each site cover waters off the N.C. coast.
Other tools for examining factors other than water temperature are available at these two sites, but anglers must do their own analyses. Archives also examine the recent past in making an analysis. For anglers capable of analyzing data, it’s available at no cost on-line.
Real-time imaging also is available. Numerous satellites orbit the earth, monitoring and relaying information each day. Unless cloud cover prevents a satellite from seeing the water, the information is a maximum of several hours old. Such information is more current than where fish were caught yesterday, and that’s extremely valuable.
Initially this information was only considered valuable for offshore (tuna, dolphin, wahoo and billfish) anglers as it was primarily used to locate the Gulf Stream and surrounding eddies and fingers. As it becomes more readily available and accepted, more fishermen use it.
Offshore bottom fishermen find the info helpful as do tournament king mackerel anglers. Even better, the technology keeps improving, with more and better information becoming available.
Another of satellite information options is Hilton’s Realtime Navigator, www.realtime-navigator.com, (713) 530-2267, Fax (281) 431-8125, or e-mail at hilton@realtime-navigator.com. Hilton’s is a subscription service that operates through a web site with on-line tutoring, but anglers do their own analyses.
Hilton’s North Carolina information area is from roughly Virginia Beach, Va. to Myrtle Beach, S.C. The Hilton’s site is fully automatic and is constantly updating, but anglers must do the analysis.
On-line tutoring at the Hilton’s site is helpful, even for novices with a computer.
One of Hilton’s particularly interesting items is altimetry, the study of elevated or depressed ocean levels at a specific area relative to overall ocean levels. Elevated altimetry translates to upwellings, generally considered positive for fishing, while depressed altimetry means downwellings, generally considered not good places to fish.
The Hilton’s site also has information regarding water temperature, chlorophyll levels (roughly translated to water color), salinity, a bottom chart of the area, waypoints for known structure and a weather radar scan from the time of the last satellite pass. Many knowledgeable and successful anglers consider a visit to the Hilton’s site a major part of the input for planning fishing trips.
The scope of information from satellite imagery for anglers spans from free Internet sites to Internet subscription services with light analysis or where anglers must do their own analyses to subscription services with highly-analyzed data that can be e-mailed or faxed to a home, office or directly to a boat with appropriate cellular or satellite phone/Internet capabilities.
No one should be surprised by these features. With many larger boats, a computer link through a satellite phone or directly to a satellite Internet service is considered standard on the bridge.
Each service has its pros and cons. It would be wise to visit these web sites, then call and speak to their service people to see which one works best for you. Some are free and some have subscription fees, but all provide anglers with information they couldn’t get elsewhere and will send them to a spot that should hold fish.
With the latest advances, the latest Internet postings or analyzed satellite images can be sent directly to a home, office or boat. Even better, the reports are in real time, often only a few minutes old. It’s possible the latest satellite download could even have more current information than where you caught your last fish.
Contact information for services mentioned in this column include:
• Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service, Inc. (ROFFS), http://www.roffs.com, (321) 723-5759 or 800-677-7633, fish6@roffs.com.
• Rutgers University Marine Science, http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs.
• Hotspot Charts, LLC, http://www.sstcharts.com.
• Hilton’s Realtime Navigator, www.realtime-navigator.com, (713) 530-2267, Fax (281) 431-8125, hilton@realtime-navigator.com.
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