Deep Blue

Winter bottom fishing off the Outer Banks produces unusually large catches of sea bass, tilefish and snowy grouper.

Pollack, codfish, monkfish? Winter bottom fishing off the Outer Banks produces huge black sea bass, blueline tilefish, and even snowy grouper. But how to prepare and when to go aren’t enough. The few skippers who work deep bottoms off North Carolina and Virginia know when to work certain locations and when to go elsewhere.

People who don’t have those skills had better find someone who knows what he’s doing. It can be cold and rough 40 to 70 miles offshore in December and January, but those who have done it get addicted for life. It’s a single mixed bag fishery from north of Rudee Inlet to south of Oregon Inlet. The productive bottoms are 25 to 70 miles offshore from to the edge of the continental shelf, onto the Continental Slope, and out to the walls of the Norfolk Canyon.

The depths, high mounds of silts and gravels, steep rock walls, and ubiquitous Gulf Stream here and Labrador current there provide rich bottoms well known to commercial fishermen, but almost unknown to sportsmen.

The winter fishery off the Outer Banks has abundant unexploited blueline tilefish and over-exploited big black sea bass. Both are rigorously managed by NOAA-NMFS, but the allowance so far has been generous. The biggest sea bass and blueline tilefish are at deep 200-foot plus soft bottoms east of Oregon Inlet and south east of Virginia Beach. The far deeper waters of the Norfolk Canyon aren’t yet fished by sportsmen (it’s hard work), but promise large numbers of rosefish and occasional golden tile fish.

The fish are not everywhere but segregate by temperature, depth and bottom. Shallow hard bottoms (100 feet) produce gray triggerfish into the fall before it gets too cold for them, occasional fall or winter runs of scup (northern porgy) for which it never gets too cold, medium sea bass oblivious to temperatures, and occasional tautog off Virginia.

Winter brings nuisance dogfish sharks everywhere.

Deep bottoms farther out and bathed in Gulf Stream water aren’t equal. At 200 to 700 feet, the gravel, mud, silt and other soft hills and slopes are permeated by burrows of blueline tilefish. Some tilefish mounds have nothing else, while others are mixed with sea bass and snowy groupers.

But the fishes of a specific hot spot can change from year to year. Where the dominant water is cold Labrador current, the deep and cold bottoms, rocky or soft, might provide a mix of sea bass, scup and tautog. But northern visitors can hit your rig on the bottom (codfish, pollack, red and silver hake, monkfish) or on the way up (schools of mid-water Boston mackerel).

That’s missing a lot, said skippers such as Paul Lesiewicz who, like other charter boat captains of the Outer Banks, is trying to educate fishermen about these opportunities by offering combination trolling and bottom-fishing trips.

“Some of us began stopping for an hour or two of bottom when the fares had finished their limits of yellowfin tuna early and we were heading in,” he said. “There were also days when pulling trolled baits for tuna and billfish was slow and we didn’t have enough tuna or dolphin in the box to make people happy. That’s when we started to ask if they wanted to try fishing these deep bottoms (we were already out there), and people started to appreciate what was under their noses all the time.”

Captains Paul Lesiewicz and Paul Lesiewicz Jr. operate the 42-foot Stolat out of Broad Creek Fishing Center at Wanchese, one of two boats at that marina offering the option of offshore bottom fishing for blueline tilefish. Other bottom fishing boats, including the Country Girl headboat out of Pirates Cove Fishing Center, fish for tilefish and triggerfish, and today many charter boats at the Outer Banks and Rudee Inlet marinas offer a mixed trip option of tuna and billfish for most of the day, and offshore bottom fishing before going in.

“It’s guaranteed to put fish in the box one way or the other,” Lesiewicz said.

Temperature matters

Nearshore waters are colder and have sea bass, tautog, grouper and triggerfish in the summer and fall. But it’s only the offshore deep waters that have tilefish.

Sea bass range everywhere, but the biggest of them are in deep water in the winter offshore mixed with tiles.

According to Lesiewicz, the best tilefish bottom running out of Oregon Inlet is near The Point, the same location fished by charter boats for billfish and tuna. Tilefish are alone at some of the silty lumps, mounds, slopes, and gravel bottoms, but more often they’re mixed with black sea bass and snowy grouper.

Hard bottoms are closer and a shorter ride to the north, but not deep enough for tilefish. These nearshore bottoms produce sea bass, triggerfish, sheepshead and grouper or tautog during warm months, triggerfish and big flounder in the fall, and sea bass each winter.

For triggerfish, the best bet is to fish hard bottoms in shallower water (100 feet or less), but tilefish first appear at 200 feet and become common at 300 feet or more away from rocks, so you don’t get triggers and tiles in the same place.

The biggest and fattest flounder of the year are on the cool inshore rocky bottoms west of The Point during late fall and early winter when they aggregate from all over the east coast for the annual mass spawning.

Tackle is simple, generally 50-pound-class boat rods and reels loaded with braid for its fine diameter and lack of stretch. Terminal tackle is simple, standard two-hook bottom rigs with bank or cheaper home-made sinkers, and whatever’s available for bait.

The boat will anchor or drift, depending on depth, wind and the extent of the bottom features. If fish are piled up like a cone at a single spot (like a hill or mound), drifting over the cone and coming around repeatedly is preferred.

Anchoring is needed when the feature is hard to stay at because of currents or wind — and in any case nobody fishes one spot hard and long.

Similar to groupers, tilefish are residents at their natal bottoms, and a small community can be easily fished out, so it becomes useless until the juveniles grow up in a year or two.

“Bottom fishing is good 12 months a year, and you can do a full day or half day trip,” Lesiewicz said. “Half days don’t get you to tilefish or grouper, which are too far away.

“A different direction means different fish and different conditions, especially in the summer. In the winter, it’s not uncommon for us to mix bottom fishing with trolling for huge stripers off the beach.”

Lesiewicz emphasized local skippers accommodate clients who want to seize opportunities (one reason skippers talk to each other all day long).

During a recent tilefish trip near the Point, radio traffic was filled with loads of yellowfins being caught, and Paul Jr. topside, eye on the depth-sounder, was reporting tuna dashing below the Stolat.

“Let’s do it,” he yelled down to mate Shawn Curles, and the two of them ordered lines up, set out two big spreader bars and half a dozen ballyhoo-baited rods, and proceeded to crisscross the area ready for anything.

Thirty minutes later and chagrined (the radio traffic was a little hyped), the Stolat resumed bottom fishing and soon had a day’s limit of tilefish in the box.

Winter deep-water bottom fishing is as new in Virginia as in North Carolina. Five or six years ago you couldn’t find a skipper or a boat.

Captain Jim Brincefield runs the Jil Carrie out of Virginia Beach, fishing Chesapeake Bay during the warm months, and going outside for sea bass, tautog, and triggerfish from the rocks to the Light Tower (about 100 feet), and when it’s warm, for tuna and tilefish in deeper water.

He started deep-drop wreck fishing only a couple of years ago, but it’s the old records of the commercial fishermen that got him curious about what was out there.

“Virginia had a vibrant blueline tilefish fishery in deep water,” he said, “back in the 1930s and 1940s.”

During the ensuing years, locations passed on by generations of commercial fishermen subsequently were converted to Loran but were nowhere as accurate as is possible today. Brincefield has a collection of locations from old notebooks, and is updating and fixing those old sites but, he said, what was a good location long ago may not be productive today.

“Sites change,” he said, even in the short term. The hill or rock is still there, but it might no longer be used by those same kinds of fish.”

Brincefield takes what’s been written about deepwater wreck fishing with a grain of salt. Skippers and anglers say things but also leave things out, and writers interpret or misinterpret what is said and also leave things out. The only way to know about deepwater wreck fishing, he advises, is to do it, and then do it some more.

“For example,” he said, “you can’t catch tilefish down deep in a strong current, and everyone thinks it’s because you can’t get to the bottom. That’s not it.

“Of course you can get to the bottom if you use thin braided line and 2 pounds or whatever it takes of lead. The problem is that, if you’re drifting over a tilefish mound and there’s a strong current down there at the time, the tilefish won’t chase the bait. They remain near their holes, and the baits just drag or bounce on by.”

A bigger problem with winter fishing is the explosion in dogfish sharks since NMFS started limiting commercial catches.

“There are so many dogfish here that they chase you off the wrecks,” Brincefield said. “You can’t even get to the sea bass down there.”

If sharks move onto a wreck or mound, forget about getting through them to the tilefish or anything else.

In North Carolina and Virginia, blueline tilefish are locally abundant (they’re not everywhere) in deep water with the best fishing in 250 to 300 feet at soft, gravely, or silty bottom areas like mounds or sediments at the base of a reef. It’s where tilefish excavate enormous burrows and come out to eat crabs, shrimp, and other shellfish.

Tilefish range down to at least 700 feet, but that’s the realm of commercial guys with winches or electric reels.

“We don’t use that kind of gear, “ Brincefield said, “because nobody wants to miss an IGFA record because he didn’t follow the rules.”

He’s fished in 400 feet, but it’s hard work.

Most blueline tilefish are about 5 to 9 pounds, but 12-pounders aren’t uncommon, and several in the 15-pound class have been taken.

In the past three years, the IGFA blueline tilefish record was broken repeatedly and now stands at 17 pounds, 7 ounces for a fish caught out of Virginia Beach.

Commercial fishermen have weighed in several 20-pound-class fish, so records are waiting to be broken, probably in 300 or more feet of water.

Dr. Jim Wright, a regular on the headboat circuit out of Virginia Beach, weighed in a 20-pound tilefish before IGFA began paying attention to this species, so he never sent in the information.

Tilefish at 200 to 400 feet often associate with snowy groupers, but range far deeper with wreckfish, a grouper rarely seen or recognized by fishermen.

Snowy groupers and wreckfish are over-fished and protected.

Brincefield said he’s seen rosefish and unidentified groupers taken in very deep water but he doesn’t fish there.

“Still,” he said, “the fishing isn’t the same from one winter to the next. We’ve taken snappers and groupers at the tilefish grounds in warm winters, and in colder winters we’ve caught cod, pollack, monkfish, and hake.”