Hi J, glad you found your way here. So on the "other" site I did write a couple of long article-type posts on the hunting of deep-water fluke. I think one was about the open bottom hunt and one was more specifically about rough-bottom fluking.
Its a little bit dated, but still valid info, for the most part. Currently most of my local fluking is now done over hard bottom, the open bottom just doesn't seem to produce as it once did. Maybe its a thinning of the fluke population - or maybe its something else. In any case I rarely make open bottom drops anymore. I steam on by to more productive rubble and the like. May well be a dumb move on my part, but its the way I've chosen to fish over the past 10 or so seasons.
Since I never signed an exclusivity contract, let alone a non-compete with that old site, here is the text of my original, written all those years ago (2007!):
" . . .My biggest question is: What holds the fish in 40, 50, 60 feet of water?? I guess I had mistakenly always viewed that area as kind of a sandy shelf...more wasteland than oasis except for the areas around the wrecks."
You are correct in that it would be a mistake to view the South Shore sandy bottom as a featureless void. Setting aside the well known broken-bottom areas that many now fish pretty hard for the better flukies, there are many, MANY places to try for open-bottom fluke off the South Shore, in water greater than 40 feet.
The problem for most bay flukers that are confronted with the vastness of the South Shore ocean bottom for the first time is that they are not conditioned to look for the more productive bottom. After all, there are no channel markers, no marsh islands, and certainly no bridges to use as reference points.
Just open water.
But that open water flows over some VERY productive bottom,
not readily apparent, unless you look for it. There are countless drop-offs, depressions, troughs and gentle rises, low crust and such that all can and will hold bait, especially squid, during the Summer fluking season.
And its particularly true that it is squid that brings us the big flatfish, late in the season. I have been told that the summer squid run is a different species than what is commonly seen during the Spring run, and I believe it. I think the two types are known as "Long Fin" and "Short Fin" - one of them is called "Loligo." Don't ask me which one that is, I really don't know. Or care either - because I'm pretty sure both types are equally tasty to Mr. Fluke. Just take it as gospel that as long as the squid gets here, the fluke will follow.
And not just the 15"-18.99" peewees either. Off Jones Inlet, my best fluke catches of the year always come during the month of August.
But there must be squid present on the open bottom to pull those quality fish, in any appreciable quantity to my area. This is the paramount point that I want to impart to you. No squid = no later-season open bottom fluke.
Funny, but the offshore waters from Shinnecock Inlet to just south of F. I. Inlet seem to have fairly consistent action throughout the fluke season. Also to the West, the NY Bight, from the Tin Can/East Reef to Ambrose to Sandy Hook can have good fishing that you can pretty much bank on, if you put in the time and develop a game plan.
Its just my luck that my area, Jones Inlet & points south, a.k.a. "The Dead Sea," has very inconsistent ocean open bottom fluke fishing. But again, to be emphatic,
on the deep offshore open bottom grounds, especially off Jones Inlet, no squid, no fluke. Find the bait, even here off Jones, and you WILL (eventually) find fish. But will they be in an eating mood, THAT is the question.
To fish open bottom and do consistently well is to PAY ATTENTION to what your bottom machine is telling you. Of course just recognizing the quality drops is only half of the job. You still need a game plan.
So what does that mean as far as locating fish? Again, you have to find the squid, of course. And how to do that? Run slowly along in water over say 45'or so and look hard at your fish finder. A color machine with excellent bottom expansion capability is all important here. Pick up the gain to the point that the screen starts to snow up and then back it off a squinch, 'til the snow just disappears. Note that this is NOT the way you would run a bottom machine if you were wreck hunting/fishing.
But of course that is not what you're trying to do here. What you are doing instead is looking for squid hanging just over the bottom. Watch carefully when you see a bottom drop away - or rise, even if its only a few feet over say a hundred feet of linear boat travel - it could be indicative of a gradual depth shift.
If you see any TINY white, light blue or red scratches (depending on your machine's color palette) suspended above the bottom, most especially from the very bottom to around 6' above it, you are gold. Odds are very, very good that the fluke have also found those same squiddies and are looking up at them hungrily while you are looking down. Pity those squid, because big fluke are VISCIOUS.
What you will need to do is to
FIRST PUNCH THE SAVE BUTTON on your GPS, if so equipped, and then start scouting the area. This will establish a datum or "Ground Zero" to further refine your game plan. What did you find? Is it a gradual drop from West to East? A well defined trough that runs parallel to the beach? A shallow depression (Or rise?), maybe surrounded by flat bottom? You need to invest some of your valuable fishing time into scouting. This can be difficult to do, as its everyone's first inclination to get to the fishing part of the trip. This would be a mistake.
Of course you could just drop in with your rigs and hope for the best, but in my opinion that is certainly not the smart play. You want to completely understand how the bottom lays and then take note of the ambient conditions - tide and wind will determine your plan of attack.
NOW STOP THE DARN BOAT AND THINK FOR A LITTLE BIT - what would be the best way to fish your new found potential honey-hole? Are the conditions such that you can drift parallel to one of the trough or drop-off's slopes? Great, now you're talking. Run upwind or up-tide (or, if you're incredibly lucky, both will be together) and drop in. Baiting or buck tailing, whatever you're doing, when you bang a fish, hit the "MOB" button on your GPS to save that spot as well and use it as a reference for fine-tuning your subsequent drifts.
Give the spot a fair chance and if you don't get immediate hits, make multiple drifts - if you see squid. It could well be that the fish are standing (sitting? lying?) pat, waiting for a specific part of the tide to bite.
Personally, I think its temperature-related, but I could be wrong, I'm just not well versed enough in fish feeding stimuli to know the real answer, if one even exists. But do believe that its often a temperature thing. I find that many times the outgoing brings slightly warmer water to the offshore grounds and that turns on our flat friends, especially early in the season.
Plus that warmer water tends to back the Spring/early Summer dogfish off, an important factor that I haven't yet addressed. There are years, pretty much every year these days, that the dogs will force you inshore to water less than 50' deep. They can be relentless. If you find them particularly viscous on the incoming, then leave the spot and come back on the outgoing - maybe two hours in and you might just be pleasantly surprised that the dogs have backed off. We see this all the time, from mid-July on. It has to be the warmer temp outgoing water moving offshore that pushes them back to deeper water.
I can't begin to relate the number of times I've gone to a pet open bottom spot in the morning, say on the incoming, and caught zip - like there's not a fish in the area - maybe only some doggies. Had to go elsewhere, putz around a bit and then head back for the afternoon turn of the tide, and KA-BOOM!!, fluke slaughter.
Trust me, if you are seeing squid, the fluke are most probably there - but might not be super aggressively feeding.
We could go into all kinds of things at this point - rigs, baits, proper tackle, proper boat technique, especially under less than ideal conditions - these are all components of a VERY complex subject - this ocean fluking.
And its certainly much more difficult than just drifting the various Inlet channel edges and back bay areas. But it CAN be super productive. I find it all to be quite challenging to whatever small skill level that I and my crew possess.
Some seasons off Jones, like last August (2006) for example, the summer squid never did show up. What a freakin' nightmare. It forced us, along with most other decent deep-water flukers in my area to look for the hard-bottom "resident" fish. Talk about a tooth-pull. We did get deep-water fish every trip last late-Summer. Some days I'd even rate as "decent," but most were pretty slow.
Run, run, run from one wreck to another, to Cholera, to the Middle Grounds, the Angler Banks and back - burning barrels of fuel, losing tons of rigs to the rough bottom, and many of my cherished TRT lures (TRT = Tommy/Reelteaser) to the hangs . I hate losing lures that someone worked so hard to produce - forget the money, its no more than a cost of doing this type of fishing. Its just that the teasers are so pretty and some days we lose better than a half dozen each. Good for Tommy, bad for me, I guess.
(Edit: Remember, this was written in 2007, before I "got serious" with the deeper rough-bottom fishing, which took a refinement in tackle, technique and boat handling.)
But I've digressed a bit, and the whole subject of broken-bottom fluking could very well command another few thousand words - and I'd still only be scratching the surface.
So, if you have any questions about that, or the original topic - which of course was open-bottom fluking, just go ahead and ask away. I'm always around . . . not to mention some very sharp other flukin' dudes stop by here too."
