By Louis Chemi.
Satellite imagery helps you home in on the water conditions preferred by pelagic species such as tuna, dolphin, wahoo and billfish.
My alarm rudely interrupted my sleep at 2 a.m. I launched from slumber and headed for my laptop on the table in the salon. Within a minute, I was reviewing the latest sea surface conditions from overnight satellite passes. The weather still looked great for a canyon run, but the water had shifted from the last clear images I saw a couple days ago. Now we would have to run to the Norfolk Canyon instead of the Washington to intercept a strong temperature and color change I knew held our best chances for tuna and billfish. Without that intel, we might have searched for hours in an area that held fish several days ago, but would have been a desert that day.
In today’s world, if you’re not using satellite mapping to study the water and gather information in the days prior to an offshore fishing trip, you’re missing out. The ocean is a bit like a desert, in which most of the fish congregate in oases of favorable water conditions amid vast swaths of unproductive water. By doing your homework on ocean conditions, it’s possible to home in on likely areas and launch with a gameplan that can greatly increase your catching-to-fishing ratio.
How to Best Use Satellite Images for Fishing
Satellite images are an incredible tool giving offshore fishermen a way to watch the ocean’s movements and predict where to find pelagic species. By learning which indicators show conditions that concentrate fishing action instead of dispersing it, anglers can often predict when, as well as where, the bite is likely to be the hottest.
read more at sportfishingmag.com.
