Sea Surface Temperature Charts
What I have found out about sea surface temperature charts is they can catch you a lot of fish, or they can make you burn a bunch of fuel.  With that said, I guarantee you that I never leave the dock without the full download of everything available.  Now they have charts with sea surface height (the long line guys swear by these), chlorophyll, sea temperature at fifty meters, sea temperature at 150 meters and many more.  For simplicity’s sake (and my lack of time reading the others) I will stick to sea surface temperatures and chlorophyll (water color).

Early and late in the season are the easiest times to look like a hero with this stuff.  Early, your look for the hottest break, with the color of the water that corresponds with the type of fish you want, and wheel her on over there.  Late in the season is pretty much the same, only you are looking for fish still trapped in the pockets of remaining good water.  As these pockets shrink many times the fish will concentrate in them. When we were still fishing hard in the fall, it would constantly amaze me how much excellent potential fishing was available, and no boats were on it. I’m talking into late November.

Mid season it gets a little tougher because there is so much good looking water. Many times these awesome breaks will be holding the fish, but they just won’t show or don’t want to bite. There have been many times that we would get there a day or two ahead of the fish, or it would take a day or two for them to settle in and act the way we wanted. Other times, when there are several breaks in the same area, you have to jump from break to break and find the one that is holding the life, and then beat that one up and see if it has your target specie. Frequently, I will put a set amount of time on an area, depending on how good it looks, and if nothing shapes up in that amount of time, we’re out of there.

Probably, the best method mid season is to find the fish and then stay in that piece of water or condition by using the charts. If you find some fish and they’re biting, look at your chart, and it is easy to see the direction a piece of water is moving. This is especially helpful when patty hopping; it is very easy to track a break that is holding kelps with yellows or dorado. Billfish are a little trickier. If I hear someone say, “The water rolled over, and the fish are gone,” one more time, I’m going to puke. Well, no! If you had been watching the SST charts, that piece of water had been coming a long way off – sometimes a hundred miles or much more. Were the fish always in that piece of water? How come nobody caught them until they got to that spot? When the water pushed through, where did they go? Did you find them where the water went to? No? Why? Is it the surface water or sub-surface water? I can still stay on that edge, so, where are they? Many species seem to always move with the water.

It was September 9th, 1999. As always, every night after dinner I would study the SST charts from Ocean Imaging, trying to find something that looked good to spend a day or two on. I was wondering if I was ever going to see one again. Finally, I saw something more than a generic blob of water to stare blankly at: a huge crescent-shape piece of hot water pushing off the beach.

By all appearances, some force of water had slammed into the beach around Ensenada and was pushing up the coast. It was extremely evident that this water had a strong clockwise rotation because of the bend in the sickle. We had found several swordfish in a similar piece of water a few weeks before around the 209, but we had gotten to it just as it fell apart. This one appeared much stronger.

Within a couple days it had pushed up to the border and looked like it would be on the 9-Mile Bank the next day. I sent one of our two planes down a couple times to check it out. Nothing.

The next day I sent him down twice. The water had pushed up off Oceanside. Late the second day he found a fish, but we were too far away. I knew where we were starting the next day.

We had been fishing pretty well all season aboard Glen Stollers Mirage. As a matter of fact, we had just taken on a third crewmember, Ryan Burr. His job was to pull the swordfish out of a rubber skiff with a fiberglass bottom and a twenty-five-horsepower outboard on the back. The last week or so, however, was pretty bad, and the Pilikia was about to catch us. In fact, Johnnie (the harpooner) had just told his dad, Stu Foster, that they had us on the ropes – that we were on our knees. They had found a good area late in the day and had sacked up three or four. He knew we didn’t have any.

The following morning we got started later than usual. We had been doing a lot of traveling. Jeremy Smith, my harpooner, started the day off. He spotted a tanker swordfish off the East End of Catalina. This was nowhere near where I wanted to be, so we added a couple extra floats and a radar reflector and took off for the break.

As soon as we crossed the closest edge, we began sticking fish. We had three soaking when our only pilot for the day, Brian Jennison, showed up. My other pilot had taken the day off; bad choice – REALLY BAD CHOICE. (Sorry Spence.) As soon as Brian got there, we went into high gear. He was spotting fish, and we were spotting fish on the way to him. It was good. According to my log we were spotting a fish about every ten or fifteen minutes – sick!

We had been steadily moving east and had just broke out of the super dirty water when I remembered the big fish – now fifteen miles away – and we were still headed east and away from it. We shut down and threw the skiff in the water. Ryan grabbed his backpack with his GPS, handheld radio (complete with scrambler), tail rope, killer balls and a twenty-two-caliber rifle. I’m sure he had a couple beers in there, too.

It was so hectic, with fish swimming in all directions, that it was hard to keep up with the notes that were crucial to re-finding our gear. We got about three or four more after sending Ryan off. Then, at 3:45 it shut off – just like somebody threw a switch.

We sent Brian up to check on Ryan at about 5 p.m. He got radio contact and coordinates from Ryan and relayed them to me. Ryan was now almost twenty miles away (towing a very large swordfish), it was getting late, and we had gear everywhere. Hmm.

Ryan lost. We started pulling gear. Pulling fish hot, shooting them and taking off for the next one. We had thirteen for the day.

I had freighters passing on each side of the last position I had for Ryan, and I was nervous. By the time we got to him, it was getting dark, the batteries in his handheld were almost dead, and he had run out of fuel in the freighter lanes. Literally. At least he forgot his shirt. After we got Ryan and that last one onboard, we found it dressed at 412 pounds. We cleaned fish until 11 p.m. and didn’t finish getting them all down in the hold until midnight.

If the fish always move with the water, how come – when we checked that edge five times in three days – nothing was in it until it got to that exact area? Did they finally settle in? Move over some food that made them float? Or had they been there all along, and when the right water moved over the fish, they floated? Wow, I could go on like this all day. That is what makes it so exciting.

The next day Johnnie called his dad. After Johnnie told Stu they had four for the day, Stu said, “Hey, you know that guy you have on his knees? He was putting fish down until midnight.”

I didn’t know Stu was in the anchorage right next to me. It took them the rest of the season, but I still remember they wound up with about five more than us for the year. It still eats me up.

A couple of days ago, I saw a nice piece of water on the machine, southeast of the Cortez. I had been talking about it with Andy, my deckhand – talking about the push and the way it was fed. No way to get there. I was just getting over it when I pulled up to the commercial boat Temptation to say hi. The owner, John Hett, is one of my best old-time friends. He is also the best on this coast with all the SST stuff, period. He said, “Hey, did you see that water on the outside? That’s where the fish are. This is just the scraps.” Yeah, sometimes it hurts not to be fishing anymore…

The last couple of months have been pretty tough. Every time I see the cover of the magazine I cringe. I don’t see myself as the Master or the Wizard, just a guy out trying to catch some fish and have some fun. There are many guys that I do view as masters or wizards – too many to name – I won’t even attempt it for fear of leaving someone out. What I will say is that most of them run long-range boats, sport boats, six-pack boats and commercial boats. There are also some very good yacht captains, very fishy guys that have to be good over a very large area. Many of them are my friends. The one thing they all have in common is work ethic, and I respect them all.