Log On
Take Me Fishing blogger Tom Keer recently reported on the pelagic bite. (“Pelagic” means, “go start the boat; you can’t catch those from shore.)
Unlike inshore fishing, where structure and weeds are a fishing gold mine… No place is more starved for fish structure than the pelagic ocean. It is wide open and featureless. Just. Water. What direction should you point the boat? Where should you start fishing? Well, birds are a great visual of feeding activity, but sometimes our feathered friends are absent.
Anything in the pelagic zone can attract fish. Wind lines, where air and current gather assorted seaweed, bubbles, and debris may be a place to start. And a floating log in the middle of the ocean may serve as habitat, decoy, even shade for species such as mahi-mahi (dolphinfish), ono (wahoo), ahi (yellowfin tuna), and many others. One log holds algae and other microscopic organisms which attract and feed little fish, which in turn attract larger fish.
Fishing off the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii with my friends, their dual 55 hp outboard motor boat happened to discover a log. With our first troll by it, a solid fish was hooked. The boat began to spin while fighting this leaping fish.
“Don’t lose that log!” Norman Ah Hee warned.
One of us always kept an eye on the log drifting in the current. It was low in the water and only about 8 feet long. As long as we kept track of that log, we continued to find mahi-mahi.
A large charter boat noticed our leaping fish and approached. However, they seemed to have missed this piece of magnetic habitat and though they passed through our area several times, never came close enough to the log to entice a fish.
If we lost a fish, we knew where to find another as long as we knew where that log was. If we lost the log in the pelagic zone, there may not be another piece of structure for miles.
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Andy Whitcomb
Andy is an outdoor writer (http://www.justkeepreeling.com/) and stressed-out Dad has contributed over 380 blogs to takemefishing.org since 2011. Born in Florida, but raised on banks of Oklahoma farm ponds, he now chases pike, smallmouth bass, and steelhead in Pennsylvania. After earning a B.S. in Zoology from OSU, he worked in fish hatcheries and as a fisheries research technician at OSU, Iowa State, and Michigan State.