How to plan a sea fishing trip?

[punkrockcaveman]

Hi Folks. I've been thinking about spending some time writing up a post about using a few online tools to plan a sea fishing trip, as I think this is something that could help a lot of people have much more success when it comes to sea fishing and perhaps encourage more people to give it a go? Is this something the forum would appreciate? It would probably take a bit of time but if the forum will find it useful then I'll invest the time.

Cheers!

 

[TeeDee]

Yes

 

[Broch]

Definitely.

 

[Wildgoose]

I’ve always fancied giving it a go so would be very interested

 

[Nugs]

Go for it @punkrockcaveman .
As a fellow fisherman, i would be interested to see how your techniques vary due to your location.
I fish the south coast, mainly Chesil through to East Devon, as its on my doorstep, although i do venture to the North Somerset coast for winter cod.

 

[punkrockcaveman]

Awesome Give me a little time and I'll get a few bits put up on this thread

 

[punkrockcaveman]

So here's the first post on how I plan a sea fishing trip. We'll start with the online tools that I use to research my trips. At this point it's worth noting, I don't fish where I want to fish as such, I fish where I have the best chance. That is dependant on conditions, tides, weather, seasonality etc. In my mind this is what makes a good fisherman, knowing how to be in the right place at the right time.

The first tool I use that helps you do this is a tide times website. There are various ones to use, but I use one called tides4fishing, as it shows you moon phases (don't get too hung up on them, just know that a new moon has the biggest tides in a lunar month, and a full moon has the second biggest tides in the month, in between that are the small tides, or neaps) and also the tidal coefficient (this number is a value given to how big a tidal range is. The bigger the number, the more tidal movement you will see).
Many venues will fish well at different states of tide. Some places will fish best 3 hours either side of low water, some a couple of hours of low water, some will just fish well on the outgoing tide and so on. We'll get into that later though. But this will help you plan where to fish with your window of time that you have available.

 

[punkrockcaveman]

The second tool I use is good old google maps, with the satellite overlay on. It's very useful for seeing access from roads, parking, picking out headlands etc but also sometimes you will get pictures using the street view function, giving you a virtual tour of the spot. Some times the satellite images are taken at low water, or when the water is kind of clear, sometimes allowing you to pick out rough ground/reefs and sandbars, deep water and shallow water etc. It's great to have it open in conjunction with the next online tool.....

 

[punkrockcaveman]

the third tool is something that I have more recently started using, its called Navionics by Garmin, just google it, and click on 'chart viewer' at the top. In the bottom left, select the round icon and choose sonarchart. This is a more detailed overlay of the depth, much more useful for fishing from the shore or kayak fishing. Again this will give you a great idea of gulleys, inshore wrecks, reefs, rough ground, sand bars etc. Consider it an underwater map!

 

[punkrockcaveman]

The fourth and last tool to mention, besides the weather forecast, is something called Magicseaweed. Primarily for surfers, it's probably the best tool you will get for seeing the swell forecast. They also have webcams on some locations, so you can have a real time look at what the conditions are like. The first thing you will see is the weight height measured in feet. That is all it is telling you, it's not telling you how rough it will be. This will depend on the severity and direction of the wind. Strong onshore winds can soon whip up an unfishable sea when only 3-4ft waves are forecast, and when strong offshore winds are forecast it can really flatten things out. Be careful with offshore winds in a kayak though. Primary Swell direction can influence just how sheltered you are, or how exposed, this can be a good or bad thing depending on what you are planning to fish for. swell time, measured in seconds (you will see something like 2.5ft at 8secs) is the time between each swell wave crest, the longer the time, the more powerful the wave is and vice versa. Handy to know from a safety aspect, but also just how fishable to conditions will be.