Bottom fishing out of newport

Bkrogers80 · 03-03-2012, 06:53 PM

Hey guys,

I am looking for some tips on where to head south of Newport to get on some good bottom fishing? I have scoured the charts looking at underwater structures but am not sure how far out (depth wise) to go? I see a couple reefs in 40-60 feet about 3-miles south but trying to nail down which one.

Thanks for your help. Just trying to help nail down a good outing.

pirk fan · 03-03-2012, 07:41 PM

No one spot comes with a guarantee of fish, you have to go find the rocky reefs, look for fish on your sounder and try various spots and techniques. Those spots you see on the chart would be a good place to start. There's lots of structure between Newport and the Seal Rocks area, if one place doesn't work, move until you find other interesting contours. That's part of the fun. Avoid the shallow structure on South Reef, it's dangerous. Watch for surface activity on really calm days,

JerryM · 03-03-2012, 08:58 PM

Every spot is okay. Some are great. Some are great one week and dead the next. Just go until you run over structure, then drift it. Mark a good one and move on from a crummy one. This time of year they are mostly all good.

jasonbartosz · 03-05-2012, 09:24 AM

44 37 55.37N 124 02 56 .63W You wont find any better bottom fish around.

Metal Head · 03-05-2012, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasonbartosz

44 37 55.37N 124 02 56 .63W You wont find any better bottom fish around.

huh? 124 02 56.63W Is that a seafood market? Not so sure thats what he was looking for but good backup plan. Guess it would be a for sure bet as long as they were open. I thought it was clever though made me think for a minute about a new spot to check out.

Metal Head · 03-05-2012, 10:02 AM

BKrogers heres the best advice i can give you. Buy a chart or look at some online to find some structure. Then get some shrimp flies or white,purple gliter,pumpkin pastics put them on some jig heads and go get em. Or do a search theres tons of info on here if you search it right. But heres a few links that might help. Some times the south reef can be great for lings, bass other times it isnt. Its the closest one though. Its been awhile but it seems the depth ranges between 30-55 ft in the area of it that we fish which is south of the south jetty maybe 2 miles or so. You will see it on the chart. I might be off on mileage didnt look at the gps. Anyways good luck and be safe.

sorry i didnt notice you said you already had a chart. These sights are pretty handy though gives you the lat/lon at the spot you think you like. You can do routes and such on the second link and it will show bottom topography (google earth application)
http://marine.geogarage.com/routes

http://mapserver.mytopo.com/homepage...tlontype=DM.MM

jasonbartosz · 03-05-2012, 11:06 AM

Those little rubber lead head jigs that they sell at SB Marina always seem to work really well. The coordinates were for Local Ocean. In my opinion the best place to eat in NP.

ron m · 03-05-2012, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bkrogers80

Hey guys,

I am looking for some tips on where to head south of Newport to get on some good bottom fishing? I have scoured the charts looking at underwater structures but am not sure how far out (depth wise) to go? I see a couple reefs in 40-60 feet about 3-miles south but trying to nail down which one.

Thanks for your help. Just trying to help nail down a good outing.

Congratulations BK, you've made a great start. One additional thing, I find that if it's shortly after a storm as gone thru, the fish might be in deeper water than 40 to 60. Not always, but often for me. However, I mostly fish rockfish and lings when I can't fish for anything else, so it's mostly in the late fall, winter, or early spring. I fish from 40 to about 120 max for inshore bottomfish, much deeper if we go to the west side of the rockpile for yellowtail rockfish and lings, but we only do that on days with nice conditions.

As noted above, be careful of both south and north reef, the water over them is shallow. also be careful of some of the high plateaus south of the jetties, sometimes a large swell comes thru and breaks over them, esp at low tide. Ya don't want to be there when that happens! Any chance of big swells coming thru and I stay in areas at least 60 ft deep.

Also as noted above, go to general locations, look for fish, try spots, move on if they don't produce. I have lots of bottomfish waypoints in my ff and use them to set up drifts. After a drift or two I know the general direction we'll drift and try to set up to go over several of my waypoints. Some of them aren't over rocky bottom, but one day they produced and that's why they are there. I remove them when I go over them again and there is no bottom structure or fish there.
ron m

Treeshot · 03-05-2012, 04:59 PM

When fishing a reef you aren't familiar with PAY ATTENTION not only to the depth finder but to warning signs. You might be in 40ft of water when you check the sounder and 30 seconds later you drift onto a pinnacle thats only 15ft below the surface. A big swell will break on a spot like that and believe me you want no part of being in the area. When I was fishing south reef for the first time I was on high alert and thank god noticed we were heading into a bad spot. When I told the guys to hurry and reel up I got alot of scowls because we were in fish and everyone was hooked up. I actually started to drive away with one guy fighting a pretty good sized copper. As we were pulling the fish into the boat a wave curled about 50ft from where we had been. I doubt it would have flipped us but everyone in the boat probably would have been looking for a change of underwear. Needless to say that spot is marked in my chartplotter as a no fly zone.

Bkrogers80 · 03-06-2012, 05:30 AM

Thanks guys for the input, I appreciate it. Should help to line up a good outing. Treeshot, I can completely see what you are talking about, some of those reefs come up pretty quick and with any swell they could be ugly. Thanks for the heads up.

Good fishing!