EP 73: How To Read Tides And Bottom Structure For Fluke

For full video of this episode go here: https://youtube.com/live/eV-SsAOmixE?feature=share

If you’ve ever stared at a chart, found a “nice looking” deep hole, and still got skunked for backwater fluke, this one is for you. I’m breaking down the exact process I use to find high-percentage fluke water before I ever launch, without handing out someone else’s secret spot. The big idea is simple: fluke are ambush predators, and they stack where current funnels bait in a predictable lane. Depth can help, but structure plus flow is what consistently feeds fish.

I pull up free NOAA bathymetry using the NOAA Bathymetric Data Viewer and walk through what the shading and contours actually mean. We talk about how to choose the right water for incoming tide versus outgoing tide, what severe drop-offs and ridges do to current, and why underwater points and converging channels create the seams fluke love. I also explain the difference between a “spot” and an “area,” and why the best bite can come from a tiny micro spot you need to hit again and again.

We run through examples from New Jersey, behind Ocean City, Maryland, and Jamaica Bay in New York, so you can apply the same approach anywhere you’re chasing summer flounder, southern flounder, or Gulf flounder. Then we get into the factor that wrecks most good plans: wind. If you ignore wind against tide, your drift and presentation can end up going the wrong direction, and fluke often won’t spend the calories to chase it.

If you get value out of this, subscribe, share it with a fishing buddy who keeps drifting the wrong way, and leave a review so more anglers can find it. What’s the one piece of bottom structure that most often leads you to a keeper fluke?

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Transcript

Why Backwater Fluke Hold Here

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 0:00

If you have an underwater point, that will create additional structure, additional turbulence in the water, and that can help to funnel the bait as well. Hello and welcome back to the Fat Dad Fishing Show. I'm your host, Rich Natoli, back again with another fluke video, fluke live stream, fluke fluke podcast. This one's another solo show, and it's on a topic that I get a lot of crap for, but I also get a lot of crap when I don't do these uh for quite a while. And it's basically how to find a fluke spot in the backwater. Now, it does apply for offshore as well or out front, out in front of the inlets in the ocean, but this is a time of the year where we're not really focused out there. The fluke are in the back, they're in the backwaters, they're in the inlets. So that's what we're gonna focus on. I'm gonna show you how I break down to find spots. Um, and look, listen to it or don't listen to it, it's up to you. I'm just trying to help out, and uh, I'm gonna try not to burn spots. I'm gonna get a whole bunch of crap forward anyway. Uh, these are I have three areas that I have pulled up in advance, and uh hopefully people don't get on me about them. They are, I'm going to say right now, none of the three spots are where I would go fishing to start in any of these areas. So, how about that? I'm not giving you what I think is the best spots, and of course, spots change based on the different conditions

Sponsors And Quick Gear Advice

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 1:35

out there. So, before we jump into that, I'm going to jump in and do the sponsors, Great Bay Outfitters, Radio Road in Tuckerton, New Jersey. That is where I go. That's where you should go anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic region. It's one of the biggest, it is the best kayak outfitter shop that you're going to find. This is one of those places where you can go and you can actually test out the kayaks on the water before buying one. And where you're looking at dropping thousands of dollars on a boat that you're going to be sitting your butt in for hours out on the water, you want to make sure that it's comfortable. You want to make sure it's going to be the one that works for you. Don't do what most people do and just buy what somebody else has because they say it's the best. Here's a little secret: just like with boats, people always say that theirs is the best and they would buy it again. That's great. So the Hobie is the best if you ask so-and-so. The old town's the best. If you ask somebody else, native is the best, so on and so forth, right down the line. The most important thing you can do is get in the boat, try it out, call Paul ahead of time. He will have the boat set up so that you can get out on the water. You can try it, and you can decide for yourself what is the best one for you before you drop thousands of dollars on it and head out and hit the water. Next one is Quad State Tune. If you have a Toyota truck, so we're talking Tacoma, Tundra, Forerunner, even the Lexus, uh 460 and 470. These are engine tunes, they've got great engines in them, but these tunes will actually get you better performance. It'll get you better torque mileage, horsepower. It will make the gear shift a lot more smoothly on the highway. So if you're towing, that becomes a big thing. You're going to get better mileage out of your vehicle. You're going to get better performance. And if it's not going to work out for what you're looking for, Kevin, the owner of Quad State Tune, will let you know. His number is 44-633-5975. And then the final sponsor is me, Real Estate Residential Real Estate in southeastern Pennsylvania. So anywhere in the Philly area, I actually go all the way out to York County for certain transactions. I can help you out. So give me a call if you're looking to buy, sell, invest, anything like that. I can help you out. I can actually even do some light commercial. And if you're looking out of Pennsylvania in Delaware, got a network there, New Jersey, pretty much any state on the actually every state on the East Coast, I have people that I work with. So I can help you out with that. So reach out to me, numbers 267-270-1145, or you can email me at Natolirealestate at gmail.com. And with that, we're going to jump right into this episode. This is going to be, as I said, I'm going to get in a lot of get a lot of heat. We're not going to have as many likes on this one because people are going to say I'm spot burning. But this is all about how to find a spot before you hit the water. And we'll talk about, you know, three different areas that I pulled up. I've got one down in Maryland, I've got one in New Jersey, and I've got one up in New York. And we're just going to kind of go through and talk about the things that are most important to look for when you're looking for a spot to target fluke. This will also be good if you're further south. So if you're in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, all the way down through Florida, all the way around the Gulf, it'll work in any of these areas if you look for these types of structures and these types of conditions that are going to mark out these spots as being good. So whether it's a summer flounder, a southern flounder, or a Gulf flounder, just like the last episode, all of this will translate directly to that. So with that said, I'm going to pull up.

Free NOAA Bathymetry Map Setup

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 5:16

I used to use Navionics. Hate Navionics now, they ruined it. So I don't use Navionics anymore, but I'm going to show you what other people use that you can use for free. So I'm going to add this to the stage here. And actually, I'm just going to get rid of my face because nobody wants to see me. There we go. All right. So this is from NOAA. This is the Bathometric Data Viewer. And you can get this online. Just look it up, NOAA, and just put in the uh bathometric data viewer. You'll be able to find these maps. Now, this right here, let me just show you what it is. Now, for those listening to the podcast, I apologize. This is going to be a very highly visual episode. However, I'm going to try to be as illustrative as possible in my descriptions of what I'm doing and what I'm showing. So hopefully it'll help you to translate it over from when you get to a computer or get on your phone and you can take a look at what I'm talking about. All right. So we have the NOAA screen in front of us. And this is again an area in South Jersey. You may know what area it is. You may not. It doesn't really matter. The land is the dark green. The water is everything else around it. So you can see the channels in there. And what this is showing is the relief on the bottom underneath the water. So if I zoom in, you can see right here, this light area on the left is shallower. And then you get the deeper hole right here. And you can see the shaded area. This is a slope. All right. So you get to see how the water is moving through the area. You got the deeper area here, you got a deeper area over on the left. And let me see if I can zoom in even more. Can't really see my mouse as easily. I wish I had something that I could show you that, but there's a hole right here. Here's a drop-off. You can see when you're reading these maps, the darker these shaded areas are within the water column, the more severe the drop-off. It's a very shallow, extreme drop right here, dropping down into this deeper water. So you're going to look at the shading, you're going to look at the lines and so on and so forth. And that's what you're looking at on this screen. So if I pan it out, you're probably going to be able to figure out exactly where this is because we're going to start seeing some labels popping up. But this is basically, if you're fishing this area, this is where you're going to be able to look, and these are the choices that you have.

Tide Direction And Ambush Structure

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 7:43

So let's start off with the first thing that I look at. And that is which direction is the tide going? Is it incoming? Is it outgoing? So if I scroll out just a little bit more, you're going to see the inlets that are going to affect this area that I was in on before. So you have this inlet up top. Sorry, got to stop clicking that. This inlet up top. And then you have an inlet down at the bottom of Brigantine, down at Abseek and inlet right here. Now, again, I was all the way up here. So we're actually going to be looking up here at this inlet. This is the one that you really want to be concerned about. So let's say we're fishing incoming tide. The water's going to be coming from the right to the left. It's going to be coming in this main channel here. And let's zoom in. And the first thing that you want to do is find structure, right? Ambush predators. They're going to sit in one spot. They're going to be looking for an area that's going to channel the bait into a predictable area for you. And that's where they're going to set up. They're just going to be waiting in that specific spot for the bait to come by, and then they're going to ambush it. So if you take a look at the screen in here, you can see that there is some structure in here. And let's see. You can see the brigantine channel. You can see a lot of structure up in here, but you can see it's also shallow. But here is some interesting things that you would look at. You see these little side channels in here, right? So you have one coming up to this creek system. You have this channel coming through here. So you have this shallow area here. You have this split here. You have this trough coming through. You have actually dry areas in here. So what you're going to do is you think about what direction is the water flowing. So right to left on the incoming tide. And then what's it going to do when it hits everything like this on the bottom? So you can see it's, you know, the deeper areas, it's going to probably funnel through those in some way, shape, or form. This hard structure or this dry area, it's going right in the middle here. It's going to hit that and it's going to bounce around it. So you're looking for eddies. You're looking for predictable flows of current. So if the water's coming in, the first thing I'm going to do is look in this section in here. Now, this actually sets up better as an outgoing tie, but I'm just trying to show what you're looking for as far as structure on the bottom when you're looking at an area using this type of map. We can scroll over a little bit more. You can see some of these other humps up in here. This is all the way up at the Brigantine Inlet. You probably don't want to be really close up in there. But if we start tucking back in here, looking for the incoming tide, you can start finding some places that do look interesting. Now you have this deep hole down here, right? So this is probably what most people are going to look at first on an incoming tide. But here's the problem with it. Look at this here. It's not really shaded dark in the center area. So as the water's coming from the right down through here, down the channel, and into here, it's a very gradual drop coming all the way down through here before it hits the bottom. Now, what you do have is this little slope back in here where it's going to come back up. So maybe fishing down in that area is going to work. But look at this on the outgoing tide. You have, let me zoom out a little bit. You have the creek systems are going to be emptying out and going the opposite direction. So this is actually where this place would set up better to me on an outgoing tide because you have this predictable flow of water down through these channels around this island here. You have a hole right here. This is actually going to be a really good spot. So as the water is funneled through here and out of here, it's going to spill down into this section down in here. The other thing that you have on the outgoing, which might even be better, is again, you had this shallow area up top. This water is going to come down and it's going to kick off around this, right? So it's going to have heavier flow here. You're going to have a flow coming over the top, and then you have this really dark area. And that's a severe drop. And right at the bottom of that is probably, probably where you're going to find a lot of fish congregating, especially a lot of the larger fish. Keep in mind the larger fish will push the smaller fish out of the way. They will be a little bit closer into the heavier currents, not necessarily right in the heaviest current, but they're going to be able to tolerate heavier currents than the smaller fish. So if you're looking for larger fish, you're going to want to get up tight in here. This is a spot right here. This little area that I'm circling is a spot. This is a spot right up in here where I'm circling. This whole thing is not a spot. It's an area. So, you know, you can't just fish anywhere in here and think you're going to have the same results. There is a huge difference between this area that I'm circling right now with the mouse and this area out here where it's just kind of flat in the middle of nowhere. You're not getting as much predictable flow of currents. You're not going to have a predictable flow of baits into that area. Think of crabs, shrimp, think of small, small minnows. It's not going to be as predictable back in here. But you can be sure as the current whips through here, it's going to be predictable right at the current seam that's going to come off of this ledge here. And that's where you want to look. It's it's places like that that you're going to want to target.

Micro Spots And Kayak Advantages

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 13:05

So that's a good one for the outgoing tide. Incoming again, there are some little spots in here, which you might call a micro spot. If I zoom in, think about the water coming in again from right to left. It's going to come down this and it's going to kick up over this. So you have another one. So look at these riffles back in here. Behind every one of these could be a decent spot on the incoming to look for the to look for those fish. So they're on the bottom of this decline, down in this section, they'd be sitting. The water comes down and through here, and as it comes this way, it's going to fall down on top of them, and then it's going to hit these little like riffles down here. So if they're on the back side of that, that's a good spot to ambush something coming over the top. And think about the water coming now down this deeper area. It's going to come down and kick off of this and around. So you have a little bit of a bonus. This little area that I'm circling is probably the one that I would try to target first. Now, it's not easy to get this little spot. I mean, that's a small spot, but that's why it's important that you need to be willing to move. You need to be willing to go over the same small area multiple times. A lot of people, if I zoom out, they'll get on their boat and they'll start all the way up here on the right, and they'll just drift it all the way back until they're forced to pick up and start their drift again. And they'll come all the way back up because they get a nice long, easy drift. That's where kayak fishermen actually have an advantage. We can stay in one spot very easily with very little effort as long as you have a pedal or a motor kayak. So we'll just kind of find this little thing and we'll just drift it, pedal, drift it, pedal, and we can go over this 10, 20 times in 25 minutes, and we can really fish this specific spot right here. Whereas the boats, it's harder to hit a spot like this, but it's important that you do it. So if you have a boat, you want to make sure that you're really working the area so that you're getting into the areas that are going to give you the best chance to get the to get those fish. All right. So that's that one. So let me see. There's some questions in here.

Viewer Configs And Map Limits

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 15:19

Okay, so the first one. All right, so Joe, can you show the configs that you have on the bathometric data view? I can. And actually, you know what I'll do? I will put in after this in the top comment, I'll actually put the link. I'll put the exact link to this so that you can see it. And then you can just kind of bookmark it if you wanted to kind of go to that default. So let me just do this. I can open up the side so you can see it. So I have it a multi-beam data set raw. And I think that's the only thing that I have on this one, actually. Oh, okay. DM standard really. Actually, I don't think this does anything, to be honest with you. If I uncheck this, digital elevation models. It's got to refresh. It takes a minute to refresh, but I don't think that that does much of anything to it. It's not refreshing. All right, let me let me try that again. No, it did. Okay. So then the DM shaded relief is what I have. Continuously updated digital elevation model. So the QDM is what I'm clicking over there. And that's it. So fairly simple setup to go in here. So that's what I'm looking for right there. Now there are a couple of things to keep in mind with this. It's not going to be totally up to date all the time. NOAA doesn't survey these areas every day. Sometimes it can be years in between. So you have to keep that in mind. This is generally what you're going to be looking for. So you can't just get this map and say, all right, I'm going to pinpoint this one spot right here, and that's where I'm going. And you go out there and you find it's different. Don't be surprised if that's the case. The only thing that you have that's going to be accurate is your own charts that you update on your on your fish finder as you go out and map and chart and everything like that. That's the only thing that you're going to have that's going to be accurate. Everything else is going to be based on other people uploading electronics, electronic data, let's say from their fish finders to Garmin. But I've seen a lot of people have them set up wrong and they're actually off. Actually, mine was off for quite a while, my low rants, and it was showing that when I, let's say I was fishing in that area, it would actually show me fishing on land. So it was not uploading correctly when they were pulling my data. So I apologize. I was probably ruining some of the data until I turned that sharing function off. But yeah, so that's that's what we're looking at for for this specific area. If we come further down into Brigantine, I want to show what it looks like in here. Now, these are where all the docs are. And what you cannot see on this, and some applications you can find on the web will have an overlay of a map so that you can look at where the docks are. You can basically see a satellite view. That's not this. You're not going to get that on here. I have maybe you can. I have not found out a way to do that. However, I can tell you this hole is here. It's shifted a little bit, but I can tell you that it is here. And it it can give you a really good idea around those docks, how to use that structure, and it can kind of help you to, you know, zoom in on the areas that you want to check out first. But again, just don't take it for gospel. It's going to be wrong quite often. It it's it's it's a good indication of what's good and what things should look like. But sometimes you'll just go out there and you'll find that there's a 30-foot hole where it looked like it was, you know, two feet deep. Now there is one area I want to point out on here.

Depth Myth And Current First

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 19:02

So one mistake that a lot of people make when they're looking for fluke is they look for the deeper water. Deeper water is not the key to catching backwater fluke. I said last week, and I'll say it again, you can catch them in two feet of water and you can catch the big girls there. So 25, 27 inches, you know, perhaps I haven't caught one up to 30 in the back, but I've seen people that have caught them in the back. You can do that. So you would you might think that this area down here looks good back in this bay. Here's the problem with this area specifically. Again, I need you to continually focus on the fact that they are ambushed predators and they're not necessarily going to just be in a spot that looks good. It has to be in a spot where the water is going to flow bait to them in a predictable fashion so they can get an easy meal. If you look at this, if the water is coming in on the incoming and is coming from the top to the bottom, it's just pulling here. There's no outflow on this at all. So what you what you have is basically the swirling currents and it just kind of fills back here. Yes, there's current, but the current is not going to be anything close to what you're going to have up in this channel up here going through all these docks all the way down the north side of Brigantine and around the corner. So keep that in mind. Just because this is deep and this looks like a, you know, right here, it looks like a really good ledge, but there's really very little water flow back there that's going as compared to up here. So if you had a choice and you were an ambush predator, where would you be? You'd be up here. You would not be sitting down in this area down here because the it's just not going to be predictable enough. You're not going to get the calories out of your feeding times that you really need. So keep that in mind. Don't just look for stuff like this, look for where the currents are going to be setting up really nicely. Now, there are some things to point out as well. So let's come all the way back in these bays back here or in these sounds. This is Reed's Bay back here. And I talked about fishing flats before. And one of the things that you got to keep in mind is yes, a flat is called a flat for a reason. It's a relatively flat bottom, but there is always structure in it. And the key, if you're going to fish a flat, is to find that structure. And you can see there is some structure in here. You can see right where the cursor is right now, there's some structure there. I could tell you in a kayak, you can't get over this at low tide, though. But at high tide, there's a deeper area here. Now, the problem with this, again, where's the water flowing? If it's outgoing tide and it's coming from the top to the bottom, or it's coming from the left to the right and draining out up in this section. Well, where's the water really flowing? It's so wide open that you have to be right on the structure, or else there's not going to be anything there. There's not going to be a fluke out in the middle of this section, right in here, because it's totally flat and there's nothing diverse. Hurting the water. It's just kind of spilling in, spilling out. If you hit structure like this down here, you can see that it's going to kick off of something. So at least you have a little bit of structure. But the key to fishing this, really, in my mind, is to come all the way down to where it outflows and inflows into the area. So if you take a look at this right here, this can set up as a really nice spot up in here because you have the water coming out and you can actually see the channels where the water is flowing out of the bay on the outgoing tide and coming in on the incoming tide. And especially on the outgoing in a spot like this, you can see it's predictable. You're going to have the stronger current flushing everything out of the bay down into this section and right over this ridge here. So this could be a spot to look at. Now I'm going to tell you right now, for all the people that are going to yell at me for spot burning. I do not like this spot. I fish this spot. So don't go to this one. I mean, you can, maybe you'll outfish me there, but it's not an incredibly reliable spot, even on the outgoing, but it does have the traits that you're looking for. There's just better areas along this bay or along these sounds that you're going to have better success at. It's more appealing for the fluke. So, but that's a good example there. You have the structure, you have the predictable current flow, and it's going to empty out and bring that into this specific area. So that's a place that you want to target. All right. So that's a New Jersey one.

Maryland Examples With Points And Ridges

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 23:29

Now let's go and take a look at Maryland. So this is behind Ocean City, Maryland. Just another example. This one is probably the most popular that people always talk about. You can see it right here. I wish it was a higher definition. I just do not have a high definition view of this. But you can see this really dark ridge over here on the left. So if you're fishing this again on the outgoing and you have all the water coming down from this bay up here on the left and out of out of this, you can see where it's starting to funnel. It gets deeper. Here's the channel. It's going to start coming down here. So you actually have a pretty good opportunity starting up in this section because it's coming out of this deeper area and it's meeting this. Now there's going to be a lot of current there, so you have to be careful about that. But you have it in this section and all along this ridge here. As everything comes down, it's going to flow down here. It's going to push everything into the deeper water, and you're going to have the fluke just kind of stacking up in a place like this, straight down, kind of in a triangle. So where the water's coming down, you're going to have them all the way up at the top, and then you're going to have them coming all the way back into this section back in here. So yeah, it just kind of shows you like there are different areas like that. You can come back in here. You can see if you want to go near the docks, you want to go through this area here. There is a channel that goes through here. So the water that is now back in these bays up in here on the outgoing are going to come out through here. So you have a nice flow in there. You have docks coming out here, too, if I remember correctly. So you have some added structure there. You can fish behind those pilings, you can drift those docks and toss up underneath them, and you have some really good depth in there. So as the water's coming down, it's hitting the deeper part of the outside curve, which is here. And you're going to look in this area here. You also have points. Points are also important. So if you don't have a ton of structure, but you have a point, that's why I pointed out this one over here. If you have an underwater point, that will create additional structure, additional turbulence in the water, and that can help to funnel the bait as well. If we come down south of the inlet, if I remember correctly, let's see. Let's come down south towards the inlet. I don't know if we have to go south of it. All right, you can see this is a this is a decent area here. So think of the outgoing. This would be a good outgoing spot. So what you have here is you have this deep area, and you can see it's relatively flat all through here. Now there are some good ridges over here, but look at how they align. If the water's coming from the top to the bottom, well, it's you're not getting a ton of usage out of this over here on the left. So yeah, it's nice, it looks nice, but you don't have the water flowing over and pushing things down. It's kind of pushing everything along it. So yes, things could collect over there, but look what you do have. You have this upwell, it's going to upwell here as you get shallower, and then it's going to drop really fast again. And then you actually have a you have all of this down in here. This area on the outgoing would look really good to me. This is something I would absolutely check out. I have never fished this, so I don't know if I'm burning anything or not. There could be, you know, a massive 70-foot boat sitting there that you know we can't fish there anyway, but it looks like there's probably a bridge there. But this is an area that I would absolutely be looking at because of what it does to the water. It takes all of this, it up wells, and then it drops right back down. And then you have this additional structure right in here, which is going to push that water in a predictable area. I would fish the back side of this. This is the point that you're looking at. Yeah, so you can fish up in here as well, but I would actually fish behind here, and this would be the spot that I would be looking at. You also have, it's not as easy to see, but you see this lighter triangle coming down here. That means that the water coming down again in this direction is going to kick up. It's it's a little bit longer of a stretch in here, but it's going to drop down here and funnel out in this direction. You can see the shape of it like this. That means the water is going to come down and it's going to funnel around it. So you have this section down in here, which could be good. And you have this pocket up in here, which, I mean, if you can hit that pocket, you may be able to find a big fish sitting there. You had the benefit of this also later in the season being closer to the inlet. So it's going to be probably a much better area to check out because you're going to have that direct, that direct line to out to that fresher water and the cooler water from when it heats up. Now you get a little south of Ocean City, and really the the area doesn't look nearly as good. You don't have nearly the structure, but you do have these creek systems that that empty out. You can see here. So all this water up in here at high tide will be coming out and around. So these do become a little bit more attractive as the water's coming from left to right. So you can sit back in here, and that's where you're going to be looking at. So I'm seeing from Carl, there's a headboat tied up right where I had pointed out before. Okay, so maybe when they're out, maybe fish there. But it's really the structure that we're looking at, not necessarily the exact spot. So if you're down in the Ocean City, Maryland area, that's an area that you'd want to look. There are also, I'm not going to talk about it in this one. I can tell you that there are some really nice areas that set up for specs down in this area. So if you want to go for speckle trout, a little bit further south, there are some really good spots, especially where you have the water coming out. Also weak fish, but you're going to have more, more success targeting the specks down in here, I think, than you're going to have with the weak fish. All right. So that's a Maryland

Jamaica Bay Convergences And Choke Points

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 29:23

one. And then the last one that I have, this is Jamaica Bay up in New York. So this is a very interesting, very heavily fished area. So uh that's one of the reasons I put it up here, because you can't really burn anything in here because it's fished so heavily. But again, we're not we're not finding specific spots. We're talking about how to find the spots. So predictable flow of current on the incoming, just let me zoom out so that people can see exactly the setup if you've never been to Jamaica Bay or you're not familiar with it. So you have the inlet to it is basically down here on the bottom left. So the incoming tide is going to come in this direction and push up and through this way, and then the outgoing is going to go from the top right down to the bottom left. So let's come in here and look at some of the things that are interesting. One of the things that's interesting in here is this channel and this structure back here near Grassy Bay. Now, I don't know the depths. I wish I had an overlay, but you can see in this area much better detail on what the bottom looks like. And you can see that there is a lot of structure back in here. So whether it's four feet deep or it's 30 feet deep, you can see that there is structure in here. Now, the way this sets up, again, if we zoom in, on the incoming tide, you have these drops right here. So this is more of an incoming tide area here because you have it on the back side of the current flow, that severe drop. So you're you'd be back in there. You have down here, if you look at where now you have a channel over here, you have a channel here, you can look at where they kind of converge. So you're going to have a decent flow coming down through Jackson Hole Creek, you're going to have this flow coming out of this main channel, and look at where it comes together right up in here. Now, again, now this is not the deepest area. Deepest area is out here. But because you have these two, these two streams of water coming together and you have them converging in one spot, this is where a lot of bait is going to collect. So it's going to come down off this point. It's going to come down out of this channel, even though it's not a deep channel, it is a channel. And you're going to have this severe drop right there. I would be looking on the back side of this. It's a good spot to be looking. It's a spot that could produce. I have not fished there. I don't know if it actually is a great spot or not, but it's something I would certainly be looking at. There was another spot up in here. Take a look in here. Again, let's talk about the outgoing. So it's a pond, right? There, there's not going to be a lot of water flow up in here. I wouldn't really sit up in there. But on the outgoing, depending on how deep this is, you're going to have the water flowing out this one little spot down here. And you can see the channel, you can see the structure around it, and you can see the little points down in here. So this is an interesting one because you might think, let's get right up in this choke point. Okay, you can do that. However, if you just come back a little bit more, you can see some things setting up. I would assume by the way that this sets up and the way that the bottom looks, the water is coming down here and it's almost cut out a trough in here into this pattern here. So it feels as though the current is coming down and it'll kick out this way. If that's the case, you have an opportunity down in here. You also have an opportunity behind this point because you'll have less current flow. So you'll have a current seam there. So it's something that you may want to consider is taking a look on this back side over here, maybe down in here, not necessarily, but it could be worth a look. I would actually come up closer to here and fish in this little spot here because you have that natural point there. And that's actually a land point, it's not submerged. So you got that area right in there. So those are the things that I am looking for. Those are three areas, three different states. Again, I did not pick spots that are the best just because that's not what this is about. It's not a it's not an episode where you get on and I'll just show you where to fish. I'm showing you how to find the spots yourself and what I'm looking

Wind Against Tide And Drift Control

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 33:38

for. Now, the one thing that you have to consider that I didn't talk about because it would take way too much time is this. You have to factor in the wind. And one of the most difficult parts of all of this is you can set it up, and this happens all the time because the wind forecasts are absolutely terrible, right? So you set it up, let's say it's for a tournament, and you're thinking, all right, I'm gonna go to this spot and I'm gonna fish it on the incoming. I'm gonna go over this one area five or five or ten times, and I'm pretty sure this is where a big fish is gonna be. Keep in mind that your drift is going to be impacted. So make sure that you have your drift socks, make sure you have your trolling motors, make sure you have your yourself ready to pedal if you're in a pedal kayak, and make sure that you can adjust for it. There are going to be days where you're going to have the wind against the tide. We all know wind against tide is terrible because it's really difficult, but that's the reason. It's it's pushing you against the way that you want to go. You want to be going, traveling with the current, regardless of what the wind's doing. And you want to try to use that wind to get you over the best spot within the specific area that you choose. I know that's very beginner, very basic information, but it's worth mentioning because I guarantee you the first windy day that I'm on the water, I'm going to see 30 boats out there and they're all just going the wrong direction. They're setting up in the wrong spot. They're drifting and they're going over, you know, sandbars and everything like that because they're not taking into account the wind. Or they're just going flat out wind against tide and just letting the wind take them rather than just getting a you know a $30 drift sock and or or two and throwing them off of the spring line and the in the back cleat. So yeah, so that's it. Let me see if there are any questions in here. I don't think there are. I would like to see from somebody if anybody can let me know what in the world can we replace navionics with. Because these bathymetric data viewers are fine, but they're not the same. They're better than the old nav charts, right? They're better than those, which are absolutely horrendous, but the these aren't these aren't great either. So if anyone has anything, please let me know. You can send it to Rich at FatDadFishing, or if you have my real estate address, you can send it there. I check that more often. But yeah, so that's it. That's that's how you're gonna go out and find these fluke spots in the backwaters at this time of the year. Here's a comment. Let me just put this up here for SD. Last year, one of my best days was wind versus tide to use a trolling motor to go with the current. I was the only one I saw catching a hundred percent. And for those that aren't sure why, let's go back to the very beginning. These are ambushed predators, they're waiting for the food to go into a specific spot. So they're setting up so they can see it coming with the current. They don't care what direction the wind is going unless it's affecting the direction of the current. So they're sitting in their spot waiting for something to come towards them, and they're looking almost always up current. All right. They may not be facing that direction, but they're looking that direction and they're waiting for something to come down current. They see it coming, they wait for it to get to them, and then they pop up behind it, they follow it, and then they bite it, right? That's typically how it is. You know, they don't typically go after it the second it goes over top of them. So if you're going with the wind against tide, you're going backwards, you're coming up behind them essentially. You're coming where they weren't looking. So think about it. Are they gonna wait for something to come down current, come past them? They can get up in the current, just kind of go with the current and go and attack their next meal and get their meal, or are they gonna sit there, see it go the wrong way, unnaturally against the tide upstream? They're gonna then pick up, say, oh my God, I missed that one. Get up and just follow it upstream, burn those calories to go after it and then attack it. Probably not. They're probably not going to. It's gonna be like the cops sitting on the side of the Jersey turnpike, seeing somebody go by in their vet at 140 miles an hour. They're just like, they watch it go by and like, not worth it. I'm not even pulling out. It's too much work. I'm not gonna go after it. The next guy can get them. Or they're just gonna radio at ahead and they're just gonna sit there. That's the that's what you're looking at. You're looking at the fish are gonna say, not worth the effort, not gonna do it. So use the trolling motors, use the pedals, use the drift socks to get you going at least in the same direction as the current, you're gonna have a lot more success. Yeah, so that's it. It's a pretty simple one. Uh, wanted to get those concepts out there for people that need to get reminded. I need to remind myself quite often the proper way to do these things, and uh, this is the proper way to do it. So um, and Joe, I would say that one recommendation I would not agree with, but I'm not gonna put that in the chat or in the on screen. So, everyone, thank you very much for tuning

Wrap Up And Next Plans

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing 38:39

in. We'll be back next week. The week after I will not be on. I do have some stuff planned for that weekend, so I will not be here. But uh trying to get some folks on. We got I got a series of topics that I really want to go into that I think people would really like. They're not visual like this one, but it's uh it's good information. It'll help you get on a few other species that we haven't talked about in a little bit, but are absolutely species that you should be targeting right now. So uh yeah, until next time, everybody get out there, get on the water, and get some tight lines.