Catching Live Bait with Your Bottom Machine

Catching live bait with your bottom machine starts before a sabiki leaves the rod. Capt. Vlad Moldoveanu fishes out of Fort Morgan, Alabama, and his bait stop is a freighter at anchor in the Gulf of Mexico, where he reads the sonar, finds the school, and only then tells anyone to drop. For bottom fishing, amberjack and bigger snapper want live bait, and stocking for four runs takes 200 to 300 of them.

How do you set sonar gain to find bait?

Turn the gain up until the screen fills with specks, then back it down until the specks just disappear. What remains is a dense red glob, and that glob is bait. Vlad adds gain as the water deepens and matches CHIRP to depth: high in shallow water, medium and low farther out.

On these ships, bait held 20 to 60 feet down and moved. Boat motors push it around, so the glob you marked may be gone on the next pass.

Why do anchored ships hold so much bait?

A ship at anchor works like any structure that holds reef fish: bait packs along the anchor chain and into the shade under the hull, and cobia slide into that same shade. Vlad favors ships anchored several days, and when one gives up nothing but horn bellies, he moves on.

How do you position a center console for sabiki fishing?

Vlad backs into the current and holds on the motors, so every line runs forward and away from the props. A sabiki in the prop means untangling it or losing a seal. He calls each drop on the glob showing on the screen instead of letting four anglers fish blind, and everyone reels to the bead so the swivel never comes through the rod tip.

What sabiki rigs work best for hardtails?

Hardtails, the blue runners Vlad wants for big amberjack, kick hard and outlast softer baits in the well. He fishes fewer droppers for them, never runs one color or hook size down a rig, and explains why a charter boat fishes cheap sabikis around Spanish mackerel.

How do you keep bait fish alive in a livewell?

Handle it as little as possible and keep the water calm. Vlad shakes every bait off the sabiki with a dehooker so hands never strip the slime coat, and he runs a pressurized livewell so water doesn’t slosh and kill the bait.