Reading Electronics for Shallow Water Bottom Fishing

Reading electronics for shallow water bottom fishing is how Capt. Vlad Moldoveanu decides where a bait goes before anyone drops. Running his Simrad over artificial reefs off Fort Morgan, Alabama, in 100 to 130 feet of the Gulf of Mexico, he calls snapper, amberjack, or grouper off the screen and puts the bait in what he calls the fish’s living room. Drop on empty bottom and you catch nothing.

How do you set up a fish finder for shallow water bottom fishing?

Start with gain. Vlad turns it up until specks appear, then backs it off a touch. He shows his time variable gain, scroll speed, and noise rejection for this depth, and what high CHIRP does to the cone. His biggest rule costs nothing: run the same palette and settings every trip, so a mark means the same thing every time.

How do you tell red snapper from amberjack and grouper on sonar?

Position and color sort them. Red snapper mark red and sit on or over the structure. Jacks hold a little off it, and grouper stay tight to the bottom. A thicker, deeper colored arch means a bigger fish, and fish up off the bottom are feeding. On the video, Vlad calls live marks before each drop.

• Big fish keep away from the small ones and sit just off the structure
• Taller super pyramids hold more fish, and bigger ones, than standard pyramids, because structure size shapes what lives on it
• An empty screen between reefs is desert, so the sonar tells you when to move

How do you position the boat over a bottom spot?

Vlad stops off the spot to read his drift, then backs the center console into the current so the lines run forward, away from the outboards. He explains why the bottom vanishes from the screen while backing down. Then the right rig goes down, which Vlad covers in his video on bottom fishing rigs for snapper, amberjack and triggerfish.

How does a charter captain organize his waypoints?

Vlad color codes spots by fish size and by the year he checked them, names spots after the people he fished with, and separates public numbers from his own. He also shows how a nibbling triggerfish feels different from a snapper loading up. More depth and structure tactics are in the bottom fishing video collection.