So I got some questions in a PM and I'm just going to answer some of them here.
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How deep were you? ... I tried the #### breakwall in 35 ft and we got only 1 legal in about 6 sets from 5:00 to 9:30PM. Can you impart some info so that we can improve our harvest?
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I'm not going to say where I was hooping, but I was hooping around the same depth on a breakwall.
Like I said it was dead for me till 2:00am. Maybe you should of just stayed later. That said I usually find there are two big wave of bugs. One going out at dark, and another returning that starts around 11. I like to hoop the second wave because by then everyone else has left and I've got the only nets in the water.
That night the second wave never showed.
At that point I started to improvise, running longer sets 40 minutes a soak vrs 30 and moved my nets around a lot initially placing some further out and some closer to the rocks. There was very little current all night, and I eventually decided that further out wasn't going to work and concentrated on tight to the rocks.
I eventually got bugs from two locations right tight to the rocks over 100 yards apart, I ended up running two nets at one location and three on the other, but all my bugs came from just four nets in two spots with the nets tight together less then fifty feet apart.
The thing they had in common was that both sets of productive nets where set very tight to the rocks where the swell was creating a split in the wave surge.
When there is no side to side current like the other night the wave action creates little eddies where water pushed up on the breakwall by the waves moves directly away from the rocks like a deep slow moving rip. To the sides of these rips you have slow circular eddies. Between these outward current created eddies right against the rocks you have a slight inward current and then a split right against the rocks. You can tell where these areas are by the direction your ropes and floats pull. If you put two nets side by side and the ropes pull opposite directions your on a split. It's kind of a rare thing that you only see on nights without current.
In the case of the other night there was almost no current and in both spots where I got bugs I put two nets side by side maybe forty feet apart on splits. In both locations the left nets float pulled to the left and stayed tight to the rocks, and the right nets float pulled to the right and slightly out. This happened in both locations where I got bugs. I'm talking the exact same pattern.
My take is in the absence of current the inward movement and sideways movement at the split was pushing my scent directly into and along the face of the rocks. Since there was no real crawl I was essentially dropping the nets right on their heads in the only locations I found where it would push the scent into the dens.
When I said I was hooping tight it's an understatement. I was using my finder and dropping my nets right on the edge of the rocks. I even hung a net which is something I almost never do, but fortunately got it back.
I found both splits by trail and error, there was no surface features that showed they were there. I just figured it out from the rope float drift.
If I had to guess from the angles of the ropes I was working the right side of each split. In the spot I tried three nets ran my third net slightly more to the left and it didn't get a thing. I'd of probably had better luck with it if I'd just moved it along the rocks until I found a third split.
The deal is if the bugs aren't crawling you want the scent washing into the rocks. Even if your not hooping a breakwater that applies. In open water rockpiles I always set up my nets so that the floats pull right toward the structure which indicates your uphill of the rocks and getting your scent to them.
Not a big deal, but that's my thinking.
Good luck Jim