Where to Find Big Rockfish and Lingcod on Kayak

[bryan_oceanside]

Hi All!

Hoping to get tips on where to find big rockfish and lingcod off a kayak. I'm not asking for anyone's secret spots, just tips on how to use my fish finder and map to find spots myself. Is it just a matter of getting to a location that is really deep? Or finding a sheer drop off? Or depth + structure? Also, do I need to worry about tide if I am fishing so deep?

I live in Oceanside so as soon as March 1st rolls around I am going to paddle out to depths of 100-450ft. First place I thought of going is Otto's Hole since it is close to the beach. Not sure that is a good spot or not.

Any info is much appreciated! Thank you!

[BenCantrell]

I find my spots with Google Maps in satellite view. Make a note of the lat/long of a few spots that look like they have interesting bottom structure and then use your phone or fish finder to navigate to them.

Here's an example:

[ProfessorLongArms]

Originally Posted by BenCantrell

I find my spots with Google Maps in satellite view. Make a note of the lat/long of a few spots that look like they have interesting bottom structure and then use your phone or fish finder to navigate to them.

Here's an example:

^^^
This is my go-to for discovering good deep water structure.

you can also make pins on google earth's desktop app (be sure to make sure it isn't tilted when you put the pins down) and then save your gps file, convert to your FF's format in GPSbabel and then import into your FF.

I've also found Fish-n-maps to be pretty helpful. I even recently scanned the GPS table on one, parsed down the coordinates to CSV, and batch-imported them to Google Earth to save a bunch of manual entry.

[Revoguys]

does your fishfinder have a contour feature? If so you can fish drop offs by just seeing the contours at La Jolla. Find a rocky bottom and drop some squid, shrimp, live macs, bucktails or curly tail grubs. I like fishing a double dropper loop with two different baits to give them options. If you can’t make bait, fish a squid on one hook and a grub on the other. I like the chartreuse or white, I’ve had good luck with those two colors. Last time I went out to LJ tho they were biting on frozen sardines! Good luck man and tight lines!

[Baja_Traveler]

Cambria - totally worth the drive if you are into rockfish and lingcod...

[Salty]

Originally Posted by Baja_Traveler

Cambria - totally worth the drive if you are into rockfish and lingcod...

Looking to take a little trip up that way this spring. Any tips on where to launch there?

[bryan_oceanside]

Originally Posted by BenCantrell

I find my spots with Google Maps in satellite view. Make a note of the lat/long of a few spots that look like they have interesting bottom structure and then use your phone or fish finder to navigate to them.

Here's an example:

This is an awesome tip thank you! Over the past few months I have been trying to do this, but I noticed that Google Earth is pretty blurry from the beach to about a mile off the coast. Am I not doing this right? Or should I be looking farther offshore and quit being a pansy?

I just got my first pedal kayak so I plan on going farther offshore from Oceanside Harbor soon. Thanks for responding!

[bryan_oceanside]

Originally Posted by ProfessorLongArms

^^^
This is my go-to for discovering good deep water structure.

you can also make pins on google earth's desktop app (be sure to make sure it isn't tilted when you put the pins down) and then save your gps file, convert to your FF's format in GPSbabel and then import into your FF.

I've also found Fish-n-maps to be pretty helpful. I even recently scanned the GPS table on one, parsed down the coordinates to CSV, and batch-imported them to Google Earth to save a bunch of manual entry.

Awesome good to know! Looks like Fish-n-maps has a ton of other great info as well.

Curious - when you say deep water, how far out are you going? Farthest I have been from shore on my kayak is 1.5 miles, but would like to go farther. I dont really have a gauge of how far others are going when looking for spots. I want to be safe of course, I am looking at getting a radio and maybe a few flairs.

I appreciate the response!

[bryan_oceanside]

Originally Posted by Revoguys

does your fishfinder have a contour feature? If so you can fish drop offs by just seeing the contours at La Jolla. Find a rocky bottom and drop some squid, shrimp, live macs, bucktails or curly tail grubs. I like fishing a double dropper loop with two different baits to give them options. If you can’t make bait, fish a squid on one hook and a grub on the other. I like the chartreuse or white, I’ve had good luck with those two colors. Last time I went out to LJ tho they were biting on frozen sardines! Good luck man and tight lines!

Thanks for the reply! My Garmin Striker 4 does not have contours, probably because I purchased the cheapest model. I wonder if I can upgrade software without replacing the hardware?

Anyway I started making double dropper loops and also bought some bucktails so thanks for the advice. Hoping I'll start reeling in giants now that we can get in the ocean again here in Oside.

Cheers!

[bryan_oceanside]

Originally Posted by Baja_Traveler

Cambria - totally worth the drive if you are into rockfish and lingcod...

Damn, that picture is my dream day out on the water. Im heading up north late summer on a coastal trip, I will definitely be checking out Cambria. Thanks for the share!

[Raskal311]

Keep moving north——-> to Ocean Cove

[Mahigeer]

I am kidding of course, but how about Alaska?


There was no mention of California in the title, so Alaska came my mind.

[jruiz]

Learn how to read your fish finder and be able to distinguish sandy/muddy vs rocky bottom. Depending on the latitude you find yourself fishing, you may not find rockfish any shallower than 120ft or you can find rockfish as shallow as 25ft.

[ProfessorLongArms]

Originally Posted by bryan_oceanside

This is an awesome tip thank you! Over the past few months I have been trying to do this, but I noticed that Google Earth is pretty blurry from the beach to about a mile off the coast. Am I not doing this right? Or should I be looking farther offshore and quit being a pansy?

I just got my first pedal kayak so I plan on going farther offshore from Oceanside Harbor soon. Thanks for responding!

I'll try to answer these in one shot.

Happy to help, and I only wish I'd figured this stuff out sooner when I was starting out
I've found fishing structure is usually just about finding a few good spots and making your rounds. Often times it'll just be a slow time for conditions, or the current will make it less conducive to staying on a postage stamp sized boulder long enough to get a good drop. Thus, I'm usually looking to spend enough time out there to either show up when the bite is good or be there when it turns on.

FWIW, You pointed out something that drives me nuts! I don't understand why the topography of <1mi areas are so fuzzy. I wish I had access to that too. Most of my runs for deepwater rockfish are between 1 and 3 miles out.
That said, I would never ever ever paddle that far out alone.... Nor would my wife let me.

Not to rub it in on the garmin model, but I just found out yesterday that I can actually record my sonar to the SD card, bring it into an app on the computer and play it back with respective map points next to it. I'll show you what some of my spots look like (sans GPS of course

I can't speak too well (others here might be able to), but this is what I'm often seeing when I'm on a good rockfish spot. One of my best spots has an almost 40' dropoff (giant ridge) on either side, and we're usually getting bit in the fuzzy looking stuff.

You can find deepwater fishing (let's say south of the central coast, of course) anywhere between 210 and 170' in my experience. I cap the depth for QoL because I've never had to go deeper for good fish and drop/reel/drop/reel/drop/reel can get old fast.

There's another one here that's in 80' of water. This is a perfect Calico Sandy spot that yielded about a dozen hookups. You can actually see where my flat fall drops into the school, gets bit, and I miss the hookset before dropping back in.

I managed to haul up (For the first time ever, mind you) a little 1 pound red and a NICE lingcod yesterday on that 80' spot btw YMMV further south where it's warmer.

[ProfessorLongArms]

Something else I'll add... Be prepared to be disappointed by Fish-n-Maps. They actually do a pretty good job of approximating an area, but I think I'm 0 for 10 on trying waypoints.... I'll usually radiate out from a spot and find some good stuff, but so far it's all (I'm guessing) out of date.

A lot of what I try to do is never take the same way home twice when going to/from my deepwater spots. Every trip is an opportunity to mark new spots along the way and so much of what you're looking for is a reef that holds life.

[Salty]

Originally Posted by ProfessorLongArms

I'll try to answer these in one shot... ... YMMV further south where it's warmer.

Good info! Question: I have a Garmin Echomap on my kayak. Can I ask what settings you have yours on in deeper water? When I am over around 175', the bottom starts to disappear and I lose any distinction between open water and bottom. Tried messing with the hz settings, chirp, zoom, etc. and couldn't seem to get it right looking how I know it should. In shallow water it works perfectly. I know this transducer is good in deep water because it came off my friend's old boat that we used to use at San Clemente Island to mark deeper fish.
Thanks!

[YakDout]

Originally Posted by Salty

Good info! Question: I have a Garmin Echomap on my kayak. Can I ask what settings you have yours on in deeper water? When I am over around 175', the bottom starts to disappear and I lose any distinction between open water and bottom. Tried messing with the hz settings, chirp, zoom, etc. and couldn't seem to get it right looking how I know it should. In shallow water it works perfectly. I know this transducer is good in deep water because it came off my friend's old boat that we used to use at San Clemente Island to mark deeper fish.
Thanks!

Sounds like you need to turn up the gain. Quite a bit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Salty]

Thanks! Did mess with the gain a bit too, but couldn't seem to get it just right. It could be a combination of different settings I have wrong too. Again, shallower water (10-175'-ish) is great and reads bottom really well.

[ProfessorLongArms]

Originally Posted by Salty

Good info! Question: I have a Garmin Echomap on my kayak. Can I ask what settings you have yours on in deeper water? When I am over around 175', the bottom starts to disappear and I lose any distinction between open water and bottom. Tried messing with the hz settings, chirp, zoom, etc. and couldn't seem to get it right looking how I know it should. In shallow water it works perfectly. I know this transducer is good in deep water because it came off my friend's old boat that we used to use at San Clemente Island to mark deeper fish.
Thanks!

I hope this isn't a dumb assumption to make, but are you keeping an eye on the zoom/range? One thing that's a bit annoying about mine is if I touch the zoom at all, it takes it out of auto range and locks it to your choice, and it feels haphazard. Actually the only real hitch in transitioning from my Lowrance.

I finally realized what I need to do is hit Menu>Zoom>Right(it'll highlight a |>>>| arrow icon) >Ok, then tune the autozoom.... You'll get a splitscreen view that shows you the view you're getting next to a view box relative to the total depth. Be sure to hit OK and not back, otherwise it'll not keep your settings.

When I'm bottom fishing, I typically only want to see the bottom third so I can really get a good view of bottom structure. When I'm in shallower, I'm going to zoom all the way out in case anything's cruising through in the mid column.

There's also a setting called Bottom Lock, though I haven't played with that too much.

Aside from that I usually set to 77khz chirp when I'm deep and set to 200 chirp when I'm under 100'

I run my gain at med or med high. I've also heard slightly less than the fastest ping speed can be good, though I haven't tweaked it too much on my garmin.

[Salty]

Good info, thanks Longarms!
Yeah the zoom is weird on mine too. I tried messing around with auto-zoom too, but I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with it lol. I think it will end up being a combo of adjusting the chirp, gain and zoom again. Also, sorry OP for hijacking this thread!