Wrecking

dave craig

Well-known member
Hello all,

As you know this is my first season of owning my own boat etc and touch wood its been great - no problems or anything like that, ive fished a few wrecks that i have the co-ords for but find it difficult to position myself so i drift over the wreck every drift.

From reading posts on here it sounds like a lot of you guys are pretty good at drifting wrecks so i thought i'd pick your brains on the topic!

I have a vague idea/understanding of positioning the boat using the bearing, course etc but still find it pretty difficult.

I used a marker buoy on saturday and it did work but ideally i'd like to have the ability to just position the boat correctly each drift instead of messing around with buoys etc.

So, if anybody can offer some advice on how to master this wrecking business it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
 
Ok , the way I do it in a 16.5ft boat , motor to the wreck using the chartplotter , when you arrive set the plotter to maximum zoom and laying a track , you should have a series of waypoint marks on your screen denoting the wreck , park the boat in the middle of the wreck and set up your tackle etc. ready to fish , this should take enough time to see which direction you have drifted by the track left on the plotter , motor back up the track and carry on in a straight line until you clear the wreck , let the boat come nearly to a stop and turn across the wind then set the outboard so that if you moved off it would turn you back into the wind. Let the boat drift over the wreck (fishing of course as you go) and once through the other side check the plotter and see where the track is through the wreck. If you want to be a little further in any direction , park the boat accordingly next drift , but always have the same side of the boat facing the wind and always leave the outboard turned so that if you motored it will bring you round into the wind , this helps make the boat drift in the same direction every time , leave the boat bow upwind or pointing in different direction to the first drift and you will drift in a different direction. There's a brilliant article on drift fishing wrecks on here somewhere by Norman , tells you how to find the wrecks and plot them on your chart etc. find it and read it , you'll find it a great read.

Ray
 
Hello all,

As you know this is my first season of owning my own boat etc and touch wood its been great - no problems or anything like that, ive fished a few wrecks that i have the co-ords for but find it difficult to position myself so i drift over the wreck every drift.

From reading posts on here it sounds like a lot of you guys are pretty good at drifting wrecks so i thought i'd pick your brains on the topic!

I have a vague idea/understanding of positioning the boat using the bearing, course etc but still find it pretty difficult.

I used a marker buoy on saturday and it did work but ideally i'd like to have the ability to just position the boat correctly each drift instead of messing around with buoys etc.

So, if anybody can offer some advice on how to master this wrecking business it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
I was the same mate it gets you frustrated at times (i mean all the time).but after time you learn(the hard way of course) oldessox is spot on ,go back up your drift line witch the plotter will leave,turn the boat the same way and you should get the same drift(and like to add it dosent happen all the time depending on tides and wind change) I wish i new the secret of these charters mate..lol
 
http://ebgb.net/misc/wrecking.doc


That's the one :D it's brilliant, before I read this I had been out to wrecks marked on the plotter and was severely dissapointed to find nothing there , thanks to Norman and his article I've now got a plotter full of wrecks within striking distance all marked out and ready to fish and know how to fish them , of course someone sometimes forgets to tell the fish :rolleyes:

Ray
 
Just do what a baot was doing to me on Sat, using me as a drift and then when we moved wreck he followed and set up drift and so on and so on until we stopped on a sand bank and said we catching :)
 
very useful site

very useful site

Thats one very useful download i havent come across before great stuff:)
 
As Ray said, read Norman's wrecking article! It helped me, it's also keeping an eye on each drift direction and the wind to try and second guess it before any of them alter the drift. Once you get the hang of using your plotter correctly it is a doddle! Equally putting the miles in and spending a day or three just plotting the wrecks with no fishing or very little:o! helps and sets you up for ever as you know the exact location and can be sure to find it every time. Planning again!
Me and Micky are just seeing the results this season and they are certainly pleasing us, it just keeps raising the bar as to what we now expect to catch as a minimum!

Graham.
 
One of the problems in locating wrecks to GPS positions is it depends which direction the original finder was travelling in. :confused:

I.E. if I was travelling North and found wreckage on my sounder and saved it, it does not allow for the cone angle of the 12deg sounder. The GPS position would just be a lat long of the boats location in relation to satellites.

A different boat travelling South to those co-ordinates also has a cone angle of 12deg and when arriving at the original GPS location its sounder is shooting 12deg the wrong way, and could find nothing.

The important point to remember here is the GPS location of the wreck was not found by a transducer shooting directly under the boat at 0mph, but one pointing forward by 12deg (usually) by a moving boat.


Alan
 
One of the problems in locating wrecks to GPS positions is it depends which direction the original finder was travelling in. :confused:

I.E. if I was travelling North and found wreckage on my sounder and saved it, it does not allow for the cone angle of the 12deg sounder. The GPS position would just be a lat long of the boats location in relation to satellites.

A different boat travelling South to those co-ordinates also has a cone angle of 12deg and when arriving at the original GPS location its sounder is shooting 12deg the wrong way, and could find nothing.

The important point to remember here is the GPS location of the wreck was not found by a transducer shooting directly under the boat at 0mph, but one pointing forward by 12deg (usually) by a moving boat.


Alan
That makes a hole lotta sense. never even thought of that. cheers:D
 
One of the problems in locating wrecks to GPS positions is it depends which direction the original finder was travelling in. :confused:

I.E. if I was travelling North and found wreckage on my sounder and saved it, it does not allow for the cone angle of the 12deg sounder. The GPS position would just be a lat long of the boats location in relation to satellites.

A different boat travelling South to those co-ordinates also has a cone angle of 12deg and when arriving at the original GPS location its sounder is shooting 12deg the wrong way, and could find nothing.

The important point to remember here is the GPS location of the wreck was not found by a transducer shooting directly under the boat at 0mph, but one pointing forward by 12deg (usually) by a moving boat.


Alan

cracking stuff cheers alan
 
So, Mrs Beatons 1747 recipe for Hare soup said - first catch your hare :cool:

So go find some wrecks in your area then; ;)

You may get some from a friend or relative, or you might get some from researching dive sites and talking to divers like Bob Scullion or Don Foster. There are some very good books by people like Roy Young.

An excellent place to get accurate wreck marks from is WRECK

For a fee of 25 euros per year you can obtain some very interesting and accurate data. There are some top notch contributors to this site inc Carl Racey who is Andy Jacksons dive partner and many others. Check out Subseatv

There are a fair few on navionics and cmap carts. Go find em' :exclam:

Alan
 
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