We are back with our week 46 synopsis of the Northern Gulf. The team did not get out fishing in the last 7 days, but we heard reports of a consistent tuna and marlin bite at the MS Canyon rigs. We did not receive any reports from the shelf structure from last week. If you have reports from last week, please “reply to” this email and let us know!
The overall forecast for this week is high for the shelf area from the Elbow to the Ozark. We also believe that it will be any day now when the FADs will have another hot wahoo bite and signs continue to point to that. We are forecasting that the MS Canyon rigs bite will remain steady, but it will not be as strong as it was the past two weeks as a result of the downwelling event moving over the rigs and the upwelling event that was present has now moved southeast.
SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE
Cloud cover from the past 72 hours has not provided a usable SST shot for this week. No report to be made.
ALTIMETRY
The altimetry this week has quite a few things to talk about. Starting from the far left, you can see that there is a strong upwelling event happening north of the Green Canyon. Bordering that upwelling on the right, a downwelling is pushing north into the MS Canyon rigs. These rigs have been hot for the last 3 weeks and we are expecting them to slow down as this downwelling moves in. The “conventional wisdom” of a negative altimetry is that once the predator species surrounding a specific structure have been caught, then they are not being replenished with new predators due to the life cycle of nutrients. We went and checked last year’s altimetry report when the bite was still hot at this same time of the year and the upwelling event remained present in the MS Canyon.
Moving to the right, you will see the upwelling event that was once situated over the MS Canyon rigs has now moved off to the southeast, south of Lloyd’s Ridge. You will also see that our area of interest over the FADS has become slightly better and is something we are still watching.
CURRENTS
The currents this week have remained steady for the northern gulf. There are still strong current lines and areas of interest near the squiggles moving northwest. There are also stronger lines moving to the west near the elbow area, which we marked as another area of interest. We would seek out bottom structure in these areas as places to troll for wahoo and blackfins. You can see the counterclockwise rotation of the upwelling event near Lloyd’s Ridge.
CHLOROPHYLL
The chlorophyll charts this week are also extremely affected by the cloud cover from all the rain in the last 72 hours. If you select the 3 day chart, you can start to make inferences about where clean water is. You will see on the below image that there are patches of somewhat clear blue water, surrounded by mostly blended blue-green water. We do not rely heavily on water color data this time of the year and we believe that the fishing is great as long as you are not fishing in yellow or red areas.
