The art of seeing outside the box

A few days back, I was finally able to get out and fish with a friend of mine who had asked me to show him the ropes of saltwater fishing. He was quick to admit that pretty much all the fishing he had done up to this point had been in freshwater and, having just bought a boat, he felt rather lost in the big world of saltwater fishing. “Everything looks the same,” he told me. “One creek looks like the next, so how in the heck do you find places that hold fish?”

How many times have I heard this same question? If I had to guess, I think that number would be in the thousands. But no matter how many times that question has been asked of me, my answer is always the same — “Use your eyes, because saltwater fishing is no different from freshwater fishing. Look for points, look for structure, and if you really keep your eyes peeled, saltwater fish will often reveal themselves as they blast through bait, just like you’re used to seeing a largemouth bass going after a minnow or small shad.”

Getting back to the fishing excursion, I decided to take him to one of my redfish honey holes, and right off the bat, he was taken aback by its location. His boat was a little 15-foot flats boat, a boat that can get into some pretty darn shallow water. To get to where I wanted to fish, we had to tilt the motor all the way up and paddle in toward the shoreline until we could go no further. Instantly, I could see a look in his eyes that said a light bulb — a 150-watt bulb — had gone off in his brain.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “I would have never imagined fish could be in such shallow water as this.”
If everything went according to plan, I knew that at a particular tide the redfish would show up, so I told him to keep his eyes open and look for fish busting or making wakes on the flats. In a nutshell, I wanted him to look and see the things that I am so used to seeing. Sounds like a tongue twister, doesn’t it? For the first twenty minutes, I got a bit frustrated because as he was looking one way, I was seeing reds busting the other way. “Did you see that?” I would ask. “No, what?” I felt like I was on Candid Camera or something because I was seeing fish tailing all over the place, but by the time he looked to where I was pointing, they were gone.

Finally, after nearly an hour, we both got on the same page, and he saw his first tailing redfish. Up until that point, I was certain he was convinced that I was just messing with him, but it wasn’t until he saw that gold back and blue tail come out of the water that he realized I was telling the truth the entire time.

I don’t care if you are fishing in six inches of water or six hundred feet of water; your eyes are the key to being a successful saltwater fisherman. You can have the most expensive rods and reels, the coolest and most expensive flats boat ever made, but if you don’t use your eyes, you might as well hang it up. Some people are naturals when it comes to being observant of their surroundings, but on the flip side, I repeatedly notice others who struggle with the art of “seeing.”

Maybe it has something to do with where and how you were raised. For example, whenever I go to New York City or some other large metropolitan area, I notice that people simply won’t look you in the face as they pass by. Maybe it’s a defensive mechanism (or it’s because I’m just plain ugly), but for this Southern boy, I can’t get enough “people watching” when I hit the big city. Even right here in the Lowcountry, I am always looking around. When driving my car and I notice a bald eagle soaring above me, I can’t help but watch these magnificent birds. But then I stop at a stoplight, look at the person in the car next to me, and they not only haven’t seen the eagle but also couldn’t seem to care less, even if it were a massive B-52 bomber flying directly overhead. Yep, I truly believe that most avid outdoorsmen’s brains have honed their senses to see things differently from the majority of the general population.

Using this God-given ability, which it truly is, my plan for this coming fishing season is to target a certain species of fish that is pretty much overlooked around here — tripletail. In the past four or five years, I have managed to catch a fair number of these prehistoric-looking fish, but only because I have gone looking for them. Having done that, my eyes and brain now appear to be working together so that when I pass by a tripletail drifting along on the surface, my eyes instantly see it. So work on training your brain to see, and you’ll be amazed at what a difference it will make the next time you head out, whether it’s on the water or simply walking to the end of your driveway. Believe me when I say a whole new world will come into focus — and what a world it is!

Collins Doughtie is a 60-year resident of the Lowcountry, is a sportsman, graphic artist, and lover of nature.
collinsdoughtie@icloud.com