Using New Technology to Catch Deepwater Rockfish

Long before the days of social media, or even smartphones for that matter, Southern California anglers spent most of their winter season targeting deepwater rockfish. Back then, we called them rock cod, and anglers targeted them using stout rods fitted with rail plates to steady the side-to-side motion of cranking the handle of a Penn 9/0 Senator full of 80-pound Dacron line. In those days, rock cod fishing was a lot of work, so anglers installed modified handles on their reels that were fitted with a bicycle grip, offering something more ergonomic to grasp when retrieving a five-hook gangion full of fish, as well as the 3 to 5 pounds of weight needed to get baits into the bite zone 600-plus feet below the surface.

That style of fishing ended after federal and state fishery management agencies declared that the cowcod stocks had collapsed, ushering in massive closures within the Cowcod Conservation Area and statewide fishing depth restrictions in 2001. While the next two decades saw a variety of depth and species restriction changes, the conservation area did not budge until cowcod stocks were declared to be rebuilt in 2019. With much of the waters within the conservation area now open to bottomfishing and seasonal access to unlimited fishing depths, anglers are not only back fishing deepwater rockfish, but also using new technology that makes it easier and more effective.

Shady Advantage

The first, and I believe the biggest, advantage that private boaters have gained is in the use of charts that offer high-definition shaded relief of bottom detail. The reason I mentioned smartphones earlier is because these days I do most of my trip planning using the Simrad app on my iPhone. The app uses the same C-Map Reveal cartography for the West Coast and Baja California ocean waters that I run on the Simrad Evo3 unit on my boat. With this technology, finding a potential fishing spot is as simple as zooming in on a bank or island and looking for areas in the depth range I want to find fish.

Speaking of looking for fish, today’s fish-finder technology coupled with CHIRP sonar makes it possible to find fish in water up to 1,000 feet deep without needing to break the bank installing a 1 kW transducer. My boat is set up with a Structure Scan 3D transducer that offers High and Medium CHIRP. When fishing deep water, I prefer using Medium CHIRP because its wider beam allows me to cover more of the seafloor while looking for fish. 

Another new tool available to some boating anglers is a trolling motor with a virtual anchor feature, such as the Spot-Lock function on Minn Kota trolling motors. This GPS-guided virtual anchor allows you to lock your boat into position even when there is wind or current. While this feature is limited to center-console and smaller pilothouse boats, it is worth its weight in gold when fishing deep water. Instead of having to lead a spot or predict how fast you’ll drift over it, you can simply park your boat on top and keep dropping until the fish stop biting or you’ve limited out.

The final component to the rebirth of this old style of fishing is braided fishing line. The line’s small diameter eliminates the need for stout rods, big reels and heavy weights. These days, a 400-size baitcasting reel rigged with a 16- to 24-ounce sinker is all you need to fish in depths in excess of 600 feet. Despite today’s rockfish tackle being much less cumbersome, winding up a load of fish from these extreme depths is still a lot of work. So, for anyone planning to target rockfish on a regular basis, an electric reel is an excellent investment.

Electric Revolution 

Modern electric reels no longer need to be tethered to your boat’s battery via extension cords. Instead, they are powered by a lithium battery pack that can be strapped to the foregrip of your rod. Or in the case of the Penn Fathom electric reel, the battery is integrated into the reel itself. Electric reels come in a variety of sizes, but smaller is always easier, so I’d recommend the Penn Fathom 30 or Daiwa Seaborg 500. Both reels will hold more than enough 30-pound braid to fish as deep as you want, and the battery packs will easily cover a long day of deep-dropping.

Before I get into the details of where to find rockfish and how to catch them, there are some specific regulations that anglers need to know. First, you are required to carry a descending device on your boat to release any cowcod or other protected species. The best descending device is made by Seaqualizer and allows you to set the depth at which the release clip opens. As a rule of thumb, set the depth at approximately half the water depth. I also recommend using a heavier weight than you might think you’d need to descend fish because cowcod are extremely buoyant. I use a 10-pound sinker attached to an electric reel to descend fish on my boat.

Know the Seasons

Seasonal depth restrictions are the next thing anglers need to consider when targeting rockfish. As of this writing, state and federal regulations mandate a closure of the entire fishery from Jan. 1 through March 31. In the Southern Management Area, which spans from Point Conception to the Mexican border, fishing is allowed at all depths from April 1 through June 30. From July 1 through Sept. 30, take is prohibited seaward of the 50-fathom (300-foot) Rockfish Conservation Area boundary line. From Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, that restriction flips to prohibit take shoreward of the 50-fathom boundary line.

To make things a little more confusing, the 50-fathom line is not based on water depth, but on a line of waypoints along the coast and encircling the offshore islands. The waypoints for the line are available on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife website at wildlife.ca.gov, and I recommend entering them into your chart plotter before heading out to avoid running afoul of the law. Another factor to consider is that there are several species of nearshore rockfish that you are not allowed to keep from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, even if you catch them in waters open to fishing. I highly recommend visiting the CDFW website and studying the catch limits of each species before heading out; it can save you a big fine if you get checked by a warden.

Structure Is Key

With all that out of the way, figuring out where to fish is easy. Rockfish relate to large areas of hard bottom structure along the coastal shelf and offshore banks. And while there are specific spots where they seem to bite consistently, you don’t need a specific waypoint to catch fish. When fishing a new area, I normally look around the up-current edge of structure because that’s the most likely area to attract baitfish feeding on nutrients in the current upwells. 

When looking for rockfish, I zoom in my fish finder to only show the bottom 200 feet of the water column because it can be tough to pick out 25 feet of fish marks when you’re looking at 600 to 800 feet of empty water on your screen. When you find them, rockfish will not mark as individual fish but as a fuzz along the bottom. The fuzz is caused by multiple fish being within the cone of your transducer simultaneously, and the more fish there are, the darker the fuzz. If there are marks well above the bottom, they’re often baitfish, but they could also be rockfish species known as chilipeppers or bank perch, both of which ascend as far as 100 feet off the bottom to feed. 

Read Next: Slow-Pitch Jigging for Rockfish

Bait or Lure

Once you’ve found some fish to drop on, you can target them with bait or lures. When fishing with bait such as strips of squid, you are only allowed two hooks, which are normally rigged as a double-dropper leader. And while everyone has their favorite setup, I’ve found that it’s hard to go wrong with rigging a Gulp grub on an octopus-style hook. The grub will stay on your hook better than live or dead bait and gets bit just as well. My only advice is to avoid using chartreuse-colored Gulp lures because, in my experience, rockfish won’t bite them. I have no idea why.

The other option, which is a lot more fun and often produces bigger fish, is a heavy jig, like a Tady Hybrid Slow-Pitch Jig. These lures range in size from 200 to 450 grams, and my advice is to choose the lightest weight that will get you to the bottom without scoping out. When dropping the jig, it helps to keep some resistance against the spool because it will keep the jig from fluttering and help it sink to the bottom quicker. Once down, I like to wind the jig a few feet off the bottom to keep it from snagging before imparting action to it with vertical sweeps of the rod tip. If there are fish around, you’ll usually get tight in short order. While it will still take some work to consistently find biting fish, today’s technology takes out much of the work of putting them in the boat. 

Field Test: Penn Fathom Electric Reel

I recently had the opportunity to field-test the new Penn Fathom 50 electric reel—and it was the first time I used an electric reel for deepwater rockfish. I loved the built-in battery feature—no more wonky power cord draped along the gunwale. The battery lasted all day and still had capacity in reserve when I plugged it in for a recharge back at home. Spooled up with 30-pound-test braided line, it offered way more capacity than what I needed to fish down to 750 feet deep. The Fathom was super easy to learn and use. A special adjustable tension feature helps prevent backlashes when free-spooling. Once a fish bit, I liked the ability to wind down with the reel handle to set the hook and put a bend in the rod. I then disengaged the reel handle and advanced the six-speed power dial to reel in the fish. When retrieving a rockfish, I kept the speed dial at around 4 to prevent the fish from spinning off the hook. I agree with author Erik Landesfiend, who recommended the Penn Fathom 30 electric reel for California deepwater rockfishing; the 30 is a bit smaller and lighter than the 50, but still offers plenty of 30-pound braid capacity for this style of deep-dropping. —Jim Hendricks

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