Minutes of pre-trip investigative work could save hours of prime time.

2006

Minutes of pre-trip investigative work could save hours of prime time.

Sit back, relax, and imagine for a moment. You’ve been pounding the phones all week long at the office. It’s finally Friday, and you can’t stop staring at the clock, impatiently waiting for 5:30 to roll around. You’ve got big plans this weekend. For five days straight, you’ve been anxiously waiting for the week to come to a close. Saturday is your big chance to return to the backcountry. You long to again unite with this, your favorite of all places.

The time has finally come. You’ve left the office hours ago, and have been methodically preparing your boat and gear ever since, triple checking every item on the to-do list. Now that everything is ready, it’s time to strategize and lay out a game plan. Years of experience have taught you all too well that heading blindly into this vast aquatic wilderness, the one we call the Everglades, will be a futile attempt at best. The expanse is just too big. There are too many miles of shoreline and way too many small pools to explore them all. You’ve been here before.

As the clock ticks toward midnight, you rest your aching feet on the coffee table and take a few deep breaths. In your hands you’re holding a clear, full color aerial photo of the general area you intend to fish. You’re staring right at a number of likely routes which you believe snook, tarpon, and redfish, your intended targets, will likely follow as they enter and exit their home turf. You follow the winding path of one particular deep cut as it meanders its way across two flats before entering a secluded, shallow bay. Intersecting the end of the cut, you notice a pair of small feeder creeks spill into the same expanse. Your intuition tells you your quarry will likely be staged right where the creeks and channel collide. You’re convinced. This is the first place you’ll look during the early morning flooding tide.

You’ll later come to find out that the colorful aerial photo is actually a mosaic of 40 smaller photos taken from a surveillance aircraft eleven miles above. Your eyes catch a twisting creek as it slices its way between the mainland and a lone spoil island like it has for so long before. Dissecting the two pieces of land, the winding creek spills into an acre size deep pocket which slopes to a distinct point. You think this is perfect terrain for a flourishing oyster bar. Out loud you mutter, “Right there!”

With the alarm clock set for 5:00am, you doze off into a comfortable numbness.

If a clear picture with all this valuable information was readily attainable for your review in advance of any backcountry expedition, wouldn’t you be taking advantage of it? Well snap back to reality and imagine no more; aerial maps of your favorite waterway are currently available to any shallow water angler who wants them.

These pictures we’re referring to were actually born as infrared images taken from surveillance aircraft equipped with sophisticated digital camera equipment from more than 60,000 feet above the earth’s surface. These unique aerial photos, which are often confused with pictures taken from satellites orbiting the globe, are not in any way intended to replace navigational charts. However, they do provide shallow water anglers with a sky high view of the submerged geographical terrain below.

Making the most of such information could save the backcountry angler valuable time that could be spent fishing rather than exploring. One glance at an aerial photo quickly reveals precisely where your intended quarry may be hiding in ambush. Considering we all know that fish follow distinct edges and breaks and often stage in areas with magnified current, aerial photos display a clear, colorful picture of the exact layout of the ‘land’, The picture is displayed in an easy to read laminated map which you can study prior to and during any trip.

Interpreting these sophisticated images is easier than one would believe. The raw data which is provided to the processor in the form of digital imagery, is ortho-rectified, carefully overlaid with GPS coordinates and extensively labeled. The end result is a user friendly chart with depth and water clarity determined by shades of blue, while natural earth tones designate bodies of land. Its imperative you realize that both time and severe weather greatly impact shallow water terrain, so the laminated image you may be studying may be not be 100 percent precise. However, the original digital images provided to the processor are rarely more than two or three years old, so the picture shown is as close to real time as you could expect.

Today, many competitive backcountry anglers and professional guides are taking advantage of the benefits of aerial imagery. They all agree the aerial view provides an enormous edge over the competition. Many admit they could never effectively fish an unfamiliar body of water as successfully as they do, without the benefits of such a tool.

While there are many nautical and fishing ‘hot-spot’ chart manufacturers, one particular name specializes in aerial imagery, Standard Mapping Services (www.StandardMap.com). Since the company’s inception in 1987, they have strived to provide highly detailed and accurate aerial maps to modern anglers with an extensive list of images covering the entire state. The company’s founder, Glenn Schurr, comes from 18 years of service with the Defense Department. During his time with the government he worked in the same field, though he points out his surveillance work was utilized for a completely different purpose.

If your goal is to make the most out of each and every backcountry outing, get your hands on an aerial map of your favorite backcountry waterway. The many benefits the imagery provides, greatly outweigh the mere investment.