The MeatEater

When I was a kid, deep water fascinated me. I was convinced that those dark, seemingly fathomless depths that stretched into blackness below my boat held fish of unimaginable size. I believed that all I had to do to catch them was to somehow get my lures and baits down into the 50, 80, 100-plus-foot depths and wait for a leviathan. Yet, no matter how hard I tried or how much weight I put on my line, every time I fished that dark abyss, I’d come up empty.

Fishing in deep water is an incredible challenge. Unlike when you’re fishing the shallows and can easily pick out likely locations for fish or even see the fish, when you fish in deep water, it can feel like fishing in a dark, empty desert. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right techniques and strategies, fishing deep water can produce some of the best fishing and biggest fish of your life.

The main thing to remember when fishing in deep water is that fish like structure. Whether you’re after giant, bottom-dwelling lake trout or suspended perch and panfish, finding these fish consistently is all about finding the structure. Deepwater rock piles, submerged vegetation, humps, ledges, reefs, and even manmade structures like brush piles will all attract and hold fish in deep water—you just have to know how to find them.

The easiest way to locate and fish structure in deep water is from a boat equipped with electronics. Fish finders, depth finders, and side imaging sonar are all fantastic tools for finding and staying on top of structure. The higher-end versions actually show high-resolution images of bottom detail and, of course, the fish that are holding around them.

If you don’t have a boat or are fishing from shore, you can still locate deep water structure using hydrographic maps. These maps illustrate the bottom contours and depths, showing where structures like underwater humps and ledges can be found on a body of water. Hydrographic maps can be found online or used through apps like C-MAP and I-Boating. However, the scale of these digital maps only shows details to a certain scale, so it’s a good idea to use hydrographic maps and fish and/or depth finders together to make finding deep water structure easy, even on a waterbody you’re completely unfamiliar with.

Once you locate areas of deepwater structure, the easiest and most efficient way to fish them is with finesse techniques. Techniques like jigging, drop shotting, Texas Rigging, and even slowly working spinners and spoons up from the bottom are all considered to be finesse techniques. While all of these techniques can be effective in deep water, each particular technique is most effective when fishing off specific structures and when targeting specific species.

Jigging and drop shotting are both effective when fishing around underwater humps or rock piles for suspended deep water fish like walleye, panfish, and even pike. Most of these fish species will be holding around or on top of the structure at the same depth as the hump or rock pile, and not at the depth of the water itself.

For example, a school of walleye lingering around an underwater hump that’s 12 feet down in 25 feet of water will be moving and feeding at 12 feet, even when they’re not directly on top of the hump itself. To fish these areas, you’ll want to drop jigs or drop shot rigs down onto the hump itself and then slowly work your way out around the structure at the same depth until you start getting consistent strikes.

Texas rigging is most effective when targeting bass, panfish, and even catfish around deep water ledges and sharp drop-offs. For those unfamiliar, a Texas Rig is set up with a few sliding bullet weights on a line above a hook. Generally, Texas Rigs are set up with soft plastics, but they work incredibly well with large live and dead baits, such as minnows and leeches, as well.

When you fish a Texas Rig along a ledge, you have a few different options. The first and most common is done by sitting directly over the ledge and then casting into deeper water so your bait sinks to the base of the ledge. Then, retrieve it slowly back up the ledge into the shallower water. If this isn’t effective, you can also sit over the ledge and cast and retrieve parallel to the ledge. Finally, you can move into deeper water and cast back to the ledge, working your lure down the ledge into deeper water.

The final effective technique for fishing deep water is by dropping spinners and spoons to the bottom and then retrieving them back to the surface. This is a fantastic technique for fishing deep holes and underwater rock piles and for targeting large predatory fish like lake trout, pike, and muskie. Start by sinking your lure on an open bail down to the bottom around the edges of the structure and then retrieving it back to the surface. It’s a simple yet effective method that draws a surprising amount of strikes. To make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, try varying your retrieval speeds until you key in on a speed the fish seem to like.

Trolling is an incredibly effective technique for deepwater fishing. It allows you to cover a lot of water and key in on suspending schools of fish like walleye or target cruising deepwater predators like lake trout, muskie, or salmon. However, just using deep diving lures and heavy weights isn’t always the most efficient way to find fish. To troll in deep water efficiently, you have to use the proper set-ups, lures, and strategies.

Downriggers are fantastically helpful tools for deepwater trolling. These ingenious devices consist of a weight attached to a cable, which is lowered to a desired depth using a spool and crank (manual or electric), to control the depth of a lure or bait while trolling.  You can clip a downrigger to your line and keep your lure or bait at a consistent depth while you troll, helping you cover water at a specific depth.

Once a fish strikes, the downrigger releases from the line, allowing you to fight the fish without tangling with the downrigger cable. Downriggers are great for trolling long stretches of deep water with consistent bottom structure or for keeping your lures moving just above bottom structure, and are ideal for targeting deepwater fish like lake trout as they help get your bait into the strike zone quickly and efficiently.

Another trolling tool for deep water is a bottom bouncer. Built on a wire frame, bottom bouncers are weights that you clip to your line like a downrigger, which literally tick and bounce along the bottom. They’re ideal for fishing gravel bottoms or weed beds in deep water, as they’ll hold your lures above the bottom and prevent them from getting snagged. Bottom bouncer rigs are useful for targeting trout, walleye, pike, and even deep water bass, as the fish will often be attracted to the sound of the bouncer running along the bottom.

I used to aimlessly fish deep water for hours, hoping for a strike. It just felt like I was drifting my baits and lures in an empty no-man’s-land, and as much as I believed big fish were down there, I simply couldn’t find them.

Once I figured out how to break down deep water by looking for structure and approaching it with the proper fishing technique, I discovered a whole new addiction. Now, whenever I look down into the dark depths below me, I don’t wonder what may be down there, but how long it will take me to catch it.

On this week’s episode, Mark Kenyon and Jake Hofer dig into how deer behavior and habitat uses shift during this time of year. They break down the many reasons finding the 'X' marks the spot on the map matters. Listen in as they discuss travel routes, crossings, funnels, attraction, and bedding. Learn how the Rule of 3 can guide your decisions in the field. Presented by RAM and Can-AM

This week Reid and Dan host the one and only Naomi Johnson out in God's Country. The episode starts off with an EXCLUSIVE announcement from Naomi and that is she is expecting baby #2 with her husband, Martin. Naomi shares her journey of navigating motherhood in the music industry and how she feels her nomadic upbringing prepared her best for this life. She shares some insane stories about growing up on a school bus with her 9 siblings, how they ended up in several different cults, and how salmon fishing in Alaska led her to Nashville. She shares stories of hunting with her siblings growing up and how one felony took away her dad's ability to hunt with a gun for life. She ends the episode with a gravorite that will matter to you.

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When the western artist George Catlin journeyed to the Southern Plains in 1834 the animal that caught his attention there was the wild horse, which covered the country in immense herds. Little known to Catlin, or to Thomas Jefferson, who longed to know about horses in their natural state, horses were so successful in the western wilds because they were original natives of North America. Eventually a trade in wild horses dominated the southern West the way the fur trade did in the North. Native people initiated the trade, Hispanics in Texas perfected the art of capture, and from 1790 into the 1850s independent American traders captured, traded for, and drove wild horses east to supply the advancing American frontier. Little known in western history because until the 1920s it lacked a corporate player, the wild horse trade was an unexpected success and mustangers a working-class phenomenon of the West.

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This week, Tony talks about how each of us is on our own deer journey, and why we should try to not impose our own hunting beliefs on others.

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Whenever we announce new live tour dates we get complaints from Canadians and southerners who are mad that we skip them over. Well, you Canadians are getting screwed again. But boy do we got good news for the South! MeatEater Live: The Christmas Tour is headed your way.

Janis, Clay, Brent, Randall, and I are hitting the road in December for a 6-stop tour of the Southeast, taking our live theater show to Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas.

What should audiences expect? Well, we’ll add holiday flair to our usual takes on hunting, fishing, conservation, and wild foods while bringing the laughs (and prizes) you expect from MeatEater. Each stop will include special guests, giveaways, and banter unique to your region.

As usual, we’re not recording, so you won’t see or hear this experience anywhere else.

At every live event, we’ve set aside a limited number of VIP tickets that get you a whip-ass seat and the chance to hang with us and tell hunting stories before hitting the stage. We’ll sign whatever merch or body part you want, which is only available to pre-show VIPs.

Our presale starts now and goes until September 26, when the general sale starts. The pre-sale code is: “HUNT25”. Click here to see our tour dates and use this code to sign up and secure your seats before they’re available to the general public.

Head over to our events page for more information and to purchase tickets. We can’t wait to see you out there!

Robert Donovan, of Ear Falls, Ontario, works in the lumber industry. He was on his way to work on September 23, 2023, when his boss radioed him about a group of archery hunters from Wisconsin who said that one of them had shot “the biggest bull moose he’d ever seen with points going everywhere on it” on Crown Land—which is public land in Canada. But they hadn’t found it.

“It drove me crazy all day that he couldn’t find it,” Donovan told MeatEater. “I radioed every couple of hours, and they said, ‘no luck, no luck.’”

After he got off work, Donovan, an avid moose and shed hunter himself, drove over to the area. By then, officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) were there, helping the hunters search for the bull that the hunters had wounded. Donovan offered to pitch in, but they declined.

Donovan headed home but couldn’t stop thinking about the moose. He used satellite maps to look for where the bull might have run after it was wounded. He identified a pond that a gut-shot moose would go for water. That week, after work, he gridded the area but didn’t find anything. In the meantime, the hunter who’d shot the moose gave up and went back to the U.S.

“The second week, I went into work in the morning, got in my machine, looked back at the road and saw a big bunch of crows and eagles,” Donovan said. “I went over there, and the moose was lying there, probably 200 yards from the road.”

“I could not believe it,” Donovan said. “It was the biggest set of antlers I’ve ever found.”

Donovan also recovered the arrow near the moose, which led him to believe it hadn’t run far from where it was shot. He got a salvage tag from MNR and brought the antlers out of the field. He decided to get the rack measured by scorers for the Big Game Records of Ontario, which uses the Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young scoring systems.

The paddles had 32 points, though only 23 were scorable. The rack came in at 204 2/8 inches, setting the “all-time record” for the province, a category that includes racks that have been picked up or of unknown origin. For comparison, Ontario’s biggest firearm-killed moose totaled 231 3/8 inches. The bull that Donovan recovered was not far from that mark.

Donovan mounted it on a plaque and hung it on a wall in his basement. “It was quite a find,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll find anything that big again, but you never know. I drew a bull tag up there for this year north of here, and you never know what you’ll run into up there.”

The two elk hunters whose disappearance sparked a six-day search were both killed by lightning, according to a county coroner.

Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko, both 25 years old, had traveled from their respective homes in North Carolina and Utah to chase elk with their bows in southern Colorado’s San Juan Wilderness Area. But when their families lost communication with them on September 11th, they were reported missing to the Conejos County Sheriff’s Office on September 12th.

That sparked a massive, six-day search of the area that involved various state and local agencies combing the rugged terrain for any sign of the missing pair.

Heavy rain had rolled in the day the hunters went missing, but investigators soon discovered backpacks and camping gear in their truck. This raised concerns for the search and rescue team since they surmised Porter and Stasko had been caught out in bad weather without the proper equipment. But it also sparked a firestorm of theories online as people wondered how two experienced hunters had disappeared within what couldn’t have been a very great distance from their truck.

That theorizing continued after the bodies of the two young men were found, but Conejos County Coroner Richard Martin declined to name a cause of death. He said neither body showed signs of trauma, but did not offer any further explanation for how they died.

But then, on September 22nd, Porter’s fiancée, Bridget Murphy, posted on Facebook, “It is OFFICIAL, that a lightning strike near them took them in an instant. They didn’t do anything wrong, they didn’t feel fear or pain. He was just trying to get back to the car as storms rolled in.”

The coroner confirmed Murphy’s account. He said neither body showed major burn marks, which indicated that they didn’t sustain a direct hit. But they were close enough to the strike that they were both killed instantly.

Condolences to the families of these two young men. We know that anything can happen when we go out into the wilderness, but we hope that being careful and smart will be enough to bring us home safely. It sounds like these guys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we're sure that’s incredibly difficult for their families.

Feature image via Bridget Murphy’s Facebook.

Clay Newcomb kicks off the Arkansas rifle season with a deer hunt with dogs. Clay and his son, Bear, join Stoney Edwards and his hounds in the Arkansas mountains to learn more about this traditional style of deer hunting. After strategic planning with a bustling group of other hunters, Clay and Bear get into position and let the dogs do their work. Presented by Magpul

Steven Rinella talks with Mark Ruder, Michael Chamberlain, and Ryan Callaghan. 

Topics discussed: The premier of MeatEater Sheds; back to the 101 of what CWD is and the myths surrounding it; it’s just not a hoax; the slow, cryptic nature of the disease; are we still going to be able to grow old, big deer?; how there's no test for live deer; filling up space in the brain stem; high prevalence rates; how the skeptical public wants an answer; and more. 

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