SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE
The shot that we are looking at is back to yesterday afternoon’s shot, so if you go into the archives you’ll be able to find this one. We scaled our shot from 65* to 79* and it gave us a good indication of what you will see when you are out there. The water closest to land is a frigid less than 67 degrees, the second layer here is 68-70 degrees, and the third layer is 70-71 degrees. If you continue to look further out into the Gulf you will see some warmer water, but that is mostly out of reach for even the biggest of sportfishing boats. We are looking forward to temperatures warming up come mid to end of March, where there will be more to look at on the sea surface temperature chart.
ALTIMETRY
The altimetry shot right now is showing three main upwellings extremely far south, with the furthest west one edging the Green Canyon. If you have a boat leaving from Louisiana, we would focus on chasing the edge of that upwelling and fishing rigs that are on the edge or inside of that upwelling. There is a small downwelling sitting over the MS Canyon rigs right now, but if you can find bait in this area you should be able to find some predators behind them.
Further inland there are some blue spots that denote an upwelling, but after evaluating the currents chart, it looks like these may just be pockets of very cold/dense water closer to land that are showing up as full upwellings.
CURRENTS
The currents this week are showing mostly stagnant water hanging around close to shore, with a little bit of current still pushing north through the squiggles and eastern fads.
CHLOROPHYLL
For the first time in about 8 weeks, we see a slight change in the chlorophyll shots this week where there looks like a defining line that separates the deep green water from the blended blue green water. There still are not any distinctly blue parts this week, but we will continue to track when the blue water starts moving back into our area.
