Here’s a topic that we’ve had to learn about through trial and error. While I have some fishing experience, the different gear we’ve encountered along the US East Coast has been shrouded in mystery. Navigating a cruising boat means sharing space with fishermen and their gear. Sometimes, a cruising guide will note to be careful of the stakes or watch out for the pots, but information about what that actually means is hard to come by.
Here’s a list of the fishing gear we’ve encountered while sailing along the coast. This isn’t an all-inclusive list, but these are the ones we see the most often.
Types of Fishing Gear We Encounter
It’s important to note that some of these present real navigational challenges to recreational boaters. The most obvious one is first on the list: pots or trap floats. They can be a real nuisance, and at times, it feels like fishermen are stringing them right through the navigational channel out of spite.
But there are others on this list that I bet you aren’t aware of. My favorites are the gillnets, quarter-mile-long, invisible nets strung just under the water between two nondescript buoys. It’s fun stuff.
Keep your eyes open, and be safe out there, boaters. Fishing gear is one reason every boater should have a tow boat membership and a snorkel, fins, and dive knife onboard.
Pots (Trap Floats)
Seen: Everywhere, most in Florida, North Carolina, ICW, Chesapeake Bay, and Maine
Pots are baited traps, wire or wood, that sink to the bottom to catch critters. In Florida, they’re after stone crabs or spiny lobsters. In the Carolinas and Chesapeake Bay, they’re after blue crabs. In New England, they’re after lobster (of course).
The pots are marked with a single line attached to a small styrofoam float. The floats are colored and marked so the fishers can find them later. The ones painted blue, brown, or black are so much fun to see on a cloudy day or in a chop.
In some places (Florida Bay, our cruising the ICW, some seasons on ChesBay, and all of Maine), the pots can be so thick that you’d think you could walk from one side to the other without getting your feet wet. The idea of navigating through them all seems impossible.
Downeast Maine has an extra special treat for cruisers — pots with toggles. A toggle is a secondary float that streams down-current from the primary. It helps the fisherman pick up the float, which can be challenging with their 12-foot tides and ripping currents. But for boaters, passing between the two floats is a very bad idea — the line between the two isn’t very long and is likely very close to the surface. That makes it very easy to foul your running gear on. Unfortunately, there are so many pots in that part of Maine that it can be impossible to figure out which floats are primaries and which floats are toggles. So where do you go, left or right? It’s a very good idea to have SeaTow or TowBoatUS here.
For the most part, pots are a near-shore water issue. If you do see a float in deep water, it’s usually larger and might even have a radar reflector. These might be traps, longlines, or gillnets; more on those below.
When faced with many floats to work through, imagine how the fishermen might have set them. They work in straight lines, and if you can figure out which color floats go in which directions, you might be able to set a course that crosses the lines and gets you clear. If floats are plaguing you and they’re all the same color, you can probably move a few boat lengths one way or another and get clear of the line.
As annoying as pots are, line cutters aren’t the ideal solution. Many boaters install these choppers on their prop shaft and plow on through, effectively giving the middle finger to the fishermen who lose several hundred dollars of gear with each lost float. The bigger problem is that the trap will never be found. It becomes what’s known as a ‘ghost trap,’ junk on the bottom that keeps catching and killing critters forever.
Trot Lines
Seen: Maryland near-shore
Trotlines are used for fishing for blue crabs in Maryland. A waterman rigs a long line (about a quarter mile long) with lots of hooks and bait. Then, they head out in the boat and drop it in the water, with a float tied on each end. The floats are usually large yellow or orange balls, but we’ve seen makeshift square floats, too.
After setting the line, the waterman comes by a few times daily. He rigs the line onto an electric winch and moves the boat along it, letting unused baits back into the water and grabbing the crabs with a net as they come up.
Of course, they like to use these near anchorages. If you see one float, you need to find the other. Imagine the line in your mind, and don’t put your anchor down in a place where you’ll wind up getting tangled with it.
If you run over one while cruising, you’ll probably be okay. They’re after crabs on the bottom, and they don’t float.
Thankfully, after they’re done for the day, the watermen will pick up the line and go home. But they usually work several lines, so there will be times when it’s left unattended.
Trotlines are a form of bottom longline fishing.
Stakes and Poles
Seen: Everywhere, especially Florida and the Chesapeake Bay
Simple PVC stakes are used to mark pretty much anything. In some places, fishermen have marked shoals and channels with stakes. These are great navigational aids for locals, but they’re just confusing to a newcomer. Are they the edge of the channel or the top of the shoal? Which side should you take it on for deep water?
Many times, you’ll see stakes in the middle of deep water. These usually mark oyster beds. At least, that’s our best theory. In Maryland, oyster leases are marked with signs on the stakes, making their meaning clearer.
It’s best to ignore them and navigate on your own because they could really mean anything at all.
Fish Stakes (Pound Nets)
Seen: Chesapeake Bay
Fish stakes are lines of wood poles set to hold up a net. The pound net is shaped to force fish to swim toward one end, where a circle net traps them. Then, the fishermen come along, close the net, and take their pick. The birds like to take their pick, too.
Fish stakes are often marked on nautical charts but move here and there with the seasons. Storms might wipe them out, and the fishermen may or may not put them back in the same place. We’ve had good luck seeing them on the radar, but if you know they’re in the area, you must be extra cautious when in bad light or low visibility. They are darned hard to see from the water.
Gillnets
Seen: Chesapeake Bay
The first time you realize what and where a gillnet is is the beginning of the rest of your life, a life now spent worrying about where these menaces are left dangling.
We first discovered gillnets at about 3 am one morning when an angry waterman shined his lights on us and angrily shouted that we’d anchored on one. We hadn’t, for the record (not even close), but the fact that even he couldn’t tell is worrying. But hey, he’s the one who snaked it through a popular anchorage and left it.
Gill nets are very long and strung between two buoys. The ones we’ve seen are about 250 feet long, marked with a large yellow or orange float on one end and a vertical flagged float on the other.
In between the floats, anything could be happening. Most nets sink to the bottom, but some have tiny floats that keep them at the surface. Running over one of those would cause a real mess. A. Real. Mess.
Trolling Rigs
Seen: Everywhere, usually behind center console or offshore fishing boats
Recreational fishing boats you see out cruising are nearly always trailing multiple fishing lines behind them. If you see a center console or offshore sportfish moving between 5 and 10 knots, you can bet money they’ve got lines out behind them.
The lines are invisible and probably go back 100 or 200 feet. It’s very important to keep this in mind, as you may need to pass behind that boat due to the right-of-way rules if they’re crossing from your
Despite what might be said about “vessels engaged in fishing” in the COLREGs, recreational fishermen don’t have the right-of-way over any other recreational vessel. Still, Darwin’s rules apply, and they probably don’t know that they aren’t always the stand-on vessel (they might not even know what it means), so it’s generally better to give way early and obviously.
Trawl Nets
Seen: Carolinas, North Florida, and Gulf
Real commercial fishing boats with their gear out are stand-on vessels over recreational sailboats and powerboats. Large shrimp boats, like Forest Gump’s, are pulling trawls. You can tell they’re trawling by the large outriggers on each side that hold the nets off the boat’s sides.
It’s best not to get too close to these boats because they move erratically and extend behind the boat. You’ll usually be able to tell where the nets are because there’s a cloud of birds right over them.
Another type of fishing gear that this type of boat might be towing is a dredge. A dredge is much the same, but it drags on the bottom and scoops up oysters, scallops, or whatever.
Purse Seine Nets
A purse seiner looks very similar to a large trawler. The net, however, forms a circle in the water column that entraps fish. The boat pulls the circle closed so the fish can’t get out. NOAA Fisheries say the nets can be up to 6,000 feet long and 650 feet deep. Deep sea rigs use purse seines to catch everything from baitfish to tuna.
We’ve seen small boats using purse seines in Maine rivers. It’s quite the sight to watch a little boat scream around in a tight circle, banging pots and pans and making as much noise as possible to scare the fish into the net.
Oyster Farms
Seen: Everywhere
Oysters are generally grown in large, floating facilities in shallow water. They’re sometimes marked on charts and sometimes not. The floats are generally unmarked black boxes that are mostly underwater. As a result, they’re not easy to see. Thankfully, they’re usually well-off channels and in shallow water away from where you’d likely be taking a cruising boat.
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