I fish out of Tiki Island but never have fished Jones Bay. My Hook-n-Line map does a poor job with the area, it makes everything look like 1 to 2 feet deep. I know about the 5 or 6 shell reefs and can see them on my chartplotter but I'm not sure how safe the rest of the bay is to run in. Its a shame not to fish in my own back yard. Are there any better resources? Thanks for any help.
I learned the hard way by hitting bottom quite a bit. My advice is to follow someone from fat boys to the middle of Jones. Then just watch where everyone goes. I followed lots of people and my GPS is on and tracking the whole time.
I fish the reefs that you speak of and learned where the guts are by watching other folks and exploring. I am not an expert but can get across the whole bay in any direction.
Just get out there and go slow and watch other folks.
Same for me as manwitaplan. I have run through and fished Jones for 26 years. Fortunately, when I first started fishing Jones, I had a 14 Ft. B-Craft. I also learned the hard way. I kept at least 10 Shear Pins in my tackle box.
Last edited by Bonito; 05-01-2012 at 04:13 PM.
Reason: sp.
Same for me as manwitaplan. I have run through and fished Jones for 26 years. Fortunately, when I first started fishing Jones, I had a 14 Ft. B-Craft. I also learned the hard way. I kept at least 10 Shear Pins in my tackle box.
I hear you, done some of that myself in my early years in other areas, but I really didn't want to learn everything about Jones by donating parts of my new Yamaha 250 Vmax SHO to the bottom of the bay.
I run the following routes (in yellow) when traveling through Jones OFTEN and have never had a probelm, even on extremely low tidal levels when the average depth is maybe 2'.
The red dots indicate pvc markers you'll see when you're out there. Just be very cautious when traveling around those spoils and shell-banks and I think you're good to go. There's another shell-bank north of this cut out you can't see but it's real obvious on all the sat. photos. I'm unaware of any other hazards.
On the far southwest side of this cut out, the three red dots together mark a large set of wooden pilings.
There's another cut headed west just south and west of Tiki that is obvious in this sat. photo, but I've never run it.
CHARLIE would be another good guy to contact about safe navigation and I'd also strongly urge you to never use a Hot-Spot map as a navigation aid. Follow someone out when you can.
My boat drafts pretty shallow. More than most probably ... but I've run most of these in a variety of boats that draft deeper than mine.
Jones Bay Navigation
Linear Mode
