How-to: Find Lobster Spots

Locating lobster spots is probably one of the most challenging parts about lobster season. If you’re looking for guidance and google “how to find lobster spots” most of the pages that come up are about the ledges and rocks that lobster can be found. But how do you find these spots?

Over the years our family has come up with a pretty efficient process for finding spots without a bottom finder on our boat. We use a combination of tools to plan areas to scout that could produce ledges or rocks for lobster to hide in. To give us a general idea of where to look, we use tools such as google earth satellite images, google earth with a nautical chart overlay, and Navionics charts.

These tools give us a good idea of areas for the kind of bottom lobster like to hide in. Lobsters prefer hard bottom, or “rky,” “co,” and “h” as labeled on a nautical chart. This bottom is perfect for creating holes and ledges that provide suitable protection from nurse sharks, turtles, grouper, and any other animals which enjoy a lobster dinner.

Satellite images are useful for approximating locations that “look” good for lobster. Dark spots on the bottom are usually either rocks or grass and give a good idea of an area that might be worth diving and seeing if it has lobster. In the image below, taken with google earth, the dark spots are the most likely rocky bottom that could have lobster spots.

Then using the nautical charts are an excellent way to find potentially good bottom. We overlay the NOAA charts over google earth, so we can find hard bottom on the chart, get its coordinates and go scout the area.

Navionics is an excellent tool for looking at contour lines of the ocean. They have a web version as well as an app for your phone that has excellent charts. Contour lines are lines on a chart that indicate a change in depth. The closer together the lines are, the steeper the decline in depth. These are useful in showing potential areas for ledges to form and could be great areas to scout for spots.

Using all three of these tools will get you a pretty good idea of potential areas lobster spots can be. It’s worth mentioning that there will be spots that are outside of these areas and this method isn’t a sure-fire way of finding spots, but it’s a start in the right direction.

Finding lobster spots tends to be easier when you have a systematic plan for where to go for your trip. The night before a trip we like to figure out a general plan for where to go. Our lobster scouting trip consists of checking spots we’ve found from previous years, writing down how many keeper lobsters are on each spot. Then scouting new areas that are around the spots we’ve checked.

-JL