Bottom fishing is not complicated. You put bait on the seabed and wait for fish to find it. Everything else is detail.
But the detail is what separates a busy cooler from an empty one: sinker weight, leader length, bait choice, and most of all where you park the boat.
Bottom fishing, or tesqeet as it is called here, means dropping your bait with enough weight to reach the seabed and hold there. There is no casting and no retrieving. You wait.
The fish you are after, hammour, sbaity and shaari, live around rock, rubble and small rises. They move, they smell the bait, they come to it. Patience is the main skill.
Sinker weight is the first thing to get right, and it follows depth and current. In 5-10 m of water a light 30-60 g sinker holds fine. From 10-20 m, go to 80-120 g. From 20-40 m, 150-250 g is normal, otherwise the current drags your bait off the mark.
On bait, shrimp and squid cover most trips. Both are cheap, easy to keep and catch almost everything. Khithaq and fresh cut fish are the better choice for hammour and sbaity.
Live bait brings the bigger fish, but it needs more patience and a livelier presentation.
If there is current, anchor up-current of your mark and let the boat settle back over it. If the current is light, drift with the wind and correct with the engine. Either way the goal is the same: your bait stays in one small area.
On the sounder, look for changes in colour and arches near the bottom. A hard return usually means rock; a scattering above it is often a school of fish.
This is the single most useful rule on the boat. Fish feed hardest in the last hour before the tide turns and the first hour after. Fish those two windows and you will beat a full day of random hours.
If you want to know the tide before you leave the house, B7R gives you daily tide times for Shuwaikh and Shuaiba ports.
Most poor trips come down to three things: too heavy a sinker, the boat drifting off the mark, and too much slack in the line so you never feel the bite. And do not move every few minutes. Give a spot 20-30 minutes before you shift.
Sharp hooks at the bottom of the sea are still sharp hooks on deck. Wear gloves, keep a knife within reach, and keep the deck clear of loose line.
Download B7R free on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.q8dm.b7r — sea state, Shuwaikh and Shuaiba tides, fish guide, catch log, seasons, navigation tools and an SOS button. Check the tide before you leave the dock.