Good and frustrating day yesterday
 

I went back to seven points but this time with no intentions of bass fishing. All I do is bass fish and though I have fun, it's time to learn some new stuff. I'm really after Hybrids or Rockfish lately and felt like yesterday I was so close, then my battery crapped out so I had no depthfinder:mad:. I had only used it for about 3.5 hours after fully charging it, obviously a defective battery. I contacted Cabelas and they're out of stock, of course, so who knows when they can do an exchange for me. I bought a battery/charger combo from them.

Anyway, the method I am using is jigging spoons in deep water. I tried it a bit here and there, it wouldn't work and I'd go back to bass fishing. I decided to stick with it today and did manage about a 13-14" bass in roughly 25' of water. That was my first fish ever using that method and out of that deep of water so I felt accomplished already...though I really wanted that fish to have stripes. I moved out to almost 50 feet and found schools of them everywhere a few feet off the bottom. Same method, I did have two hits that I missed. I guess I need to do a better job at detecting a strike before the fish detects me. Never had any strikes with this method prior to yesterday. I can't say for sure, but I'd guess in 50 feet of water those weren't largemouth. Then the battery crapped out and I went home pissed off.

Got a pic of the graph to show what I was seeing and also a nice pic of where I "parked" the yak to sit and eat lunch. I guess I need to find a battery and charger soon. I feel like I'm close to figuring out these fish...

Great report. The hunt can be as exciting as the catching.



Regards


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Nice work Jimmy. My guess you were marking bait, yellows and small whites. They are all over from 35-50 ft of water just off the bottom. More often than not, your hybrids and striper will be more suspended 5-15 ft off the bottom and separated large arcs on the graph.

But who knows, that's just based on my experience.

Stick with it Jad. I love fishing deep water and from experience, confidence means everything. You have to be confident that they are down there and keep fishing them. The hardest part is getting that first hit, then the school usually gets fired up.
From the looks of your graph you are on them. Now its finding what they want. Have you tried a super fluke/jighead combo?

Bull dung. If that was true I would be the most excited fisherman alive. I need to catch for a change.;)

great report! well written was right there with ya reading it! if you can determine the depth of the fish you can either drop to the bottom and then reel up by counting handle turns ie., if your reel takes up 24 inches of line per turn then if the fish are 10 feet up from the bottom then 5 reel turns ,etc. you can also measure form the reel to the first guide and pull that amount of line so if the fish are 20 feet deep and the distance from reel to first guide is 24 inches then you "pull" line 10 times. hope that helps.

I'm with you on the measuring commdd. I took most of my reels and physically measured how much line was taken up by one revolution of the handles.

It was between 22-24 inches, varied with the reel. I marked each reel with the measurement so I know at a glance what to crank up.

And Jimmy, I'm curious as to how you parked the yak upside down without all your rods and tackle spilling out? Quite an accomplishment!

It's funny you mention the hunt. My wife asked the other day if I like fishing in small ponds. I said depending sometimes it's like fishing in the bathtub. She said you like the hunt don't you I laughed and said yes I do.


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Mike don't rain on my parade! Not only were those NOT whites and yellows, they were all hybrids or rockfish. Matter of fact, the two missed hits were 20+ pounders haha. And Merv, never doubt the creativity of an Engineer :D

Lol, sorry Jimmy! Just trying to help ya! When I was out a few weeks ago, I too thought I was marking hybrids and stripers on the bottom like that. 15 tiny yellows and whites later, I continued my search. When I found the school of hybrids it was obvious once I finally saw then on the depth finder. Dropped down....BAM, fish on!

Ok, could one of you Hummingbird guys interpret that graph for me? All I see is brown, and more brown. How do you know which brown are the fish? Or do I need to get new glasses?

It's not a color graph, so you just are looking for images, objects, and shapes. No color tones.

All I can see in the "graph" photo is some guy taking a picture with his phone!

Glad I was not the only one thinking that. Even in black and white you can see arches, all I see is a black cloud.

That's all I'm seeing. There's nothing that I would think are fish anywhere in that picture; however, jad2t saw them, that's why I'm asking for what I should be looking at/for. Are you guys talking about the broken/foggy looking black areas right above the solid black?

Check out the attached pics. The HB one is from a Hummingbird unit that belongs to a guy I know who was out fishing for white bass the same day I was...that pic is of the same school of white bass I took a screenshot of with my Lowrance, which is the other attachment. Now in this case, I can see that those might be fish.

I saw you out there I think or at least that bright green kayak. We caught a few at 7 points suspended. Nothing was biting aggressively, in other words the bite was subtle and easy to miss. I guess the 45 degree water will do that.

We were marking fish suspended from 10 to 24 feet. We caught at 20. I do a lot of jigging and I am used to it, but it takes some getting used to. I catch 2 to one to my son's, and they will beat me in other methods.

As far as the graph goes, they are great but they can be frustrating. I have seen my HDI 7 lit up with bait and fish and could not catch squat. Yesterday when I left 7 points I went to a hump out in the open lake, marked no bait and no fish, while we were in this dead water looking for fish we hooked 2 15" Hybrids and a yellow and a white. Go figure. LOL

You have to read up on how sonar works to understand why the "hooks" are formed by larger fish. I won't bore you with the details, you can google it for yourself if you'd like. Anyway, the hooks form while passing over the fish. If you're right over fish you'll just see long black lines. The higher black area is a bunch of smaller dots so thick it forms what almost looks like a false bottom. That would be the shad. Underneath it would be the predatory fish. Whether they were white bass, hybrids, rockfish, we'll never know because I never got one before the battery died haha.

I often see the hooks formed when I'm paddling fast and pass over fish but when I took that screenshot I was sitting almost still as there was no wind.

Yep Heiny that was me, float over and say hi next time!

Came across this great article this week explaining the basics of reading and understanding sonar. Thought I'd share.

http://doctorsonar.com/pages/lowranc...by-luke-morris