Fish with chuck the perch wisperer today from 2 till dark. At first spot fish were at 25 to 27 foot. We caught lots of crappie and only kept 11 inches or better. The fish never did turn off but chuck wanted to see if we could find some perch. We found some in 22 fow. We ended up catching 23 perch. Also caught a few eyes one keeper and 2 cats and whitebass. Very fews boats out today.
I bet I know what it looked like. 1st spot I pulled up on last night my fish finder was absolutely full of nice red marks. I've never seen it completely full like that. Caught a couple crappie right away and then funny thing is they moved and I couldn't find them again. There were some giant bait balls moving around so they might have been positioning the fish.
Nice! Thanks for the screenshot deerfarmer. Love seeing those as I'm still trying to learn my electronics. I'd love to figure out how to catch perch on alum. Never caught one...
Great catch. Plenty of good eaten there. I have to ask,,? Was there, if any, a difference between your crappie spot and the place you caught the perch in? In one of the lakes I fish I hardly if ever get crappies and perch in the same location. The perch seem to be more deep weed oriented till the weeds start dieing off then we find them with the gills on the clay and or mud flats.
Nice Job
Do you give lesson? Just started fishing Alum and Hover again this year .I do better at Hover for Bass ,but once all the play boats are off Alum I plan on hitting it hard for the fall bite.I hope I have a few days like yours lol
Sorry for the newbie question, but I'm trying to learn electronics: what distinguishes this screen image from a thermocline? I might have interpreted this incorrectly had I seen it, given its consistency and depth. Is this a cloud of baitfish just above the bottom?
The screen shot is a large school of crappie with bait fish mixed in. If you notice there are fish stacked form 20 to 27 foot. Thermocline looks more like a fuzzy line. But at alum the thermocline is also around 25 foot.
Thanks, Steve. After blowing up the screen shot that makes a lot of sense. I've been marking what I thought was a thermocline around that depth on Alum. Thus the confusion. This really helped a lot. I appreciate your post!
Fish with my friend Ralph yesterday. We met at the ramp at 10am and he had to leave at 2. We found the fish in the same places they were in on thursday in 25 foot of water. In the 4 hours we fished together it was pretty much non-stop. He left with 25 crappie all over 11 inches and another 12 perch. While he was there we caught lots of smaller crappie also but we were only keeping the larger ones. After he left I had lunch at the marina deli. The rest of day I spend looking for more spots. I found numerous spots that had fish and most of them were in 20 + feet of water. I even went to the middle section of the lake and found a couple spots. I fished by myself until dark and kept
another 20 or so large crappie and another 3 perch. Only one small eye yesterday,one smallmouth, but did get two large cats both in the 5 to 7 pound range.
Nice reports. Was there last evening also in mid pool looking for bass (ie trash fish [emoji12]). Found a few but no size to them.
My question to you: when you are looking for spots are you pretty much always using traditional down sonar? And then once you find em do you just spot lock over top and fish vertically? Or are you staying on the move to stay with school?
Still learning the electronics but I had this last weekend and was hoping it was a little school of crappies but turned out to be blue gills and white bass (to the side in the shallower water). Have really been studying up on what things look like on electronics so thought I'd throw this out on this thread.
Also, deerfarmer, on your first pic of your school of crappies you were sitting still at that point in time correct?
Again my disclaimer. I have only been drop shotting for two years so I'm not an expert. I usually have a pretty good idea where the fish are from my last trip out. But if I have to start looking I usually just use traditional sonar to locate fish. This time of year I know fish aren't going to be below the thermocline so I start looking in 30 fow and shallower. I just start running over contour lines until I start seeing fish. Once I find what depth the fish seem to be holding in I will start holding on that contour line until I find a school of fish. If that doesn't work I will turn on the side imaging to start to look for structure that is holding fish. Once I find them my goal in to stay right over top of them with my I electronic anchor. Sometime I'm fishing a spot that is only 2 or 3 feet wide and on a windy day it can be really hard to stay on top of the spot. The last couple days the fish haven't been very active and the bite has be really light but the fish seem to be holding in one spot and not moving around much. Two years ago I couldn't catch late summer crappies so I set a goal of trying to figure it out. I think I'm finally starting to catch on.
In the sonar picture the left side of screen is my front transducer and the right side of sceen is the rear transducer. I have a 17 foot boat so you can see a few feet makes a big different. I set my spot lock right over top of the fish but the anchor is always correcting itself. So I point my boat into the wind and set the spotlock so it drifts over the school. I have 3 transducers front,middle, and rear. And I fish under which ever one I see fish on.
Thanks for the explanation. Still trying to build confidence in what I'm seeing on the electronics. This helps a lot. You definitely seem to be getting it figured out
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