Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Simrad Screen Shots

 
 These screen shots can be clicked on to enlarge.

Deceiving screen shot. 
This shot shows 4 or 5 fish on the sonar 5 to 10 foot deep. They appear to be nice fish due to their color but in fact they are only 12 to 14 inch fish. The reason is they are so close to the transducer and the reflection of the pings is so much stronger at that short distance. The fish at 25 feet are 3 pound Stripers. They appear larger due to the length of the arch but notice the boat is almost still, I am only going a half mile an hour. If they were nicer fish they would also have more color in the center of them. To associate them with the side scan, the A's are the same fish and the B's are the same fish. When you look at side scan the boat is at the top of the side scan screen at the 0 mark. Everything below it is history. On sonar the boat is at 0 and everything to the left of it is history. Presuming I was going .5mph when I popped the picture the B fish are about 30 feet behind the boat. On side scan the darker blue is the water column and at 36.9 feet out either side it picks up the bottom then the beam shoots out to the sides of the boat 120 feet similar to a flood light. I am posting this pic to demonstrate how when using side scan you can see that the B fish are about 5 to 10 [deep] feet from the boat and the A fish are 25 feet [deep] from the boat in the side scan portion of the screen shot.

 In this shot I was running about 25mph when I ran over this hump and notice numerous fish relating to it. I slowed down [you can see the surface clutter on the right side of the sonar page near the surface which is my boat coming off plane] to turn back around and work the fish. When traveling 25mph structure scan still works but does not show single fish at that speed. I use my sonar page primarily to locate fish at higher speeds then once I locate them I use both to get back on them and to determine their size.

In this shot I am marking keeper Stripers between 20 and 25 feet deep clearly on my sonar screen. The fish show up on my side scan as lighter vertical dashes. These are feeding Stripers. They are streaking in the sonar shot [swimming up and down] and wiggly on the side scan view. Notice on side scan some fish are larger than others and on the right side you can actually see the shadows of the fish which indicate larger fish. Side Scan is like shining a flood light out to the sides of the boat, the objects appear lighter and the shadows are behind them. The larger the shadow the bigger the object. If I were looking at structure on the bottom of the lake, I would see the structure clearly and could estimate how high the structure came off the bottom by the size of the shadow behind it.

Although these are screen shots taken off of my Simrad, Lowrance shots are similar. I post these shots to help my clients understand what they are looking at when they are on the water to help them locate and catch fish more proficiently.


Friday, August 19, 2016

A Great Morning on Lake Anna

 When you find this

 You should end up with this!
Sunny, Mikki, Taz and Will

 Mikki and her big one

Will with a nice Bass

Sunny and Warm, water Temperature 88*
This morning I put 200 Herring in the tank, picked my clients up and taught them how to deploy the baits. I then located a school of Stripers and set down on them. As I was baiting everyone the Stripers started blowing up around me and anxiety to say the least hit an all time high. They could only get a couple baits down before someone would screw things up but eventually after cutting 7 lines apart that got tangled the fish started hitting the deck. For 45 minutes it was constant action and by 7:30 we had 17 Stripers in the box. After the rush was over I looked, and looked and looked for other schools with no success. Finally I just set up on some structure and Mikki popped her nice Striper and we caught a few nice Bass. This morning the fishing was intense to say the least but the crew got it together and pulled it off. They thought they were going to have a leisurely morning sitting around reeling in a fish here and there....NOT.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Wednesdays Catches

 The Roberts Family

 Fred, Mike, Jillian, Josh and Scott

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 90* and Clear
Got back on the water after spending a couple weeks at the beach and Tony and I put our clients on some nice Stripers.


Saturday, August 06, 2016

Tony's Recent Catches

 Edward, Nathan, Drayton, Andrew and Doug

 Robert, Cody and Casey


Lowrance and Simrad Screen Shots

 In this Lowrance pic I had just thrown my cast net. You can see the net completely open on side scan. To the uneducated eye it appears like the net is falling sideways vrs horizontal but it is in fact falling perfectly. Side Scan is looking out to the side of the boat similar to a flashlight beam. The depth of the water is 22 feet, the surface being 0. The transducer is picking up the net as a side view falling through the water [dark blue] clearly showing the sinkers on the bottom of the net. I threw on some bait that were on the surface trapped in the top and right side of the net which slowed the decent of the net on that side.

 In this pic I threw on a very large school of bait and the diagonal line is the net falling through the bait. The screen is scrolling from right to left so the net hit the surface in the middle of the shot and fell straight to the bottom but because the screen is scrolling it appears that the net sunk at an angle.

 In this screen shot you can clearly see a major school of bait with a couple fish near the bottom of the school.
 This is another shot with a couple fish [yellow marks] in the middle of the bait.


 This Simrad shot shows where I scrolled back and looked at Stripers I had gone over a few minutes prior to taking the shot. Even after the fish have left the screen you can touch and drag the screen back into history and view the screen and if I wanted to return exactly to the spot simply waypoint it. I would then use my chart to return to the waypoint. On the Navionics chart above you can see my boat and that I was on the edge of the channel [brown area].

This shot is a school of punks. The arches are small, very little color in the arches and as you can see on side scan very small dashes out to the sides of the boat. Learn to identify what fish and size of the fish before you waist your bait and time working non keeper fish.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Wednesday's Catch

Christian, Adrian, Wesley, Nathan

Tony continues to lay the smack down on the Stripers
 by putting his clients on nice ones.

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Rockin the Stripers

Tony put his crew on the Stripers this morning. Robbie, Eric, Jason, Gary, Wayne and Kyle. Gary practices catch and release or they would have had all their limits.