This is a screen shot of non feeding Stripers stratified between 22 to 25 feet deep. These Stripers are not in a feeding mode. They are very docile and content to stay in that tight formation. We put baits in their faces but after working them for 20 minutes we only caught a couple of fish.
This is a picture of a small school of bait with a few fish beside them.
These Stripers are feeding and we are catching them. Notice the arches are streaking. Nicer fish out to the right side of the boat as shown on side scan.
Stripers feeding and scattered through the water column.
This is a school of catfish. I had a light hung off the front of my boat catching Herring and this is a shot off of the back of the boat where I was culling the baits I wanted for the bait tank and throwing the rest back into the water. I had fish breaking all around the back of the boat and I put out a couple of lines and could not keep the Cats off the hooks. Notice the differences in the Catfish in this shot verses the Stripers in some of the other shots. Stripers are very hard bodied with a larger swim bladder and reflect the pings from the depthfinder better than the catfish with soft bodies, numerous appendages and small bladders. The harder or denser the reflection, the more color will show in the image of the fish on the screen [in this case red for Stripers].
This is a school of Herring hugging the bottom. These baits are extremely packed tightly on each other and are very dense. Again the red color shows how dense the school is. If the bait was loosely packed the school would have showed up yellow in color. This is what I look for when I want to catch daytime herring when they are deep. Even though they are 20 to 28 feet deep, they are so crowed together that when I throw my net they cant get out of the way of it. A big heavy net helps as well.
Bunches of feeding Stripers.
Sometimes Stripers school so tight that they are hard to distinguish between fish or bait. Lately I have been finding schools of Stripers that are extremely tight, as shown in this screen shot. I ran over this school about 20mph then I dropped the boat off plane and returned to the spot, put baits out and caught fish. I also called one of my other guides back to that part of the lake and he saw numerous schools like this in the general area. We would only catch fish when we were directly over them.
This day fish were hard to find and hugging the bottom. This is a Largemouth on the bottom and if you look at the right side of side scan you can see other fish [white dashes] laying on the bottom and also see their shadows out beyond them. Notice on my chart I am up on top of a ridge that dumps off into deep water nearby. More Bass are shallower to the right side of my boat which is a Classic location for nice deep Bass that don't see many artificial baits.
This is a school of Punks scattered over a couple of acres right in the channel [channel is highlighted in brown on my Navionics chart].
Here I am running over humps about 16mph marking Largemouths on the ledges of drop-offs.
Hope you enjoy the shots, click on them to enlarge.
Jim_Hemby@hotmail.com www.JimHemby.com
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