Some more Simrad screen shots

 This is a shot of a typical Largemouth pattern in the winter. Bass are hugging the bottom

nearby an irregular feature. At Anna it doesn't take much for Bass to relate to. We caught 2 Bass at once here, both were 3 pounders.

 This is a cool pic here. On the bottom is a school of Stripers. We were easing off of a 25 foot
flat and hit Stripers at 35 feet.You can see 4 of the baits [long horizontal lines] we were pulling between 20 and 25 feet deep. There were 2 rods on the back of my boat and 2 rods eight feet in front of the other 2. The lower bait gets hit and the fish pulls drag as it heads for the bottom. Once I noticed the school I slowed the boat down to about a quarter mile per hour. The baits dropped down into the fish and they got jammed. We needed more help here reeling in these fish than we had on the boat. Guess what type of fish these were????  Wrong.....Largemouth Bass!

 I had left my Navionics card in my Lowrance that I was demoing at last weeks boat show so I had my map on Insight. The sonar page is showing a couple fish at 22 feet. It also shows some of our baits being pulled through the fish. The squiggly line near the bottom and then rising to the surface is a fish we were fighting for awhile. It made a run to the bottom then we tired it out and could reel it to the boat.

In this shot we are over 50 foot of water and had been pulling baits around 25 feet deep [2 horizontal light lines]. I noticed the fish were deeper and not rising up to attack our baits so Anthony dropped a down line [vertical line] down till I told him to engage the reel. Three seconds later he hooked up.

These fish relating just to the bottom with no irregular features around them are a pod of Largemouth. You can barely see 3 baits being pulled through the water column at 23, 28 and 32 feet of water. The bottom bait hooked up and you can see Greg fighting a 23 inch Citation Bass to the boat [ziz zag marks to the right of the Bass].

Depth Finders 101...

I have been off the water for 2 months. It was so foggy we could only see 1 boat length ahead of the boat for about 4 hours. I could not run to where I wanted to fish so we relied on our Simrad and Lowrance to locate fish for us. I idled out of the ramp and eventually started seeing fish. We simply put baits in their faces and started catching fish. Once the fog lifted we were still in sight of where we had launched. We caught all these fish in an area that I seldom fish. Why?????? because I trusted my electronics! 

Too many anglers own expensive Locaters and don't use them to their advantage. They fish the same areas every time they go out, they look for other boats catching fish or search for birds to tell them where the fish are. They call their friends up before going fishing asking "Where did you catch bait or where did you catch fish or where is Hemby, Cobb and Harris or some other good fisherman fishing".  You paid for the Depth Finders, USE them. Take the next step. Forget where you use to catch fish, fish move constantly. Don't look for other fisherman to sneak up on or fish their areas after they leave, go find fish for yourself. I guarantee you will become a better fisherman and certainly feel better about yourself  going out and locating your own fish. Fishing is so rewarding for the ones who work to find their own fish. Chances are you will catch not only more fish but bigger fish working areas that are seldom fished. If you need help learning how to use your depth finders get some friends together, book a trip , catch some fish and go away with the confidence to go out and do it on your own.