Lowrance Gen 3 HDS-7 Bundles now available

For those of you that have been waiting on the new Gen 3 Lowrance products 

to arrive Greentop has just received HDS-7 Bundles. They are selling them for $1499.99. They also have a few Gen 2 bundles left at a great price as well. There are no rebates on Gen 3 products but for a limited time there are still rebates on the Gen 2 products. Contact Steve at Greentop 804 550 2188.

HDS-7 Gen3 InsightUSA Bundle

83/200 & Structure Scan HD Transducer

Brand New Includes Two Year Warranty

Product # 000-11788-001

• 83/200 kHz Transducer Included
• StructureScan® HD Transducer included
• Optimized for inland lakes & freshwater uses
• Preloaded Insight USA cartography

Cabin Fever

 This shot is from Stonewall Estates up by Tim's Restaurant

 

 High Point Marina

 Down lake side of Holiday Mill Bridge

 522 Bridge over North Anna

Uplake Side of Holiday Mill

Like everyone else I have been sitting inside for the last couple weeks waiting for the weather to break. I have had to cancel/postpone 8 trips due to wind, cold and or ice recently. I popped a couple of pictures today around the lake. Basically the lake is frozen solid to the splits. From the splits to 208 the main portion is open in places where the wind breaks the ice up. Patches of ice are in the main lake down to Sturgeon. All creeks that I looked at were frozen to the main lake. The backs of the down lake creeks were frozen as well. If you can find a place to launch a boat be careful running, there are patches of floating ice through out the lake with the exception of main lake below the power plant. I saw ice thicknesses ranging from 6 inch up and in the backs of creeks to over 3 inches at the 208 bridge in coves. Once the weather breaks I will be back out on the water making up for lost time.

There is one good thing that results from a freeze like this. In all the years that I have been fishing for Stripers on the lake whenever the lake freezes like this fishing the following spring and summer is incredible. Most of the Threadfin die off giving leaving biomass levels down increasing catch success. The fisherman simply does not have to compete with so much bait giving us a better chance to catch fish. Last fall there was so much bait fishermen didn't stand much of a chance catching Stripers, they were full most of the time! I had to actually work areas with no or little bait nearby to catch Stripers. This year will be different.

Lowrance and Simrad Rebates

Navico is giving rebates on some great Lowrance and Simrad units. Here are some of the rebates you can take advantage of. Lowrance rebates run through May 3rd, Simrad run through March 31st.

Stop by Greentop and let Steve or Thomas show you how they work.

Lowrance

ELIGIBLE PRODUCTS AND BUNDLES FOR PROMOTION Check boxes below for Purchased Qualified Products
$300 Rebate:
Purchase any HDS Gen2 Touch Display model with any one of the following:
o LSS-2 StructureScan HD Transducer
o SpotlightScan Transducer o GoFree Module o Point-1 GPS Antenna o SonarHub Sounder Module o Outboard Pilot o Broadband 3G or 4G Radar
$200 Rebate:
o HDS Gen2 Touch + LSS-2 Bundle (any size model)
$100 Rebate:
Purchase any of the units or accessories following:
o HDS Gen2 Touch (any size model) o SpotlightScan
For additional information on eligible products please visit: http://www.lowrance.com

Simrad

ELIGIBLE PRODUCTS FOR PROMOTION
Check boxes below for Purchased Qualified Products
$500 Rebate o 000-11196-001 N SS16 evo2
$400 Rebate o 000-11192-001 NSS12 evo2 o 000-11451-001 NSS12 evo2 w/4G Radar
$300 Rebate o 0 00-11190-001 NSS9 evo2 o 0 00-11450-001 NSS9 evo2 w/4G Radar
$100 Rebate o 0 00-11184-001 NSS7 evo2 & purchase of:
 o H DI SKIMMER XDCR 50/200 455/800KHZ (000-10977-001) o H DI SKIMMER XDCR 83/200 455/800KHZ (000-10976-001)
Check box below for “Free” product in addition to your Visa prepaid card: o “Free” GoFree Module Or o “Free” RS35 VHF Marine Radio
_________________________________________________
$150 Rebate o 000-11674-001 ForwardScanTM XDCR Kit GoFree Module o 000-11184-001 NSS7 evo2 – No Transducer

Reply to Sunday's "What do you think" post

A few days ago I put a screen shot up asking viewers opinion on what they were looking at. I have been posting screen shots on my journal for many years now to help anglers try to understand.....
A...What is going on in the shot and how to interpret what they they are seeing
B...Help fisherman to see and understand what their units are capable of
C...Setting up their units to work properly for the conditions they are fishing
D...General support to Lowrance and Simrad owners
E...What they are missing not using this technology
F...and mainly to give confidence to anglers that they can go fishing and by using a good Depth finder and understanding what they are seeing they can go to any body of water and locate fish, establish patterns and Catch fish.
That being said hopefully I am helping some of you and here the answer to what is on the screen.

  That day fish were pretty lethargic and the only fish that we could pattern well were deep. In this shot I had the boat over 48 feet of water pulling downlines at 40 feet deep. I am using Chirp on my Simrad which shows incredible detail. I tend to use Chirp more when fishing deep and broadband fishing shallower. Lets start off near the bottom of the screen. Remember, I am Chirping which gives me more separation and vivid pics. The bottom shows up on most of the screen as reddish brown highlighted by a bright light green line. The more solid horizontal Brown/green marks are Stripers. The thinner horizontal brown/green lines are my lead sinkers. The squiggly lines near the bottom is my bait that we were using swimming up and down. The more to the center of the cone angle the more pronounced the image is. As the image gets out to the edges of the cone they appear less dense because the signal is less strong. The numerous diagonal lines are White Perch swimming up to feed on a school of 3 inch Herring that are near the surface. The screen moves from right to left, what is happening currently under the boat is on the right side of the screen and as the screen scrolls to the left it becomes history. Therefore the Perch are swimming up toward the surface, not swimming down. Some viewers thought I emptied my bait into the water and they were swimming back down towards the bottom. If that was the case the diagonal lines would start under the school of bait and they would go from the bait to the bottom toward the right side of the screen. Some viewers thought we were reeling in a bunch of Stripers, I only wish that was happening in the picture. I have posted some shots of us reeling in fish in previous posts. Thanks for your opinions and enjoy my future posts. If anyone has questions about Lowrance or Simrad units let me know. If you don't want your questions viewed on the net you can email me at Jim_Hemby@hotmail.com. Lets all hope this weather breaks soon so we can all get out and enjoy boating and fishing.

Some more Simrad Screen Shots

 In this pic we are over 45 feet of water and have our down line baits set between 25 and 30 feet deep. You can see four baits being pulled through the water [ Horizontal lines] and a fish comes up from near the bottom and hits a bait. The fish initially pulls the bait down about 3 feet then we gain control and reel him up to the boat. This Striper does not appear to be very large on the screen but it was a solid 5 pound fish. The fish was out to the edge of my transducer signal and showed up very week on the screen. The closer the fish are to the middle of the ducer cone the stronger the signal appears on the screen.

 In this pic we had located Stripers between 40 and 50 feet deep so we deployed our baits to that depth. You can see four of our baits traveling from near the surface going down to 40 feet. For each bait we put out you can see to distinct images. The more solid signature is the lead sinker and the dotted lines is the baits swimming down. Once the baits are locked into place the sinker stays at a constant depth and you can see the bait swimming up and down on the screen. At the right side of the screen the four baits are in place and the sinker signature is stronger.

This shot was typical of what we saw all day long. We would locate a few fish here and there, nothing ganged up. I am motoring at 4.5 mph looking for fish. Notice a hump on the bottom about a third of the way across the screen. A couple of nice Stripers are suspended above the hump. They may not look too big but I was moving fairly fast. If I was going the speed I fish at they would have showed up larger. About 2/3rds of the way across the screen is a stack of White Perch. They also are suspended. They stack vertically this time of year unless they are feeding, then they will streak. Just before I come up onto this ledge there are a couple more fish. None of these fish in this picture were feeding.

What do you think?

For the last few years I have been posting screen shots on my journal. I wanted to see if anyone has been watching and /or learning from these posts. I popped this screen shot yesterday from my Simrad. Other than a beautiful screen shot can you tell me what is going on in this picture? Let's have some fun and respond back to me with your opinion on what is happening here. I would like to hear from my clients, followers of my journal and facebook, other guides, TV show producers, pro's and friends, other than yesterdays clients [they already know]. Respond on my journal [by commenting], facebook or forum sites. I will repost the picture later in the week with a detailed explanation. Thanks for your responses. Enjoy!

Working hard for Stripers

Dwayne, Ralph and Eric

Cloudy and Pleasant, Water Temperature 41 to 43* and Clear

I got out very early this morning to catch bait and picked the guys up at High Point at first light. The moon was very bright last night which made bait collection tough and fishing today even tougher. We fished hard today and ended up with these nine keeper Stripers. We also caught a few punks and Largemouth. I am hoping the weather will warm a little and stabilize somewhat. All these fronts are messing the Stripers up and making them difficult to pattern. The weather is calling for 65* tomorrow and 16* on Friday???? Go Figure!!! Today we caught fish in 50 foot of water and in 8 feet of water. I am getting really close to patterning these Stripers, I got it narrowed down to 42 feet???? The lake was frozen from Dillard's all the way up at 3 pm today.

Simrad and Lowrance Screen Shots

 This is a Simrad screen shot of a school of 8 inch Gizzard Shad with a Striper just to the right of it. The water temp is COLD and the shad are grouped very tightly. You can see a couple Gizz on the outside edges of the ball of bait. This bait ball is very dense and is depicted by the intense yellow in the center of the ball. Anthony threw on this school and caught enough bait in one throw to go fishing for the day. When I see this on my Simrad I do not fish in the area, fish are not feeding and I will catch O. If that bait was broke up and scattered throughout the screen I would pull baits through it and catch Stripers.

 This is a Lowrance shot of a school of Largemouth Bass. They are relating to the drop off hugging the bottom stacked on top of each other. We dropped a bait down to the Bass and hooked up. It might have been a different story trying to catch them on a spoon or artificial bait, the fish here are not aggressive. If they were more aggressive they would have been higher on the ledge and up on top of the hump. We had our sensitivity up real high here that is why there is so much noise in the pic.

 In this Lowrance shot we are pulling baits at 22 feet deep. Fish had been congregating between 20 to 28 feet deep all day that is why we had our baits set at that depth. You can see the Stripers "stacked like cordwood" right on the bottom. Again, these fish are not in an aggressive mood. We did pop 2 or 3 here but only because we had our baits in their eyes and using live bait. If they were feeding all 10 rods would have hooked up. You can also see fish on the side scan screen. These fish were punk Stripers.

In this Simrad shot the Echo page is showing fish from 20 to 28 feet deep again as it did all day. There is something on the bottom at 22 feet. If you look at down scan on the bottom right side of the screen it is pretty obvious what you are looking at. You can see fish relating to a piece of structure on the bottom. It is obvious that it is a brush pile that they are relating to. We caught Stripers on the deeper side of the brush and Largemouth on the shallower side of the brush. I did not get a pic of the Bass because we were fighting fish at the time. You can also see our Navionics map in the upper right side of the screen. You can see all the breaklines and an obvious tip of a point that we are approaching. We are the black boat in the pic and I have a couple waypoints that I had marked the brush at in previous trips. The white on the map is our Depth Highlights. We highlighted 20 to 24 feet and Navionics automatically shows it on the entire lake that way. When we think fish are in certain depths like they were today we use this feature on the map. It makes it soooo simple to keep the boat in the productive areas enabling us to catch fish almost all day long. When the Navionics map is zoomed out it is clear to see the path you want to keep your boat in. We were pulling down lines and boards with split shot keeping the boat in the "white" area of the map concentrating our down lines in the productive depth but with the boards we were able to cover water 40 yards either side of the boat allowing us to work depths from 10 to 50 feet deep all day.  Today's technology makes my fishing easier and more enjoyable. Simrad and Lowrance are the obvious "Bomb". They show me what is happening under and around my boat. They are my eyes. Without my eyes I can not fish. Imagine doing anything without eyes. If your eyes are not 20/20 you get glasses to see. If your equipment is not seeing 20/20 you need another prescription. Simrad and or Lowrance is the answer. Navionics is my map. It guides me to the areas that I suspect fish to be holding. With one foot depth increments it tells me in advance where fish should be and guides me to them. You see, I paid for a guide [Navionics] and reap the benefits from it every day. My electronics work for me, they should work for you as well. If you need new Glasses or a Guide, go to Greentop Sporting Goods. Thomas Harris is the best in the industry when it comes to Navionics and Steve Lane is the Guru of Electronics. I am not trying to get you to spend money. Heck, you already have buying a boat, a vehicle to tow it with, a place to keep it, rod, reels, tackle, etc. Your time has to be valuable to you. Complete the package. Go to the water with the tools you need to make the most of your adventure. If you want to catch fish and are not happy with your results, this could be the final key to your success!