Underwater screenshots from Harris

I posted the following on the NC Forum and was asked to re-post it on here. I have SI and 360, but did not use them. I find them much more helpful in shallower water and not in the thirty foot water we are fishing right now. The GPS, DI and 2D are very important to our success in Winter fishing. Hope you find some of the screenshots interesting and helpful.

I wanted to share some screenshots from the past two days fishing on Harris. If you include the perch, there were a lot of fish caught on this lake. From looking at these screenshots, you will see that the more baitfish, the more and larger fish there will be up the food chain. We are fortunate in this area to have some lakes with high nitrogen levels that produce lots of plankton which feeds millions of shad. I've also included some shots that will help you see where the fish are located right now.

I thought these three were quite interesting. As you can tell from the clock, they were taken within a seven minute time span. This is the same area JC and Joey caught so many of their perch along with a number of us catching a lot of crappie. The screenshots clearly show you were you had better be fishing. You can see from the third shot that the back on the boat has gotten to far up on this point and no fish.

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Not all of the fish were deep, as evidenced by this shot. Note the time on the second shot--the morning fish were much more shallow and they moved deeper as the sun came up.

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I'll post several feeding and resting fish. It's obvious the predators are at work on the schools of shad. It is amazing to me how many fish are down below these schools on the bottom. I think these are "resting" fish that have already fed. Getting these fish to bite was not always easy. I think some of the more successful teams from yesterday were fishing for the active fish suspended higher in the water column.

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In this photo, you can see I am using the I-Pilot link and have created a track that I am following. I think the screenshot explains exactly why I am following this track.

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Here are some miscellaneous shots that I hope will help you catch more fish. Understanding how they pattern themselves in the Winter can help you find them.

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JL .... those "resting" fish might also be larger fish, or even fish of a different species, just hanging out under the carnage going on in the baitfish schools, waiting for an injured/dead one to flutter down to them. Easy meal with little to no effort !!

I know it's each to their own, but I still fail to see where 2d screens are of any major benefit when the DI screen is showing a much better rendition of what's actually down there. And when you use the full screen in DI ... whoa !! It's almost as good as having a camera down there.

I sometimes hear people say they like the DI so they can better interpret what the 2d is showing them :banghead :deadhorse :scratchhead (to which I say "to myself" ... then why do you even bother with the 2d images, in the first place, if you need the DI image to interpret the 2d image :Doh: ) Old habits are hard to break, I guess :biggrin

... cp :kewl

Great image shots. I am in same corner as Pappy on the 2d sonar. I find myself lost without the si and di....but the 2d is just not something I pay a lot of attention to....if at all.


Regards

I like those shots ...

:ThumbsUp

Rickie

The 2D only helps me on the boat. We have the 8" Onix and with a quick glance at the screen, I can see if we are over fish or not. This time of year with the crappie stacked in the deeper depths, I keep the three windows open on the screen: GPS, 2D and DI. Most of the DI shots you see are where I quickly changed screens to DI-only for the purpose of a good screen shot.

The screenshots are a big help to me as I take a good bit of time studying them back at the house. There is no real structure in this lake, so they tend to stand around some kind of physical change, such as over the bank of a channel or either at the top or just at the bottom and a drop-off. Having a good GPS map is critical in being able to fine-tune just exactly where I want to fish. We normally fish 2-hook rigs with 3/4 ounce weights this time of year and either on the bottom or a couple of turns up. It's all about what we are seeing on the screen. Hope this helps.

JL,THEY ARE GOOD SHOTS,FOR THE PEOPLE THAT DO NOT KNOW HARRIS HAS A WARM WATER DISCHARGE,HOW DID U DO IN THE CONTEST,I KNOW U WILL BE GLAD WHEN JORDAN IS FISHERABLE AGAIN AND I WILL BE GLAD WHEN BUGGS KERR LAKE IS BACK TO NORMAL,WILL BE FISHING GASTON TILL THEN

We were just outside the top three--had just a little over 7 pounds. We caught a lot of fish in the one-lb. size with 1.23 being our largest, but could not get a big one in the boat. Freddie got one a little over 2 lbs. and and ended up the day with just over 10 lbs. to win the tournament. I'll bet it will be two weeks before Jordan is fishable again. I just checked and Jordan is a little over 232, sixteen feet above normal level.

Thanks for the shots. Interesting stuff... I too like to use 2D and DI in split screen.

2D is very useful to mark an accurate waypoint or in positioning the boat over an object.