What A Change

Went fish'n yesterday for the first time in about 3 months. Sunday the water temp in Big Bear was 85. Yesterday the warmest I found was 73. Twelve degree drop in 3 days ain't real good for fish'n but I went anyway. Man it was ruff! I'm talk'n bow dive'n ruff! The wind was blow'n right in the bay. Waves had a long way to build. It was like try'n to fish while set'n on a mechanical bull.

I did manage to catch a lot of fish. All but 3 were 5 1/2" to 8 1/2" fish and were mostly white crappie. Looked like 2 separate year classes. When I say I caught a lot, I mean well over 100 dinks. Just about as fast as you could drop a jig in the water. My Bamboo beds were LOADED! They were about 7' to 8' deep over 13' to 14' of water. Still ain't figured out where the big boys are. I got plum tired of catch'n dinks! On the bright side, yesterday looked good got the future.

We may have an early start to the "Fall Bite".

Had to be crazy on the lake yesterday. A country boy ROCKIN AND ROLLIN!!!

I fished yesterday and had 16 keeper crappie and caught 90 small fish. Some where 8 inches but the most of them were 6 inches long. Going to be on in a couple of years.

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Originally Posted by Slab Slayer

I fished yesterday and had 16 keeper crappie and caught 90 small fish. Some where 8 inches but the most of them were 6 inches long. Going to be on in a couple of years.

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Did you fish Kentucky Lake? How deep were you finding fish?

Was catching the good fish at 16 feet.

Went again today & caught about 50 dinks & 11 keepers.

Got tired of fighting the wind at 1:30, brought home these 13. Turned loose a couple of bigger ones that I would have needed a chainsaw to fillet. 14-18fow was best for me.

http://i1205.photobucket.com/albums/...1981/001-3.jpg

I've been catching pretty good @ around 9'-10' up here. Funny thing is back in July and early August when it was super hot, I killed em at 6'
Then buggers were everywhere.
http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/o...kBarnes001.png

I don't know what the deeper fish were, they wouldn't hit.
Crappies were on top

Crappiemax,
Please explain to me a little of what is going on in the graph on the left.
Just curious for my education. Is this a side image display? I am still only familar with the older style graphs, but one day going to get something new.
Thanks,

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Originally Posted by colayn

Crappiemax,
Please explain to me a little of what is going on in the graph on the left.
Just curious for my education. Is this a side image display? I am still only familar with the older style graphs, but one day going to get something new.
Thanks,

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I'll give you a little of my interpretation. The white specs in the bottom half of the display are fish. You can see their shadows above the "pm" in the time display which gives an indication of how far off the bottom they are. If you look around, you'll see some fish close to their shadows, meaning close to the bottom, and some a long way away, meaning off the bottom.

There are some small objects and long shadows that kind of give me the idea that it might be a stake bed the fish are holding on. You can see the shadows on the lower left and what could be stakes near the ccenter line just above the 41 in the time.

The line in the middle is the path the boat took, and the wider dark region around it is a result of the depth of the water. The fact that the wider part stays parallel and the same width tells you that the bottom is fairly flat, although it is slightly shallower at the bottom of the display.

Just my interpretation.

Left screen is SI, upper right is DI. Lower right is 2D sonar.
The whie blips are shadows. The dark blips are shadows. Dark lines (lower left near speed)are shadows from trees (not stake, but good guess)
On SI "0" is the boat to the right and left of boat down to the white line @ 20' that is the water depth. To the right and left of the bottom line that is the Side imaging. There not really much there except a few stick-ups.
If you look at the DI and sonar there are 2 distint groups of fish. The upper group are crappie, I have no idea what the lower group is.
Those crappie were spread over a pretty good size area(actually we found several areas like this). The water temp was upper 80's even to the low 90's, it was mid day and those crappies were very active, they stayed that way the whole time it was hot.
Now that the water is cooling down the fish dropped deeper and are tighter to structure....go figure!

Thanks guys for the explanation. The DI is the most confusing for me, never have seen one in use on the water.
How is the shadow generated by sonar ? Is it something the computer puts there simulating a light condition ?
Again I appriciate the help, big believer in my sonar, but still living in the 2D black and white world.

Good fishing to you,

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Originally Posted by colayn

Thanks guys for the explanation. The DI is the most confusing for me, never have seen one in use on the water.
How is the shadow generated by sonar ? Is it something the computer puts there simulating a light condition ?
Again I appriciate the help, big believer in my sonar, but still living in the 2D black and white world.

Good fishing to you,

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The shadow is real. Just like a shadow is generated by an object blocking light, on the sonar the object reflects some of the sound making a lower reflection from the objects behind it.

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Originally Posted by CatFan

The shadow is real. Just like a shadow is generated by an object blocking light, on the sonar the object reflects some of the sound making a lower reflection from the objects behind it.

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X2 if sonar can't penetrate it leaves a shadow.
Did anyone else find the bite getting deeper lately?

Did anyone else find the bite getting deeper lately?[/QUOTE]

Yes, I thought they moved a littel deeper yesterday, maybe 5 feet
Water temp dropped 13 degrees last week !!