SI interpretation 6/4 (drop shot deep gills)

Went out this morning to try and find some deep water gills. While they are bedding it's not a problem but after they come off bed I'm used to catching dinks. After reading how they move out deep off gravel or rocky points I picked out several points that dropped off deep. Due to wanting to see hard bottom mixed in with the mud I changes over to red/green pallet. This was the 3rd point I looked at and the red was not located in the other two locations.

I would run my pass while making a recording then pull off and review the spot. (Greg! your the man!!! worked great!) In this location I finally saw red indicating hard bottom.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps5f34909f.png

I then changed over to my normal blue pallet but was not seeing what I thought should be there.


http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps6f11a5ac.png

As I went through the pallets I came to brown and was getting better.


http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps3b802805.png


I then went from sharpness off to sharpness on and could tell the point was holding fish. Notice in the red/green shot the long shelf of gravel. The top of the point in this shot is more of dots which I took as fish. The shelf was more of a blur. Now to see if what I was looking at was what we were after.


http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psfb6c0fab.png


The wife and I went back and dropped a marker over the right group of fish and never left that spot. We used a drop shot rig with crickets and hooked one after the other. Great day with the better half and a new spot to boot.

Hope this info helps someone.


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Very nice write up!! Thanks for taking the time. Nice shots and I learned something new!

Now that's getting your money's worth out of that unit...

:ThumbsUp

Rickie

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Originally Posted by Redge

Very nice write up!! Thanks for taking the time. Nice shots and I learned something new!

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glad it helped Redge, hope others can use the info as well.

Great post, slabbacks. Very good lesson on Settings.:highfive

These are my favorite types of posts. I sure can learn a lot from you guys! Thanks much for taking the time to share this!

Very good example SB, of the differences you can show with different colors. When you went from blue to brown, I could see the fish POP. And the numbers went way up when you bumped the sharpness up....thanks

Nice shots but why is there a big difference in the water temp 89 vs 81 ???

Are you taking the snapshots and saving them on the SD card and then changing the palette colors, for study and such, just curious.

great shots,keep them coming,looks like you and wife got into them

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Originally Posted by jimp

Nice shots but why is there a big difference in the water temp 89 vs 81 ???

Are you taking the snapshots and saving them on the SD card and then changing the palette colors, for study and such, just curious.

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jimp, temp I'm not sure about. I pulled that one shot from the recording for this post to show blue vs brown.

In reference to the shots and reviewing them, I was using shots but Greg explained about using a recording instead. Tons of more info to look at and play with. I would hit record and make a pass over the location I had picked out. I then just stop the recording and the boat. When I reviewed the recording I was able to freeze the screen by pushing the down arrow key when I saw something of interest. I adjusted Sen., Contrast, color pallet and sharpness to name a few but these were the main ones.

Really helped in finding a honey hole...If I would have just used a blue pallet with regular settings I would have passed this spot up.

HB units do not "record" the temperature during the recording process....

I'm pretty sure the temp being displayed (at any point)... is the current temp that the probe is seeing...(even during recording playback)...

Rickie

Rickie that's it then. Those shots with the higher temp was on the water and the other I went out to the boat under the car port to watch the recording again to pull the blue screen. Never got one on the water and wanted it for this.

:ThumbsUp This why I like doing these post, I always learn something new from others comments. THX

Very nice. I've always wanted to try bluegills in deep water. Several years ago Al Linder did a show about summertime bluegill. He was vertical jigging and catching them in 20-25' of water, he caught some pigs too.

Way to go Slabbacks!! Thanks for the effort in helping us learn.!!

Explain the hour glass shape. I'm assuming depth difference, but which is shallow and which is deep?

With SI, the more narrow the water column.....the part in the middle....the shallower the water.

Sonar pings back faster in shallow water, so less dead space( black area)?

What are the clouds in the black area? Sorry for the questions but I'm really interested in this down the road.

That is a whole lot of useful stuff there, thanks slabbacks for taking the time to post this, that is unbelievable man, keep on teaching fellas, I love it.

Here's a quick video that shows how the processor takes the 3 dimensional underwater world and "paints" it into a 2 dimensional SI image...it may help understand the layout of the SI image on the unit display...

http://youtu.be/gsS-Lgg4HD0

Rickie

tcounty ask away, this is how we both learn.

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Originally Posted by tcounty

Explain the hour glass shape. I'm assuming depth difference, but which is shallow and which is deep?

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http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps0b58c56c.png

look at it this way. the top of the ridge or top of the point is marked. then the base is marked or at least the main part of it. look at the top right of the screen...30 some feet. if you take your boat from A to B keeping the point to your right you stay in the channel but slowly come up in depth.

move right from B to C and the tip of the point is going by and you are also coming up in depth along the flat. From C to D it gets even shallower with the point still on your right as shown by the two thick blue lines showing depth greater at the top. you are heading to the start of the point up near the bank.

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The clouds in the black part or water column of this shot tells you that we have some fish and bait in there. Fish show up as more of dots and bait more of a cloud. also in the other shots as stated this is prop wash from my boat. hope it helps

Thanks. It's awesome technology , but I don't know if I can figure it out. Would be nice to ride around scanning for fish.

More More More this is great. Showed my wife and she said so u just didn't throw away $1,500 bucks. Then she said you just don't know how to use yours. LOL!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by Bean2302

More More More this is great. Showed my wife and she said so u just didn't throw away $1,500 bucks. Then she said you just don't know how to use yours. LOL!!!!!!

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:Rofl wife justification could be part of it as well i guess.

Tell her , because you respect the family budget, you went cheap.
Realizing your error, you ordered this:
http://www.thegpsstore.com/Furuno-MU...tor-P3952.aspx

Great info thanks!

Enjoyed this thread and the info shared in it. Thanks guys :)

Slabback,can you post a contour may of a area like you are talking about,not one of your good spots ,just a area that one would be looking for.thanks

Just sent a PM to another member who had the same type Q genec. When I get home I'll fix it up and post in the morning.

thanks

genec

These are some shots in reference to what I found as productive points vs ones that did not produce the size and numbers of gills.
do not reference the cursor as the fishing location (this was just the best fit of the screen for the shot)

When I first started I was just looking for points to scan but found that points with sharp drops left and right and a flat about half way through produced better. These locations needed to show some type of structure, stumps brush ect it seemed to get the most fish to hold as you saw in the earlier SI shots.

These shots show points that match both and the ones I found to be better. The first two show roughly how the slope was compared to the contour map for those that are just learning to use them.

Notice how this point has a slow steady drop going to the end with no flat.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psc09f44fe.png



This point has a good drop leading to a flat and a hump at the end. It also had good drop left and right to deeper water.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...ps7d654b61.png







The following shots show the same and with the aid of the graph up top you will see how to read the contour lines and see the difference in each area. The spots that produced the biggest and most gills were the ones I went over in SI and found a combination of the flat, drops each side and structure. Red/Green showed if I had a gravel or rock bottom that met the mud and silt. Soft bottom points had hardly any fish that I found. Hope it puts ya on some and better help those who asked about this.

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As i understand ,you like best a drop off on each side of a point and having a feeding flat,then look for rocks and hard bottom,but the flat do not have to be the spot where the fish will be,it looks like on your lake you majored on 15 to 25 feet but the flat was shallower,so i would not have to find a flatas deep as the fish are for they could move up to feed at their own time,low to no light condition? Correct me if i am wrong, also did not see any defind creeks near,just slowly tapering down till it made or meet a creek drop off? Thanks,i am sure many can use this information

" also did not see any defined creeks near,just slowly tapering down till it made or meet a creek drop off? "

genec these shots being pulled from the HB map dont show the channel, that's a good point you brought up that I forgot to mention. The main channel was at the tip or ran along one side and the tip of the point where I was taking fish. One location I fished had a feeder creek coming in from the right and the main channel ran along the left, they met out near the tip. I found on most of the points that were not near a channel were more mud or silt bottom.

" the flats do not have to be the spot where the fish will be"

I saw fish along the flat but most were closer to the structure.

"it looks like on your lake you majored on 15 to 25 feet but the flat was shallower,so i would not have to find a flat as deep as the fish are for they could move up to feed at their own time"

The depth range was based on location where I saw large groups of fish. When I first went out I was just looking at points but soon found the points in a certain depth range, had flats and structure with drops near a channel just held more fish. I think they are holding there due to having everything they need in one spot. (This was the first time I've taken gills like this well after they have came off beds. Some of the guys on the bream forum told me about it and went searching)

The lower shots are from KY Lake, just north of here. They show points that matched what I found down here that produced and those that did not. If I wanted to go up there and fish I would have used this as a starting point to try and find them. I could change once I saw something different or hopefully stayed with this to get them.

got ya,thanks

Great info...hopefully SI is in my future shortly. Thanks for posting.

This is a great post. I used my si to kill the Gills and shell crackers in the spring and have in the past two weeks started using it to look for the deep water Gills at Center Hill Lake and Laurel Hill Lake. I had seen an article about the red green color palette before but your description is really helpful. Laurel Hill is a 300 acre man made TWRA Lake and it is basically a scooped out hole without a lot of contour...no gravel or rocks. So doing a search in a kayak can be time consuming. I did find some suspended in 27 feet of water on a hump coming out of 50 feet of water. They were at 10-15 foot depth and were moving but got 20 of them before I lost contact with them. Tried using your method at Center Hill but I was not in the right place. Did find them under the docks though. I was surprised I didn't find any deep water gravel but I was just not in right location. I have put off getting a map card but need to do so. Until reading how you did the recording I never thought about pulling over and going through my adjustments...a great tip. In looking back at some of my snapshots I see where I missed fish. Thanks much for the great info.


Regards

One of the guys that I fish with used it on center hill and said the point close too locations where he saw pea gravel along the bank was the ones that produced. He also said he took nice shell cracker off some of the bluff wall down deep.


May be harder to get to in a yak than a boat with motor but try those type locations next time. Good luck

Alphahawk,
I remember fishing Laurel Hill as a kid with my father and on of his friends....one trip we caught gills out of about 25 feet of water it seems like all day long. Dad's friend knew how to find and catch them out deep, this was late 60's o early 70's and we did not have any electronics at all. I may have to put that one on my bucket list along with Reelfoot.

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Originally Posted by slabbacks

One of the guys that I fish with used it on center hill and said the point close too locations where he saw pea gravel along the bank was the ones that produced. He also said he took nice shell cracker off some of the bluff wall down deep.


May be harder to get to in a yak than a boat with motor but try those type locations next time. Good luck

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Yeah I was in the wrong spot..and I knew that. I have fished Center Hill for years but it was from a boat. The bluff fishing for Gills is always good in summer there. But in a kayak I have to tread lightly so to speak...LOL. Too many boats come way too close for comfort. So I have to pick my days and spots carefully. Once again thanks for the great info.

Regards