J-Doc

You must have charted that spot before I got there several weeks ago. I saw you randomly "Willy-nilly" all over the place Saturday. Lol (Just pickin) This technique is used for chart plotting by Lowrance for creating contours for unknown lakes. Certain new Lowrance units have this feature. If anyone was smart, they would do this prefishing for bass tournaments too. But.....people are too proud to be informed. They would rather use history, instincts, and BASS articles they read while on the throne (I know, I used to do that). THERE!! Now that visual is in your head!! HA!!!

He's not joking either. I showed him my Plano box full of Flickers as I'm building my collection slowly and on a wife budget. He almost passed out.

Final shot. This is the one that got my blood pressure going.

Another teaser shot....

When he says there are fish there........he's not kidding. See below. While Scott was schmoozing with another boater, I had marked some stripers in 30-40ft over a 60ft drop on a previous trolling run with flickers. I went back to those spots to try a 1/2oz white jigging spoon. I found the stripers in 20-30ft so they were moving up. I couldn't stay on the fish long enough to keep them in my graph. I would find them, drop the spoon and count to about 8 before I could hit 10ft, thus 16 seconds later and the fish would have move out of my graph already. I had a hard time keepin on the fish. Then this massive school appeared and I snapped a screenshot. I got one nibble. The spoon was totally in the middle of them several times. I figured I'd snag one it was so thick. Seems like the bite picked up around 3 after I left. I've read several reports where the bite picked up around 3 and after.

Or bite my jigging spoon. I was on a massive school bit they were moving around so fast, as soon as I would graph the., I'd drop the spoon and watch it fall. By the time it sank 20ft, the screen would slowly clear. Darn buggers!!! I've got some screen shots I'll post later after dinner (with the wife). (Put the phone away. ....Put the phone away....geez!)

I was going to go but the fish were calling my name.

You are correct. They do have a habbit of being where and when you least expect and YES.....they are tasty treats!! I'll report what i find....if I find anything. Feathers&Fins will be out. You know he will proivde his weekly blurb/report. lol Speaking of tasty treats. I know what I'm doing this weekend. Breaking out the Holland and griling some fresh striper during all of this crazy winter snow junk they are predicting. YUM!

I think it's still a bit early myself for them to be that far up river. I am going to Horseshoe Ben and work my way down from there. May end up in War Eagle before day is done.

I was hoping for that was not the case but I believe you're correct. I was hoping to hit that end of the river myself tomorrow for a while before all the weather breaks loose.

After fishinwrench's earlier mis-read and accusation of Oldplug...........I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I mis-read this one above!!

After fishinwrench's earlier mis-read and accusation of Oldplug...........I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I mis-read this one above!!

Agreed on hours of use. My buddy Joe drop shots without the graph as well. True drop shot for vertical presentation uses the graph though.

Have you had luck with drop shot before on your boat? Can you tell the difference between a rock and a fish when they're both on the bottom? What I mean is, if you see a blip on the very bottom in 30ft, do you know how to tell if it's a fish, a rock, a catfish, etc? That is where you need to focus on learning (as do we all and myself included). If you have color sonar turned on, you want the sensitivity set to auto, ping speed about 80-90% (sometimes 100% spending on water clarity) and you should see the fish as a different color than the bottom. Lots of bass (including spotted bass) like to hang out on the very bottom. If you see a target, drop your bait to it and just dead stick it. Every so often a very very subtle twitch. If the blip on the bottom comes up to take a look, watch your rod tip!! You can often see the bite before feeling it by watching the rod tip. When in doubt, pop the rod up with an upward hookset and you probably have a fish. The key is keeping your bait within the sonar cone. If not, you're blind and not aware of your bait's action it's immediate surroundings.

What you said is true I believe. Hadn't thought about the clearer image. Wouldn't matter on mine. Lol. Learning to catch them off shore is more important than deep. Drop shot is not dynamite. A great technique no doubt but not a sure thing. Close..... If you have HDS units, you can get really good sonar images for drop shot. I have not seen someone set the hook before the bite. Must be very confident in their screen and what that are looking at. I can promise Arron Martens and Brent Ehrler got that good out of long hours of use and exploration. I don't think there is a fast track to learning how to do what you're wanting. It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice and use.if there was I would definitely be looking into it myself.

AMEN!!!

Not that I'm aware of. It's a processed task from what I've read. No "easy way". If you find different, please let me know. As for upper and lower, no I don't. I just use a split screen if needed. If I'm drop shotting and my target is most definitely on the bottom and I want less "bottom" and more graph, yes you can adjust the lower limit. It's not hard. Just take the depth off of auto and set the depth you want. Or you can adjust the actual lower and upper limit but on a small screen, it just looks garbled and junky. If you have an HDS 7, it might benefit you but it doesn't me. I like being able to see the whole graph typically.

Each model is different on screenshots. You can download a manual for your unit that will tell you. I think you said you have an HDS 7? F&F can tell you. I push the power button and then the (+) button on my unit. His is different. You have to have a 2gig micro card inserted into your unit. If you have a graph card, you will have to pull the graph card, insert the extra screenshot card, save the image, then remove the screenshot card and put your map card back in if you want to use your map card. Or be like me and keep your micro card in all the time for screenshots. Map cards won't work on my unit. As for uploading photos, that's easy. Take the micro SD card, put it in card reader into your computer. It acts as a flash drive or hard drive on your computer. Copy the files and save. Then to upload to OAF, upload it just like you would any other photo. Use the attachments option.

Here is a quote from another forum (crappie.com) where a discussion was had for such a request on how to. It's not much but I'm digging into it a bit more. You basically need to convert your GPS coordinates and then you can translate them into your Google Maps.

There is a way to do that. I'll dig up a thread in another forum that walks you through it and post it later. It's a bit more complex that I'd like. As for fine tuning, auto is typically best. For sensitivity, noise rejection , etc. As for SD card, it's a bit different for every unit. What specifics are you looking to tune on the fly? As for what pallette is best, depends and varies by opinion. I use white background because of glare in the sun. Makes the image pop.

Considering they are not that popular, it makes me want to buy a bag. ?

So true.

Sorry if you have seen this already but there is this thread in the General Discussion forum. Lots of good info in here. Biggest thing I can recommend is understanding the cone angle and how it works. Also how sonar angle is different from structure/down scan. It's a different cone shape and elongated vs a circular cone extrusion. That's the basics to understanding sonar. There is a lot to learn. Buy the Dr. Sonar DVD's. Doc is a very knowledgable sonar user and answers questions on Facebook also. You can like his Facebook page and learn a few things from that alone.

What seminar?

I can't believe this is still going. Three things are obvious to me.... A. Some of you do not have access to water and cannot go fishing (lake still froze over?) B. Some of you NEED access to water to go fishing C. Someone will always be unhappy about pro's plugging their sponsors and that's never going to change So let's all go fishing and report back with pictures of fish. We can all agree that we like looking at photos of big fish WE catch.....