Sonar Sights

[nathanhooper]

Well, I answered one of the questions I had last night. Went out with a friend and I told him about the large arches I was seeing up Indian Creek. So we decided to troll. Sure enough, we saw some right around the 30' mark just like I was Saturday morning. We dropped his downriggers in and threw out a couple of large stick baits he likes to troll a lot. These things are the size of some of the fish I catch. Haha

After getting hung up once in a tree we kept on going. A minute or two later it looked like, to me, that we had gotten hung in another tree. So I went back to get the pole and he kept on saying that it was a fish. So I started reeling in, and it had some resistance but I thought it was just a limb holding back...until the limb decided to take off with several yards of line.

Fish on, I'm sure I looked like a little kid. But eventually we pulled up this dude. 34"+. Not sure of the weight, don't have any scales. Going to have to get some though. I am guessing 18lbs? The belly on it was right at 7" deep, not sure if you can guess weight based on that.

So, I'm pretty convinced that those fish hanging out at the 30' mark are stripers after all. Its killing me because I want to so bad go back out tonight, but I've got to wait till tomorrow unless I can get all the stuff I need to do done tonight. I had planned to do it yesterday but then my friend called. I'll still get some pictures of what I've been seeing, but nothing gives more indication that actually pulling up a fish that you were seeing on sonar.

[Feathers and Fins]

15 to 18 lbs based off the size. Nice fish

[nathanhooper]

Thats what I was figuring. Thats not me holding the fish, thats my friend. Figured I'd better not show him off without his permission. Some people are internet shy when it comes to photo's. He had pulled it out of the water and I just instinctively grabbed my phone for a picture.

[J-Doc]

Nice fish! I'd like to hook on to a few of those myself.

[nathanhooper]

Thanks. Yea, it was fun reeling him in. Makes me wonder what it was like for f&f with light tackle - not to mention 15 more!

I'm still going to get pictures. Id like interpretation and thoughts on what I'm seeing.

[Feathers and Fins]

Thanks. Yea, it was fun reeling him in. Makes me wonder what it was like for f&f with light tackle - not to mention 15 more!

I'm still going to get pictures. Id like interpretation and thoughts on what I'm seeing.

NERVE RACKING

[fisherofmen11]

Nice Fish. Yeah I would love to catch one of those or better yet one of my kids to catch a fish like that.

[nathanhooper]

Here are a some pictures of what I was seeing last night. I wish I could have made my ff work with the card, but its too big of a card. I need like a 512mb card I think. The first pictures are of what I was seeing Saturday, and then on Sunday when we caught that striper.

Now here, man oh man, was I looking like a kid in a candy store...except I was the kid without any money...

Could not get them to bite anything. Of course, I likened it to a dog with a plate of ribs and me trying to get him to eat a plate full of sticks that look like ribs...just aint going to happen. To your point f&f, live bait would have made all the difference in the world last night.

[nathanhooper]

So all of that was interesting, then we got into some hybrids that were shallower than that. Then, my learning curve with the downrigger quickly sharpened when I was making a turn and decided to go over a couple of huge tree's. Note to self and others...when the line on the downrigger tightens - stop the boat -. Lost a ball and clip, but luckly they were homemade and I'm not out a tremendous amount. Just hurt the pride some because of the stupidity of it.

The next couple of pictures I would love to hear thoughts on. After we messed around with the downrigger in tree and so on, it started to get dark. At this point, according to what the generation schedule was, they would have stopped running as hard if not all together. But all of a sudden my screen started to have this happen.

Then, just a little bit later it looked like this.

I thought it was my sonar, so I turned on the humminbird in DI mode and got the same thing.

What is it? Just crud suspending that was previously being pulled down stream?

So, I learned a lot last night. These pictures do not do justice to what we were seeing. At one point we saw this bait ball, then we passed over it again after turning around just a min later and saw part of it being demolished with big arches right under the part that was being demolished. What I would have given for some live bait.

[J-Doc]

Those are some BIG arches for that depth range. The really fat-long arch could be a paddlefish because of the thickness of the arch. The long skinny arches are either gar or stripers. I’m leaning towards stripers unless you were seeing a lot of surface activity from gar?

As for the noise, that looks like it turned on some fish activity at first and then the rest is silt and trash from the dam generating.

That’s my interpretation anyway. That’s just it……with sonar, it’s all interpretation until; A) you start pulling in fish to confirm the arches you saw or you drop an underwater camera down and take a peak.

Cool pics by the way. I think we should just start an entire thread on sonar pics specific to Beaver Lake and interpret each others photos. We could all learn some things.