Van Hook Arm - Friday, August 5, 2011

Is that a fish? How about that?

What are those little marks up here? What is all the stuff at the top? The depth finder is most often the topic of conversation throughout the day. I remember the days when I fished as an amateur in some of the Pro-am tourneys asking the same questions.

Today we had limitless opportunity to take some photos of the Lowrance, so I will try to go through these photos and give a quick explanation as to what I think I’m seeing. All the images are from Sakakawea in the Van Hook Arm. Keep in mind different units, even one Lowrance to another, display images of fish differently.

Fish 1  This is a typical fish arc. I like the solid yellow with a hint of red outline. Big Fish.

Fish 2  If looking for fish, I would stop to fish an area that shows marks like this. The black marks above are likely perch or similar sized bait fish.

Fish 3  Very nice clear, clean shot of a fish. I would expect to hook this fish about the time the arc is 2/3 of the way across the screen.

Fish 4  Fish moving up from bottom, likely feeding on a perch. You see these often and sometimes it can be suspended fish, spooking from your boat, heading to the bottom.

Fish 5  Nice clean mark. I need to see the yellow no matter the size of the mark to convince me to stop and fish.

Fish 6  Walleye down pretty tight to the bottom.

Fish 7  We are stopped with no wind, so the boat is moving very slowly. This fish is directly under the transducer and moving with us at approximately the same speed.

Fish 8  Get out the leadcore. I can’t drive past stuff like this without giving it a try.

Fish 9  Far right could be junk or a cluster of fish. Moving left - walleye, maybe two. Above the red marks are normally Skip Jacks, Gold Eye, Shiners. All the same fish with several names.

Believe your depth finder. If you have marks like what we are looking at you have a fish fry in the making. Good Luck fishing.

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