Wayne P.

I would like to know where the Sportsman's Warehouse gets their information too. I have been catching them close to the surface either over 17' depths or shallower. What I see is most are fishing within sight of the Rt. 701 ramp and are using live bait under floats with little or no success.

If you follow the comments on the yahoo site, you will see that the greatest benefit is being able to cover a wide area on each side of the boat along with getting a good idea is what is in the water column. Once an interesting object is shown, all you do is move your curser to it and save it as a waypoint to return to it. It will allow you to check a larger area faster and get an idea of what is down there. Once an interesting spot is marked, you then use the vertical beam to stay on it just like a regular sonar unit. With a regular vertical sonar beam, you are limited to what is directly under the boat and only as much area as the width of the cone at a particular depth-that may be only about 1/2 the size of your boat.

Use a finesse technique, those little things are tedious to snap from off to on without pushing them past the outside keeper Put your fingertip on the end of the little shaft to make the position changes with a fingernail. Turning them off is a lot easier, push down with a fingernail and you're done. Make sure all the "on" ones are bottomed againt the keepers before you put the side plate back on or you may bend the little shafts.

You can fish at the main dam. There is a small parking area at the second turn after coming off of Rt. 15 . It is pretty rough and weedy though. The duck pond dam is a lot better place to shore fish-not as rough. I am not including the paved parking lot and ramp, just the gravel lot that is past the paved lot. If you go sometime around mid April, the water to the left side of the peninsula on out to the fishing pier is noted for double digit bass catches from shore. There are no limitations as to how far you can go around the lake to shore fish, the amount of clear shoreline area is your only problem, all around the lake is a wildlife management area.

JCrxy4Bass, the lake is full now. If you must fish from shore, the peninsula where the handicap fishing pier is near the dam is a good place to try, especially near the original gravel ramp and along that dam. With so much vegetation in the lake, shore fishing is really difficult. I only fished it twice in October and caught a total of 87 bass. The new lake near Fredericksburg had just opened at the end of Sept and I fished that 4 times in Oct.

Wacky is my thing, but I have no need for a jig with that presentation. I fish as deep a 30' anyway and do not want a fast fall.

I fish Briery more than any other place in Va. and it's 75 miles from my home. I have fished Sandy a lot also but the past couple of years I have concentrated on Briery the most. I've been fishing Briery since it opened in Jan 1989 and was at Sandy on opening day. For the most up-to-date info, and past information, check out------- fishingva.com I only post fishing reports on that site. I usually just make day trips to either.

To get satisfactory performance of the SI feature, you need to be moving faster than trolling motor speed. In addition to that is the transducer needs to be more or less non rotating to keep from getting a distorted recording of the SI image. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sideimaging/

I like them for another reason. My hand doesn't have contact with cold plastic and the rough texture of threads and locking rings like most spinning rod handles have.

I use the MinnKota temp guage. I has a 23' cord with probe for water temp, an air temp sensor and a clock. It is powered by a single AAA battery. I also have two spares. It is model #MKA-38

Use U.S. Post Office parcel post. It's cheaper.

A video of pro angler Clay Dyer.

I'll still old school. I have color units and monochrome units and prefer the color units for GPS mapping and the monochrome for sonar.

I'm having my favorite 5'6" pistol grip rod re-built now. New guides and finish. Used for spinnerbaits and Chatterbaits.

The X96 is a good unit in the same price range but lacking in resolution (320X320) as compared to the before mentioned units.

The uni-knot (6 turns) works for me, I use 20# fluorocarbon on lots of my rigs.

This is part of a guide's fishing report for Guntersville on 2/11-------- "All fish were caught on a Trap(Red), but a lot shallower than I've been fishing (2-5ft).Tried a few different things ,but mostly the Trap ,because it's so good for covering a lot of water."

Did you fish the shallow 58 degree water? I read a few fishing reports for Guntersville and some were catching bass in less than 5' before the cold weather came back early this week.

If you want to get technical about it, a true bass is a striped bass and a white perch. Maybe we should just choose what species the poll asks about and not criticize it.

Thanks, T-rig. It looks like a better option.

Thanks T-rig, will the Mattlures Bluegill sit upright on the bottom on slack line? I have a similar bait (not sure what mfg) that lays on it's side on the bottom. I'm not worried about getting hung up since I wouldn't use it for anything but a verticle presentation to a visible target.

Thanks for the replies. I watched the video. I'm not interested in it's swimming motion or how well it casts. What interested me was the way it suspended just above the treble hooks that were on the bottom. It looks like a prefect bait for bed fishing, especially the bluegill model.

The Eagle Fishmark 480 or the Humminbird 565 would be your best choice in that price range with the HB having the edge with a higher verticle pixel count of 640, a little more power, and a dual beam transducer.

I find fluorocarbon to be more abraison resistant than nylon or co-polymer monos and I am re-tying less often.

The Activate is similar to the old Fish Formula with flakes.