Old, Silted Neighborhood Pond Trouble

[Unknownwaters]

Here is the situation:

I have been fishing this 40ish acre lake for years. It is about 100 years old and just about all of the significant structure has been covered in several feet of mud and silt. All thats left of the old creek channel is a slight 1 foot depression that is pretty difficult to locate. The only significant cover that I can see are trees that have fallen in a long the shoreline. Throughout the year, the only fish that i catch fishing the fallen trees are 10 inch or less bass on plastic worms. However, in the spring there are quality sized bass under almost every piece of shoreline cover, and it is not uncommon to catch a couple 5 pound plus fish in a single day. A friend of mine even landed a 10 pound bass in early spring under a dock. After doing some research, I concluded that all of these lunker bass must be staying in the deeper water somewhere all year before migrating to shallow water in the spring to spawn. I recently got a fish finder on my small boat, but when I searched the deep water all I saw was featureless bottom, save for one deep 20 foot hole right by the dam and the 1 foot creek channel that runs through around 15 feet of water. I thought I found some scattered cover in the deeper portion, but the sonar signal for it is weak. Even more concerning is that my fish finder did not show any fish on any of this structure or cover. On a related note, every time I get out to water that is deeper than 15 feet my fish finder gets a lot of strange interference. You can still make out the bottom and cover, but it picks up consistent weak signals throughout the water column, almost like a static fuzz. I have absolutely no idea what this is, I do not get these readings on other lakes i fish. Does anyone have any experience on lakes like this that could give me some advice?

sorry for the lengthy paragraph, but its better to be more detailed than less detailed on these sorts of things.

[Bluebasser86]

If it's allowed you may try adding some new cover like brushpiles to help attract fish. If you can do it don't just go dropping them everywhere though, find that little 1' creek channel and drop it along the bend of it or where it swings in close to a point or around the edge of the 20' hole you found. As for the interference, it sounds like it might just be a really poor signal due to all the silt and mud but it's hard to tell without seeing it.

[Shewillbemine]

I'm learning that my fish finder is not the end all, be all device for simply locating fish. I know that because I've caught bass when it has registered 0 fish on the screen. So don't think fish arent present just cuz the screen says so.

You may want to mess with the sensitivity and see if the "static" remains or not. The water clarity also plays a big role.