Locating Bass By Shore And Land Fetaures

[MikeOGNR]

It has come to my attention that in my V hull boat I cant really put in an expensive fish finder and frankly I never really enjoyed using them, only reason I had one was for depth and temp. My question is how do you guys narrow down your selection as of where to start fishing and have a high chance of being successful  I've heard of looking at the shore line and then determining by that, but I'm kinda lost on it all. I usually hammer the shore line chancing for bass, but I would like to also learn how to fish deep water and be successful  Maybe if led in the right direction I might be interested in buying a small unit for my boat just for deep water fishing. Any help is appreciated

 

Thanks

 

- Mike

[rangerboy]

they make some inexpensive portable fish finders that would work for you,you can hang it off the side of the boat. play around and see if you find some thing good.  i would go to your favorite spots and move out deeper, look for any thing that would hold fish

[tbone1993]

Get some contour and topo maps and try to find ledges and other things. This really is something that is best explained one on one.

[MikeOGNR]

What kinda Fish Finder should I invest in and also say I look on the shoreline and see like humps and points jetting out would this continue along in the water. Also my V hull gets pusher around with the wind a lot seeing as how its a light, but I do have a trolling motor any tips on positioning my boat for success.

[aharris]

Not sure why you dont like using a depth finder, but that would be your best bet. You can usually determine roughly where channels are in smaller lakes and you can roughly determine the depth of a bank by the surroundsing. Depth finders make it much more simple.

[WRB]

We actually caught bass without sonar units by looking at the terrain surrounding the man made reservoir.

What you see above the water continues under the water and to get a good understanding of what the lake under water looks like is; take photos of the lake at low pool or look at a good topographic map with elevation in 1 to 5 foot increments. Increment is a elevation line for each change. Line shown close together indicate an abrupt change, wider apart indicate a gradual change. You can see these geographic changes above the water and compare what you can see with the topo map to get an understanding on how to read the map.

You are amoung the 90% of anglers who feel comfortable within a casting distance from shore.

It takes a lot of time to understand bass locations related to structure features and every lake is different and the terminology differs between anglers regionally, no easy answers.

You can mount your transducer outside on the transom, level with the water line when the boat in on plane, works good.

To

[MikeOGNR]

I just never really understood how to use a fish finder or how to read them really and for Topo maps where could I acquire some. Like online or in stores??

[WRB]

Navonics Hot Maps may have the lake you fish. Try googling topographic fishing maps, several choices.

Don Ionino's book on Finesse Fishing and the Sonar Connection is available from TW, good hands on book.

Bruce "Doc" Sampson puts out a good tutorial on DVD, for various sonar units.

Tom

[SirSnookalot]

If you grew up in the 50's there was a good chance you learned how to fish in a rowboat with no electronics.  Back in those days there was a boat livery on most inland lakes, we were always not on the same body of water, we caught fish by instinct and trial and error.  Not owing a freshwater boat in the last 10 years I still do it the same way.  In all fairness the amount of boat traffic was way less than it is today, you gotta look a bit harder now for fish.

The advancement in technology has to work wonders and it does, I do a lot offshore shore ocean fishing, be a real tough grind without it.

[Nitrofreak]

Fishing deep structure, when you get ready to, with out a sonar to aid you is like driving your boat across a lake you have never seen before with you eyes closed, you just keep bumping into things.

 

You are not going to get this all in one day, nor in one year, it's a constant learning curve with only a few facts to help you along the way.

 

Read all the best books you can, theory is a great tool to aquire and you will put those theories to work when you are out there in the real world putting your own puzzel's together, theory and good equipment go hand in hand, a good sonar will help aid you in understanding what the structure below the surface is like and how the fish are relating to it, so do not be afraid to open your mind to this chapter as well. 

 

Topo maps are a great place to start, WRB is on the money with a great post, a good place to start with a topo map is to look for the longest points on the map and start working from there, work your way back into the creeks and channels as you study the maps, WRB has given some good info for what the lines on the map represent, in the books you will read, you will soon come to know what to look for on these maps, try to pick up books by local authors too that have fished your closest bodies of water, they can be of some tremendous insite as you learn more and more.

 

Nothing, and I mean nothing is going to help you more than being out there on the water as much as you can be, the more time you spend there the better you will be, understand what you are doing, take notes of the time and what kind of day it is and the location and depth of which you caught your fish and the tool that you were using, keep a log in your mind and in a book if you so desire, it will help you in the long run, keep things simple, don't over think or rush to change baits and fish your whole tackle box, take your time and learn to be patient.

 

Good luck and be safe !!!

[MikeOGNR]

I have a protable fish finder much like the Eagle Cuda 300. The suction cup mount never really sticks solid thoguh and I never really found out how to use it much. I feel as though if I aquire the skills to read it I will become a better angler in itself because on my lake I no where points and drop offs are, but I never really no how far from them I should be fishing and I never know how to tell whats down there. I want to be able to fish deep water because in the spring,summer when I mostly fish bass tend to congregate to deeper water during midday. Not knowing if sturcture lies underneath a point or what type of bottoms the lake has throws me off a lot. Any tips on how I can mount and read my fish finder would be great also any tips on reading topo maps for succes would help a lot.

[MikeOGNR]

Also what type of books should I be looknig into. Titles of books would be great so I can eliminate the good from the bad.

[Nitrofreak]

Navonics Hot Maps may have the lake you fish. Try googling topographic fishing maps, several choices.

Don Ionino's book on Finesse Fishing and the Sonar Connection is available from TW, good hands on book.

Bruce "Doc" Sampson puts out a good tutorial on DVD, for various sonar units.

Tom

 

It don't get much better than that.

 

Bill Murphy's books are really good to pick up as well, one book that comes to mind and that is very popular "In persuit of giant bass"

 

Good books will always relate structure with how the fish relate to that structure, reading books like these will greatly increase your knowledge of where you should be looking on your sonars and your maps.

 

Fish by the way will go deeper on bright sunny days for sure but they also seek out cover in shallow areas as well, the more cover you can find no matter the depth the more successful you will be, don't be blinded by the fact that they go deeper and just start fishing deeper water, look for deeper water that has something to offer, like tall grass for example, or brush piles and things of that nature to start out with, as you progressivly get a better understanding of structure and how they relate to it the more successful you will become.

 

As for sonar units, there are so many different options out there to choose from it can be confusing, the mounts that you choose, you should keep in mind what you are protecting, don't skimp on a good bracket no matter how much you pay for a sonar unit.

 

If you are thinking of upgrading to a newer unit, look at all of them, be open minded and prepair for a lot of sales pitches, don't bother talking to a sales rep, most do not know their product anyway, go on line and look at the good and bad reports of each of the units and make the best decision you can for the cost you can afford to pay.

 

Good luck and be safe !!! 

[MikeOGNR]

What I'm getting from these posts is that I should relate bass more or less to structure and cover rather than deep water??? and that way ill be more succesful

[Nitrofreak]

Yes,

 

Just fishing deep water may or may not hold bass,  bass relate to structure in many different ways, creek channels, ledges, humps, points, rock piles, road beds, referring to depth is anywhere from the surface to the bottom, the fish dictate the depth, it does not matter if they are 5 feet deep or 30 feet deep, bass will always relate to structure and cover, the only time you will find them not relating to either would be when they are feeding on schools of bait fish in open water, or suspended,  usually the bass are located under these schools or somewhere close if they are feeding on them, if not they are pushing them in a direction to make feeding possible and much easier by trapping the bait fish between some type of structure and the surface.

 

The bottom of the lake or body of water is structure, anything on top of that like a brush pile, a sunken boat, a man made rock pile, tree stumps, trees that have fallen, are all cover.

 

Fishing cover like boat docks is generally easy to do, fishing suspended fish is a good bit more difficult, fishing structure is not that hard if you know where to look, spending a lot of time on the water, you will find how fish travel from deep to shallow and the structure they use to get around from place to place, it's like their highways and byways so to speak, once you get into reading these books and going out on the lake it will open up a whole new world to you, it will allow you to locate structure that is used frequently in some areas, and in others not so much, they will help you fish the right cover and help you find ways to locate them when they leave that cover.

 

Read all of the articals in here as well, there is a virtual library on fishing in the site on anything you wish to know.

[Dwight Hottle]

Take your suction cup transducer & mount the transducer to a board by bolting it thru the board without the suction cup. Then you can C clamp the board to the transom.  This would allow to you to use what you already have.