Hummingbird Says There's Fish There!! What Do You Do Now?

[Choporoz]

I run into this situation every time I'm on my local rez and I have zero fish to show for it.  Usually fall and spring pattern, but could be mid-summer also.

 

Fishing in a VA reservoir; about 20 feet from rocky shore - sharp drop to 35 feet.  Pretty wide, level channel (at least 40 yards wide.)  There's intermittent patches of old trees structure, but not throughout.  As you approach these patches, the fishfinder starts hollering.  All kinds of fish from between about 6 foot off the bottom down to the bottom.  Of course, I can't say for certain they're bass, but I want to believe they are    I've tried: drop shots, jigs, kastmasters, swim jigs, heavily weighted wacky worms, spinners, deep diving cranks, etc.  Never a bite.  My best approach has been to leave and find shallower cover that I'm familiar with.

 

Am I wasting my time continuing to work 'fish' that may not even be bass?

[Jar11591]

It could be suspended crappie or bluegill. Maybe bait a hook with a night crawler or small minnow and drop it down just to see. If they're crappie or bluegill they won't pass up a worm or minnow.

[Crestliner2008]

You are saying the sonar is telling you there are fish there. Possibly. Are you using the "Fish I.D." feature on the sonar? You know, the one that shows the icons of fish at various depths? If so, turn it off and start to learn how to use the regular sonar with the "arches" instead. The Fish I.D. uses a lot of the signal to render those little icons. So, it can miss-interpret what it is actually pinging on. Using this feature, the sonar could be pinging back floating debris, or weed clumps, or submerged sticks. Go to the web site of your sonar's manufacturer and I'm sure they will tell you the same thing.

 

Don't give up on the off-shore structure. If there are bass residing in the waters you are fishing, they will utilize deeper off-shore structures. More so during the warmer months, but you can find them there just about anytime. Remember, not all fish do the same thing at the same time. The presentations you are using are just fine. I think you may be fishing where they ain't though!

[WRB]

This may be a sonar question more than a general bass location question.

I see you have a Hummingbird, not an expert on these but sonar is sonar. When you say yelling the first thing that comes to mind is auto settings and fish alarm, if you use those features that is more than likely your problem, false single returns. If you have the know how to set up your sonar mantua and fine tune the sensitivity settings and know the returns are correct, please disregard my assumption about auto settings.

Air suspended in the water via the fish air bladder is what the sonar returns as fish. Any air or gas underwater looks the same to sonar, gas bubbles seeping out of decaying mater, it's the air bladder that see most of the time and every fish the same size looks the same. Suspended fish could be any species that suspend or swim.

What we look for are signs of active bass near structure or under baitfish. Baitfish being smaller size and close together look like a cloud of tiny dots, larger fish look like arks or banana shape marks on tradition sonar, bright dots on HD units. Active bass tend to very close to the structure or cover, inactive bass tend to suspend away from structure.

You mentioned trying a Kadtmaster spoon without success, nearly every game fish will strike a small structure spoon! Good choice. The only advice I can give you is keep checking and fishing those isolate trees, active bass should show up if baitfish are in the area.

Tom

[Wayne P.]

You are saying the sonar is telling you there are fish there. Possibly. Are you using the "Fish I.D." feature on the sonar? You know, the one that shows the icons of fish at various depths? If so, turn it off and start to learn how to use the regular sonar with the "arches" instead. The Fish I.D. uses a lot of the signal to render those little icons. So, it can miss-interpret what it is actually pinging on. Using this feature, the sonar could be pinging back floating debris, or weed clumps, or submerged sticks. Go to the web site of your sonar's manufacturer and I'm sure they will tell you the same thing.

 

Don't give up on the off-shore structure. If there are bass residing in the waters you are fishing, they will utilize deeper off-shore structures. More so during the warmer months, but you can find them there just about anytime. Remember, not all fish do the same thing at the same time. The presentations you are using are just fine. I think you may be fishing where they ain't though!

 

 

That is false information. You CAN use the FishID that Humminbird has since it won't assign fish symbols to debris, only fish that meet the criteria to be assigned the symbols.

What you describe is what other brand's fish ID does.

 

I use it all the time to see fish within cover like this:

 

 

This is a large school of shad, none of them were assigned a fish symbol since they didn't meet the criteria to be assigned the symbols:

 

 

 

 

This is a huge school of crappie, only a few of them were large enough to be assigned the fish symbols:

 

[slonezp]

Hard to know. There are gizzard shad upwards of 15" in my lake. Dragging deep diving cranks thru the area will normally snag some in the back and, unless there are bigger returns, we know to move.