When do you abandon electronics and go fish shallow?

[clemsondds]

Ok so I have livescope and various other graphs on the front of my boat. I have become obsessed a little with being able to see the fish before I fish for them. But I also miss just going up the bank and doing more traditional fishing. So, my question is, do you guys that focus primarily on off shore electronics based fishing….do you ever choose to fish shallow and if so, when/what occasion (eg prespawn, muddy water, post-front…) 

just love hearing everyone’s thoughts. 
 

[Mobasser]

I love to fish shallow cover with topwaters. Hot summertime. There's still a skill in casting accurately, and picking apart the cover. No electronics doing this. Old school bass fishing.

[Pat Brown]

A lot of mornings from about 5:30 to 7:30 before work I bank fish at the local pond and often in the evenings.  ? 

 

When I go out in the Jon boat, I only have down imaging, and I find it mostly useful in the dead of winter.  I only recently got it before this cold season and at first it was basically pointless because there were literally fish everywhere.  As it got colder, it's usefulness became apparent.

 

I look forward to saving up and getting a better rig with side imaging and FFS because I'm a science person and I love observing behavior and learning about my lake.

 

I don't think it's gonna necessarily make me a better angler 70% of the year.  Because 70% of the year around here, they're up shallow and I know what to do.

[A-Jay]

35 minutes ago, clemsondds said:

….do you ever choose to fish shallow and if so, when/what occasion (eg prespawn, muddy water, post-front…) 

just love hearing everyone’s thoughts. 
 

Night Time is The Right Time . . . .

A-Jay

[clemsondds]

15 minutes ago, Mobasser said:

I love to fish shallow cover with topwaters. Hot summertime. There's still a skill in casting accurately, and picking apart the cover. No electronics doing this. Old school bass fishing.

Yeh definitely! 
 

anyone who has livescope/ffs care to chime in?  

[DaubsNU1]

I fish the bank a lot, mainly because of my three home lakes.

 

Lake #1 is 220 acres, lots of flooded timber. I have my spots and occasionally will use down imaging to work the creek channel. I've already mapped all the underwater structure I like to fish.

 

Lake #2 is 84 acres, some flooded timber. Again, I've mapped the deep areas I need to fish.

 

Lake #3 is 315 acres, shallow bowl...most of the lake is less than 6 feet deep. The big bass reside near docks, rip rap, dock pilings.

 

My boat is small and I mainly fish for bass and Pike. My brother has an 18' Alaskan...we fish walleye and smallies, and the side and down imaging gets used much more. 

[Catt]

When do you abandon electronics and go fish shallow?

 

Never ?

 

Even when I'm fishing "shallow", I am fishing structure!

 

Structure fishing doesn't mean you're fishing offshore. Structure starts at the waters edge & ends at the bottom of the deepest water. 

[clemsondds]

32 minutes ago, Catt said:

When do you abandon electronics and go fish shallow?

 

Never ?

 

Even when I'm fishing "shallow", I am fishing structure!

 

Structure fishing doesn't mean you're fishing offshore. Structure starts at the waters edge & ends at the bottom of the deepest water. 

So you use your ffs up shallow to look at structure and pick out spots to pitch/cast to?  

[Captain Phil]

If all the electronics fell off my boat I won't miss them.  I learned to catch bass when the only depth finder I had was a stick.  Shallow bass are active bass.  A fish you can see on a monitor is not necessarily a bass you can catch.

[Catt]

27 minutes ago, clemsondds said:

So you use your ffs up shallow to look at structure and pick out spots to pitch/cast to?  

 

No sir ?

 

I use down imaging, side imaging, & map

study where available.

 

Don't own FFS & have no intention of buying it anytime soon.

 

30 minutes ago, Captain Phil said:

Shallow bass are active bass.

 

Tell our marsh bass that

[BayouSlide]

I fish shallow nearly all the time and use FFS nearly all the time. I have seen bass in the midst of sunken limbs and vegetation in less than 2 ft. of water, cast a wacky Senko and caught the bass. No matter where I'm finishing I use FFS to eliminate unproductive (no baitfish or fish activity) water.

 

[Edited to add:] Humminbird's Live Image allows you to rotate the transducer to horizontal (landscape mode), which I use when shallow because it considerably widens the field of view.

[Team9nine]

I love offshore structure fishing, but I still enjoy going shallow at times, just because…kind of like watching a bobber get slowly pulled under and out of sight - it never gets old. Paralleling a riprap bank with a buzzer or shallow crank, or just pitching the edge of emergent vegetation - good stuff. I just do it whenever I feel like doing it, or if I think conditions are right or the lake is set up for it.

[gim]

4 hours ago, Mobasser said:

I love to fish shallow cover with topwaters. Hot summertime. There's still a skill in casting accurately, and picking apart the cover. No electronics doing this. Old school bass fishing.

This is primarily how I fish for largemouth here, except I rarely use topwater because they don’t work. I’m naturally drawn to visual cover, although I will admit that my sonar and GPS are still on and I continue to look at them regularly.

 

This approach can also be a weakness, especially in midsummer when fish often move deeper offshore. I’m not as proficient fishing deeper.

[Susky River Rat]

To me this sounds more of a question of which style of fishing suits your body of water best.  Some bodies of water tend to fish a certain way better. I would think anytime from pre-spawn to fall would be great. If you have a bank that has been wind blown for a couple days that would be another option. Fishing lakes I always worked a progression. Shallow early and worked my way to deep structure as the day went. Especially in the summer time.

[Tennessee Boy]

I go where the fish are so I spend a lot of time on the bank in the spring and at other times.  Live sonar is not as useful shallow but I don’t turn it off.  I glance at 360 occasionally and many times I’ll see something interesting away from the bank that I’ll look at more closely with live.  I lot of fish will hang out 20-30 yards from where they spawn on any available cover.  You can catch some nice fish casting on the other side of the boat while fishing down a bank.

[Catt]

2 hours ago, Tennessee Boy said:

You can catch some nice fish casting on the other side of the boat while fishing down a bank.

 

One of the older guides on Toledo Bend told me years ago for every bass you catch on the bank there's 5 behind you waiting to be caught.

[TnRiver46]

The only sonar I’ve got currently on my boats is on my biggest vessel and it’s mounted at the console. I’ve never much cared for looking at it while casting 

[papajoe222]

11 hours ago, clemsondds said:

So you use your ffs up shallow to look at structure and pick out spots to pitch/cast to?  

What he is saying is he uses his electronics to find structure in shallow water.  Bottom changes, depth changes, etc.  A shoreline can be full of cover, but the majority of catchable fish will be in the cover closest to some structural element.

[clemsondds]

1 hour ago, papajoe222 said:

What he is saying is he uses his electronics to find structure in shallow water.  Bottom changes, depth changes, etc.  A shoreline can be full of cover, but the majority of catchable fish will be in the cover closest to some structural element.

Yeh, I guess I just get tired sometimes of looking at a screen...hard to get in a rhythm like you can going down a riprap bank with a crankbait.  It's tricky, bc that's my favorite way to fish...but now after using electronics for awhile (esp ffs), I'll be going down that bank and if I don't get bit within the first 20 min or so, I start wondering if there's even bass in the area and start thinking about going back to ffs ha.  

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Took me 6 months to finally make the pieces come together with SideVu/ClearVu, catching fish offshore on electronics only is an addiction unto itself I've now found.  The only way to get good on these things are to stare at them constantly, and experiment with the info you are getting in real time.   After months of doing that, it's hard to stop especially if you have some solid days or fish using it like that finally.  

 

Calling your shot like Babe is tremendously fun.    Now I see people bank beating in a boat and I'm like, "must be a poor who's fishing blind".....I know it's wrong ?

 

I'd waste 90% of my time on the water for months at least if I had FFS, that said I'm itching to buy it.    I saw a deal recently for $1800 turn key Garmin setup. 

[Woody B]

I've said this before.  If you KNOW the lake your fishing in electronics aren't as helpful and in strange waters.  However, staring at a screen can and usually will result in less casts, and more fish.   I know the area where I caught this fish like the back of my hand.  However, I saw it live, and knew which stump is was at.  There were smaller bass at other stumps.   Had I just blindly cast to where I knew the stumps were I would have probably caught a little one first, and spooked this one.  It was ~6 feet deep.  

[Catt]

A friend & I were talking about this generation staring at a screen. Then I realized how many hours I spent staring at a screen learning structure fishing. 

 

A lot of us older guys spent literally hundreds of hours staring at a screen.

 

[geo g]

South Florida I am often fishing 3 to 5 feet of water.  No need to have the electronics on in the shallows.  Stealth mode without the pinging is more important in the shallows.

[Bird]

Most of the lakes I fish are riddled with wood.

Sometimes I don't have time for electronics.

[gim]

11 hours ago, geo g said:

Stealth mode without the pinging is more important in the shallows.

So I assume you shut off your bow mount too then, if you think the ping of sonar is spooking fish to your presence in shallow water?  Because certainly the constant rotation of a prop blade in shallow water creates a heck of a lot more noise than the ping of a sonar unit.