FFS questions: high wind, how to stop catching Gar, changing appearance with range, bottom fish

[txchaser]

1) Wind was gusting 35+ according to the weather service, so probably faster on the downwind end of the lake this weekend. 

Man I was really having a hard time staying on fish, finding my bait, etc. Probably only 1/5 of my casts were any good. 

Is this solvable in any way? Skill up and eventually you'll figure it out? Or just get in coves/areas that aren't getting blasted? I wanted to be out on main lake points and their transitions into creek arms. But it was just silly hard. 

 

2) the gar. The dang longnose gar. Is there a reliable way to ID gar? I keep catching them and it's a bit maddening. They seemed to stay at similar depths as the largemouth that are biting. 

 

3) I leave the range on 100'. I've noticed that past about 50 everything looks 'tall' in the return, and as it gets to 50' it tends to blob out, get more horizontal. Is that just how it always is? 

 

4) it kinda seems like the bass that will eat tend to be in the same 5-ish foot depth range. Am I noticing this right or I'm crazy? 

 

5) Tips on identifying size of fish that are on the bottom? I can usually notice them vs weeds, but it's hard to tell how big they are. Trying to not waste time chasing smaller fish. 

 

[casts_by_fly]

1- you’re going to struggle in high wind. Even if you’ve got double poles down (which isn’t a normal ffs scenario) you’re still talking about lighter baits/line/rods a lot of the time. And at that wind speed you’re going to be doing everything you can just to move the boat around. 
 

2- we have pike and musky, so same

body shape as gar. Play with your setting a little. You should be able to recognize the difference between long skinny fish and shorter chunky fish. Now a 15” crappie?  That looks just like a bass. 
 

3- depends on the transducer you have. Mega live 1 doesn’t have enough power to do well much beyond 50’ or so. At that range it’s losing power too much to differentiate shapes and sizes. Not sure which xd you have though. 
 

4- that’s just the fish you have and the techniques you’re using. Could be the time of year and the mood your fish are in. Plenty of bass have been caught deeper than 10’ on ffs. 
 

5- fish laying on the bottom are tougher. You need good target separation. Play with your settings. Dial down the contrast so you can try to make out the edges of the cover and the edges of the fish. Get closer and set your range to 50’ and your depth to 2’ deeper than the water. That will get the most pixels on the fish. From there you can compare the fish to the grid size on the screen. 

[Logan S]

1:  This is when stop looking at it and go fish for real with a spinnerbait or something .

 

2:  I have this same issue with catfish...I think there's always going to be some misidentification.  One thing that usually proves true to me is that actual bass are more active on the screen than catfish or crappie or others...They move more, they react to your bait from farther away, etc.  

 

3:  I have my range at 80' (AT1).  I generally only use 10', 20', and 30' for my depth so I get comfortable with how things are presented at each range.  

 

4:  If it works keep at it.  It probably varies.  

 

5:  If they're on the bottom, its tough to see them.  Last time I was out I caught around 15 fish off a single point and the screen was bare as a desert the entire time, they were right on the bottom. 

[txchaser]

On 3/17/2025 at 10:13 AM, casts_by_fly said:

1- you’re going to struggle in high wind. Even if you’ve got double poles down (which isn’t a normal ffs scenario) you’re still talking about lighter baits/line/rods a lot of the time. And at that wind speed you’re going to be doing everything you can just to move the boat around. 
 

2- we have pike and musky, so same

body shape as gar. Play with your setting a little. You should be able to recognize the difference between long skinny fish and shorter chunky fish. Now a 15” crappie?  That looks just like a bass. 
 

3- depends on the transducer you have. Mega live 1 doesn’t have enough power to do well much beyond 50’ or so. At that range it’s losing power too much to differentiate shapes and sizes. Not sure which xd you have though. 
 

4- that’s just the fish you have and the techniques you’re using. Could be the time of year and the mood your fish are in. Plenty of bass have been caught deeper than 10’ on ffs. 
 

5- fish laying on the bottom are tougher. You need good target separation. Play with your settings. Dial down the contrast so you can try to make out the edges of the cover and the edges of the fish. Get closer and set your range to 50’ and your depth to 2’ deeper than the water. That will get the most pixels on the fish. From there you can compare the fish to the grid size on the screen. 

1) ok im not crazy. and way too deep of water for poles

2) got it thanks. I'll try to get really focused on what I see, I'm probably just overzealous

3) lvs-34

4) sorry i wasn't clear, I meant a five foot depth range. Like on a particular day, fish from 5-10 will eat and eat quick but deeper or shallower they are way less likely to eat. Said another way, not likely to be fishing 3' for some fish and 18' for some fish on the same day. But maybe not true at all. 

5) oh that's really helpful in terms of concentrating the pixels down there. 

Thanks for the deep response.

On 3/17/2025 at 10:43 AM, Logan S said:

1:  This is when stop looking at it and go fish for real with a spinnerbait or something .

 

2:  I have this same issue with catfish...I think there's always going to be some misidentification.  One thing that usually proves true to me is that actual bass are more active on the screen than catfish or crappie or others...They move more, they react to your bait from farther away, etc.  

 

3:  I have my range at 80' (AT1).  I generally only use 10', 20', and 30' for my depth so I get comfortable with how things are presented at each range.  

 

4:  If it works keep at it.  It probably varies.  

 

5:  If they're on the bottom, its tough to see them.  Last time I was out I caught around 15 fish off a single point and the screen was bare as a desert the entire time, they were right on the bottom. 

1) yeah a bladed jig is like magic here, but the ffs fish are consistently bigs

2) interesting point about how they react. I'm surely guilty of catching at least one kinda big catfish every time. I need to be able to see the crappy return and not throw at it

3) yeah good point there on the depth range. I leave it on 20 if I can help it. 

4)

5) yeah I'm fortunately able to get a ping back enough to know it's a fish vs weeds or crap on the bottom, but I'm probably missing even more fish that arent showing up at all. 

 

I'm going to go watch some more fish ID videos. 

[casts_by_fly]

6 hours ago, txchaser said:

1) ok im not crazy. and way too deep of water for poles

2) got it thanks. I'll try to get really focused on what I see, I'm probably just overzealous

3) lvs-34

4) sorry i wasn't clear, I meant a five foot depth range. Like on a particular day, fish from 5-10 will eat and eat quick but deeper or shallower they are way less likely to eat. Said another way, not likely to be fishing 3' for some fish and 18' for some fish on the same day. But maybe not true at all. 

5) oh that's really helpful in terms of concentrating the pixels down there. 

Thanks for the deep response.

1) yeah a bladed jig is like magic here, but the ffs fish are consistently bigs

2) interesting point about how they react. I'm surely guilty of catching at least one kinda big catfish every time. I need to be able to see the crappy return and not throw at it

3) yeah good point there on the depth range. I leave it on 20 if I can help it. 

4)

5) yeah I'm fortunately able to get a ping back enough to know it's a fish vs weeds or crap on the bottom, but I'm probably missing even more fish that arent showing up at all. 

 

I'm going to go watch some more fish ID videos. 

no, that’s makes sense that the fish are feeding in a similar range. They are following the bait and there is a certain set of conditions that is triggering them. Could be temp, clarity, plankton making the bait twitchy or just the particular bait that is in that depth range is what they want to feed on. 

[TnRiver46]

How to stop catching gar ? Those things are hard to hook, impressive if you’re catching a lot of them 😂 

[casts_by_fly]

10 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

How to stop catching gar ? Those things are hard to hook, impressive if you’re catching a lot of them 😂 

I kinda wish we had them around here.  When I was growing up my family would take a week in the summer and go north for a cottage vacation and a week of fishing.  It started as canada but when the fishing trailed off we swapped to the St Lawrence (and a year at black lake).  I remember fishing for bass and seeing big longnose cruising.  One time for S&G my dad tied on a mega spook (clear) and worked it back across its nose.  It swiped and he handed me the rod.  I bet my mom still has the picture of me holding it up back at the dock.  It was 48" including the nose.  Fun creatures.

[TnRiver46]

@casts_by_fly, I target gar all the time. Almost every one will bite but hook up ratio is terrible. I get several 40+ inchers every year but you have to miss a hundred bites to get one 

[JHoss]

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

@casts_by_fly, I target gar all the time. Almost every one will bite but hook up ratio is terrible. I get several 40+ inchers every year but you have to miss a hundred bites to get one 

Have you ever tried the frayed rope trick? I haven't but heard that it works. I caught a couple on jerkbaits last year, though I'm not sure if they were actually biting it or I just happened to snag them. 

[TnRiver46]

Yes I’ve tried rope, that’s the only thing I’ve found they won’t bite haha. Jerkbait is my best lure for gar by a landslide. Dead bluegill is also good.

[wonkyrig]

1) If I can't make a good presentation even with a heavier jighead, I usually just go cranking or spinnerbait. If that's not panning out, I look for water that has fish where I can make good presentations. Really depends on what they're keyed in on and I try to stick to what the fish 'should' be doing based on the seasonal stuff. This is the type of situation where scope can be more of a distraction than a benefit. There are still tons of fish you'll never see on scope - I have to remind myself of this all the time.
 
2) Gar are easy to identify when they're grouped up and when they're perpendicular to the beam. Otherwise, they sit fairly still and will not react to a lure until it's right in their face.

 

3) Just a result of how the beam(s) works.

 

4) Normal. Are the fish keyed on threadfin in 10 feet and you're catching them on a small minnow in 10 feet? Try different profiles or baits for those other fish. There are days like this where it's somewhat patternable, and days where it doesn't matter as much. And sometimes, those fish in that depth range are just negative.
 

5) Hard to tell, but generally a more solid return = denser, more mass. There are mounts where you can click them up and down to angle the ducer and it makes a little difference. There's also perspective mode.

[txchaser]

On 3/19/2025 at 1:07 PM, TnRiver46 said:

How to stop catching gar ? Those things are hard to hook, impressive if you’re catching a lot of them 😂 

Sticky jerkbait hooks I guess!

 

I think I mostly figured out the gar today - they kinda have tendrils coming out the top and bottom of the FFS return, and it stays "tall" even under 50'. 

New question, I was putting the transducer back from perspective mode, and it looked wrong. Long story short, I had to go one click up from the mark and then it looked fine. Is that something do do with the mount attached to the TM being slightly downward facing? When set in the 'correct' position per the diagram it was definitely still facing too far down.

[casts_by_fly]

1 hour ago, txchaser said:

Sticky jerkbait hooks I guess!

 

I think I mostly figured out the gar today - they kinda have tendrils coming out the top and bottom of the FFS return, and it stays "tall" even under 50'. 

New question, I was putting the transducer back from perspective mode, and it looked wrong. Long story short, I had to go one click up from the mark and then it looked fine. Is that something do do with the mount attached to the TM being slightly downward facing? When set in the 'correct' position per the diagram it was definitely still facing too far down.

for megalive 1, each click was 10 degrees. There was a mark for ‘forward’ which was nominally 50. But in the head unit you could select what angle you were at.