Get more out of your Graph

Fish, Lies and Video Screens…are you getting the most out of your fish finder?

See if this little scenario sounds a bit familiar to you:

You’re out on the water and you’re marking a bunch of fish on your graph. The fish are absolutely thick beneath the boat and you’ve got your gear plowing right through them…yet…you’re not getting bit. You’ve tried altering the depth of your lures to no avail and you have also been through the “trying everything but the kitchen sink” routine and have still yet to find something in your box that the fish want to eat. You can see the fish down there but it’s like they’re collectively flipping you the bird. Looking at all those schools of fish pass under the boat is kinda like the movie JAWS 4…so bad, you just can’t bear to watch anymore.

Believe me, this is the kind of stuff can get in your head, too. To skunk out on a day when there are tons of fish around has a tendency to eat away at your confidence and keep you up at night, pondering what you could have done differently.

But don’t take it too hard, amigo. You probably didn’t do anything wrong except believe a big fat lie.

This may or may not make you feel any better, but here it goes anyway…your fish finder may have been lying to you. Yep, you heard me — that little black box on your console, the one on which you spent a small fortune and rely so heavily upon – it’s been telling stories.

Of course, I’m not calling all depth sounders liars here, nor do I feel that they vindictively mislead, but there are things you need to know about how your unit works before you can trust it. The biggest problem with many fish finders is what is often called the “fish I.D.” (or something along those lines) feature. This is a function that, unfortunately, has become quite popular on most LCD graphs these days.

With the I.D. mode turned on (the default setting on many units), submarine objects that the depth finder picks up between the boat and the bottom are displayed as cute little fish shapes that look a lot like goldfish crackers. The only problem is, a depth finder cannot always tell a fish from…say…a weed bed, a submerged log, a thermocline or…a mermaid. A good way to illustrate this is to go from trolling speed to full throttle while watching your finder. Your entire screen will get inundated by signals your transducer is reading from the boat’s cavitation bubbles…it will go mostly black. When you have fish I.D. on, those bubbles will often register as, well, fish.

Get Naked!
I can say that the technology has dramatically improved and that the I.D. feature on newer units is getting better and better all the time. However, if you really want to know what’s happening below the boat, you have to turn that function off and learn to interpret the signals without the goldfish crackers.

Most units (except for some of the less expensive models) allow you to do this. You may have to scroll through several sub-menus until you run across the right screen and, on some models, you’ll need to switch from the unit’s basic automatic setting to the manual one to override the I.D. system.

Initially, you may feel a little naked without I.D., but you’ll eventually get the hang of it. When your depth finder’s signal bounces off a fish in the non-I.D. mode, it will register as an arch-shaped mark on the screen with the apex pointed towards the top of the display. All the other stuff like bubbles, submerged debris, reefs, weeds, etc. won’t show up looking like arcs. With a little practice, you can really begin to interpret what you’re looking at with greater accuracy with I.D. turned off – which will, hopefully, help keep you from trolling back and forth over that school of “fish,” which actually is nothing but a bunch of grass along the bottom.

If the transducer’s signal doesn’t hit the fish square on, or the fish makes a sudden movement just as it’s being “painted,” you may get a variation of an arc, but it will still be something that looks a lot different from the many non-fishy things down there. Fish that are moving with you will show up as horizontal lines and your sonar may also return partial arches — fish that were only “painted” by your transducer’s signals briefly before swimming out of “sight.”

Things get a little more tricky when schools of fish are tightly packed together, because the transducer can’t always separate each individual fish on the screen. In those instances, you may see just a big, dark ball shape. When you pick up a dense blob like that, you can be pretty sure you’re looking at fish if it’s suspended above the bottom. When fish are schooled up right on the bottom, it can be hard to tell what’s rocks and weeds and what actually has fins on it. Luckily, today’s color units have the ability to differentiate – through color shades – between solid structure and live critters much better than the older grayscale models.

Practice, Practice
To become proficient at using a depth finder, you just have to get out on the water and run the thing. Also keep an eye out for seminars at your local sportsmen’s shows and boat dealerships. A lot of the big name marine electronics manufacturers run training classes throughout the year which will take you through everything like ping speed, sensitivity settings, etc.

Eventually, you’ll get a better feel for what you’re looking at — and you’ll catch more fish as a result. The only bummer is, there will still be days when you see a million fish on the screen and you won’t be able to get them to bite…only now you’ll know that they really are fish!

Kokanee: The Basics

Kokanee salmon are more popular these days than Lindsey Lohan. They’re abundant, fun to catch, taste great on the grill (and never need to go to rehab!)…what’s not to love? You just need a few basics to get you started…and then you’ll be off and running.
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Striper for Dinner!

Stripers are damn tasty! Here’s how to cook ‘em up right:

Striped bass have firm, white flesh that’s mild in flavor and extremely versatile. My favorite is fish tacos followed grilled with garlic butter…Yum! However, I decided it was time for a little change. Time to go with something a bit more interesting.

That, of course, led me to Scott “The Sporting Chef” Leysath (www.sportingchef.com) who shared with me his poached striper and peppercorn vinaigrette recipe, which I once cooked with him on his show (but of course have long since forgotten).

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Small Plugs for Spring Chinook

If you’ve ever fished for spring Chinook, you know that they’re straight-up kookey. Sometimes, they’ll bite like piranhas and other times…you can’t buy a bite to save your life.
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Spring Shad Fishing

Spring’s here and that means it’s time for American Shad!
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Catching Bass on New Water

How do you catch bass on a lake you’ve never fished before?

I posed that very question to our intrepid bass expert, Big Fred Contaoi the other day. A valid topic, I figured, as he has been fishing a bunch of new waters in his first two seasons as a pro on the FLW Wal-Mart Tour for Orange County Choppers.

Many of the tournaments he’s been fishing have been on bodies of water that Fred had never laid eyes on before. Most have been quite unlike the lakes of the West that he has cut his teeth on. So, what the heck do you do in that situation?

In Fred’s case, he can only practice for a short time on a tournament lake. So, he often practices on other lakes in the area when the one that the tournament will be held on is off-limits.

“For example, my first-ever tournament on Tour was at Florida’s Lake Okeechobee,” he says. “The first thing I did was fish a nearby lake — Lake Toho — so I could get a feel for the fish in this general area,” he said (he caught a nice 8-pound largemouth that day). “Then, I drove my truck around Lake Okeechobee for a couple days to just check things out and talked to people at local tackle shops, etc.”

Fred says that, when you’re chatting up the local experts, ask them about the size and color of the forage that the fish are on and what sort of cover they like in the lake.

When it was finally legal for him to begin pre-fishing, Fred simply got out on the water and started sniffing around.

“You have to remember that bass are still bass no matter where they live and they all have the same basic needs like food and shelter,” he says. “Once you figure out what they like to eat and where they like to live, you can set up a game plan.”

It’s not a bad idea to also try to set up a couple “emergency plans” in case you get a sudden change in weather between the time you’re practicing and tournament day. For example, poll the locals about stuff like where the area’s bass go when a sudden cold front moves through (think deep water) or what happens when the north wind blows on that particular lake.

When you’re going to try a new water for the first time, hiring a guide isn’t a bad idea. You can learn more in a day with a guide than you could in weeks of doing it on your own. Depending on what part of the country you’re in, a guided bass trip can run you $125 to $250 per person…money well spent, to be sure.

The Best Bait for Spring Steelhead

If I could use only one bait for spring steelhead, it would be, without question, a big, juicy nightcrawler.

‘Crawlers are the perfect choice this time of year. Think about it – the high flows of spring often wash a good smorgasboard of goodies (including worms) into the water, which steelhead, of course, key in on. Rivers also run pretty cold in the spring, so the fish will be more lethargic and a big meaty hunk of garden hackle is often the only thing that will get them excited. In addition, nightcrawlers also give you a nice “changeup” bait to use on streams that receive lots of angling pressure.

Furthermore, I’ve found spring steelhead act a lot more like resident trout than their winter cousins. They’ll spend more time in a river and, eventually, start to revert back to their old ways of eating invertebrates like nymphs — and worms.

And we can’t overlook the fact that ‘crawlers stay on the hook way better than eggs and shrimp. In reality, it’s the only steelhead bait that can “die of old age” before it falls off the hook. Less time spent rebaiting means…yep, more time in the water and, hopefully, more steelhead.

Technique
The cool thing about using worms is they’ll fit right into most styles of fishing you’re into. ‘Crawlers can be side-drifted or boondogged from a boat just as if you were using roe; they can be drift-fished from shore, suspended under floats or backtrolled behind a diver.

You really don’t need to alter your techniques when fishing with nightcrawlers and only need to make a slight adjustment or two to your tackle.

Rigging Up
For this article, let’s take a look at basic side-drifting or bank fishing. Either way, I’ll attach a Slinky-style sinker via a slider rig to my main line and then run an 18- to 36-inch leader down to the hook. Now, here’s the only area where rigging up for worm fishing is any different than fishing eggs – the hook. Instead of the classic octopus style hook, you’re going to want to run a baitholder like a size No. 2 to 1/0 Gamakatsu. The barbs on the shank will help keep the bait from sliding down around the hook, which is key because you want your ‘crawler to look as straight as possible in the water and the bronze color will blend in with the bait.

Baiting Up
With a bait threader, slide the worm over the hook and up the leader. Traditional drift bobbers like Corkies, Cheaters and Spin-N-Glos don’t work all that well for this technique because they ride on the leader above the bait and push down on it, causing the worm to bunch up. To that end, I’ve found that foam “puffballs” like Fish Pills work best. After the worm is threaded and the hook is situated just beyond the head, I’ll slide a puffball onto the hook and let the barbs on the hook shank hold it in place. You can also run a Fish Pill on the leader above the hook instead if you prefer.

Downriggers: Precision Depth Fishing…Or?

When downrigger fishing, do you really know exactly how deep you are fishing?

Despite the fact that downrigging is called “controlled depth fishing,” there’s some room for error here.

Say you’re out on some large reservoir chasing kokanee. You’re dragging a chartreuse Needlefish behind a 4/0 dodger. The whole rig’s running 35 feet behind the downrigger ball. On your graph, you notice a school of fish at 50 feet and you drop your weight down to 48 feet so you’ll be just above the fish and in their collective window of vision.

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Glide Your Way to More Steelhead

Looking for a new technique to help you put more steelhead in the boat — especially in clear, snaggy rivers? Give side gliding a try! A modified form of side-drifting, side gliding allows baits to be presented to steelhead quickly and naturally with minimal bottom contact by keeping the lines slightly downstream of the boat. Here’s a mini lesson:
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Fiberglass Fish Mounts

By having a fiberglass fish mount made of your trophy catch, you can have the best of both worlds: a fish for the wall that you didn’t have to kill!

A mounted trophy from a past trip is an awesome addition to an office, sports room or den – and they’re not as expensive as you’d think. Now before I go on here, guys, I know what you’re thinking – you’d love to have a fish mount in the house, but your wife would sooner let you buy another boat than have you hang a dead fish on the wall. And you know what, she’s right! I’m not too into the concept of having a dead critter hanging in the house, either. Just seems kinda weird…
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