Big Indiana Bass

A Crappie OTC Primer: In-Fisherman

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I thoroughly enjoy catching structurally related open water crappie. In my opinion, the best way to become a good open water/deep water bass angler is to first learn how to be a good open water/ deep water crappie angler. If you can do one, then the other is a piece of cake, as they say. You've heard me term my style of fishing this way as "Crappie OTC", which simply means crappie on-the-cast. While it sounds like a very simple, no-brainer way of catching crappie, it is actually much more involved than most realize. I've been promising an article for a while now, and am happy to say that that is now a reality.

I've had the pleasure of working again with Ned Kehde, In-Fisherman field editor, to capture all the basic details of this method, covering everything from tackle to electronics. There is still a whole second chapter that could be added at some point in the future concerning all the little intricacies and such of the technique, but this (very long) article should give you a thorough primer to get started. You can find the article on the In-Fisherman website at the link below. At some point I'll add a copy to the articles section of BIB for future reference.

One last comment - don't let the title fool you. This is a year round approach that works in both warm as well as cold water. The only differences are in the movements and holding areas of the crappie throughout the season.

The art and science of catching cold-water crappie

Drop Shotting for Smallmouth with Lowrance HDS10

This one is definitely worth watching. Right length, right detail, gets to the point. Nice.

Wind, Waves and Crappie

Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
-The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

%o$-(@$%#^ wind! OK, so it wasn't quite as bad as the Superior storm that sunk the giant ore carrier, but 20-30 mph winds on an open lake are a major headache for a 16' jon boat and a 10hp motor.

Only get two days out of the week to fish, they turn out nice and sunny, but those damn winds and whitecaps, plus a bad direction to boot. Not fun in a little tin boat. Still, had no choice if I wanted to fish. Made the best of it and managed to catch quite a few fish, to the tune of 50-60 probably, though many were small (<9"). Most crappie are still scattered for us, but I couldn't even begin to think about sitting out in open water on some of my better areas. So did a little searching with the new H'bird, learned some new spots, and managed to keep busy with the action. Water temps down to about 62 degrees now, so the best is still to come. Mostly 1/16-oz tube jigs on 4-6# line - anywhere from 5'-15' of water around docks and submerged brush. Neighbor kept some of our crappie today, including a bonus channel cat.

 

Finding lots of good stuff, and lots of fish (small white specks) to catch with the new Humminbird SI unit.

Here's the neighbor's haul from our trip this weekend; 4 pounds of channel cat fillets and a bucket of nice crappie.

Largest crappie I've had in the boat all year, caught by my partner today.

SI Crappie

Got out for a bit last weekend to play more with the side imaging. Decided to chase crappie, and so spent some time looking at a few areas I sort of knew already. Wanted to see what things looked like with the SI.

One benefit I've learned pretty quickly about SI is the efficiency with which you can find stuff that should/could hold fish. Seeing as how most of our reservoirs are shallow flatland impoundments, I'm running the screen out about 60' on each side, giving me a 120'+ coverage path. If I was to run a series of paths looking over a new area, it would take roughtly 4-8 times more passes to be able to find what I can now do in 1 pass most times - very efficient.

Another benefit, actually two benefits, are:

1. Being able to tell pretty much exactly what you are looking at when you see something, i.e. a tree vs. a brushpile vs. a stump, etc. In 2d, I can make some pretty good assumptions because of my experience with electronics, and to a certain degree I didn't really care what it is I found, but with SI most times there is no question what it is you are looking at. This helps with deciding on best lure retrieve options.
2. Seeing exactly how something is situated in relation to you and your path of travel. For example, in the shot below you'll see a laydown I came across while scanning an old submerged pond. The cool part is that I could tell exactly which direction it was laying, and so when I dropped a buoy on it, I could immediately take up a position that allowed me to throw to the base of the laydown tree and work my jig parallel to the direction of the trunk and branch arms. This translates into less hangups and greater opportunities at fish. Usually it's a trial and error process of "touchy-feely", with the worst outcome being a snagged lure within the first few casts that disrupts the spot while you're trying to tease out the best lure retrieve angle relative to the cover. In this case, I whacked 50 crappie of this single spot and and never broke off a bait in the process.

Humminbird 798 Screen Shots and Video

Here's the final post in this side imaging series for now. When I was looking into units, the most common "negative" I read about the unit was it's small size and how things could be difficult to read or interpret. I'm fairly certain that like most everything else electronic, bigger is probably better. That said, I couldn't justify putting a $2500 unit on a recreational jon boat, not to mention I don't have that kind of spare change sitting around. If you tourney fish, have that kind of money to "invest", or simply want the best right from the get go, then go big. There's a reasonable chance that at some point I'll probably upgrade too, as that seems to be a somewhat common theme with guys who started with the smaller units.

The other thing you won't see me post in the future is what I call the "Look, I found a tree!" post. Part of the reason it took me so long to adopt this new technology was because of the way these units get portrayed on the Internet. Every forum is a post about the tree some guy found, or check out this refrigerator, or look, it's a bridge piling! So what - I've been finding these things for years with my regular units. What you rarely seem to find even now is a post about how someone has used this technology to better their fishing, especially right here in Indiana on waters that we all fish. We don't have many lakes with submerged standing timber and loads of spotted bass. Show me how this is going to help me out in 10' of water on a lake that was once a muddy farm field, and at a place that the bass rarely if ever school.

That's what any future post will entail on this site. In the mean time though, I do want to show you some screen captures from Sunday, taken straight from the screen of the unit on the water using a digital camera and not via some internally generated process. I also have a short video clip showing the same. This way you can see for yourself what these smaller units are capable of and make your own decision.

 
 
 
 

And here is the short video I shot while recording out on the water.

 

Humminbird Side Imaging Settings

I've been running electronics for quite a long time, so naturally I thought getting the settings dialed in with this new unit would be pretty simple - and to a large degree it is. That said, the last Humminbird I allowed on my boat was a CH Thirty II chart recorder if that gives you any idea.

Getting the sonar settings for 2D was pretty simple and intuitive, and I haven't messed much with down imaging yet. That's the lowest priority of the 4 applications this unit has for me, so no rush there. Side imaging was where I really wanted to get things dialed in, and I got most of them set pretty quickly. Still, I screwed up with the screen scroll setting and it left me back off the water Saturday questioning the purchase. A little research that night and I found the following video, which gives you everything you need to know in a simple, straight-forward manner. Fifteen minutes and you'll be dialed in with your SI, too. Don't make it any more complicated, because it really isn't.

 

Side Imaging Installation

Before we get into the cool stuff, first we have to deal with the not so fun stuff - installing a new electronic device. Depending on your boat, that may or may not be a major hassle. Fortunately in a jon boat, everything is pretty much accessible and easy to work around.

You can see from the previous post picture where the unit got mounted - right on the deck next to the Lowrance X-15MT. Four screws and some minor drilling and caulking and we were in business. The base mount swivels round as well as going back and forth, so adjusting for easy viewing was pretty easy. The power cable (6') ran straight through a side channel under the deck and back, and was direct wired to the main battery with an inline 3 amp fuse on the positive side.

The biggie was the transducer mounting, which actually wasn't too bad. Location is always the biggest factor since you want to avoid turbulence. With a side imaging unit, you also need to avoid anything that might block a view going straight left and right from the transducer under the boat, usually the main motor. This can be a little tougher in a jon boat where you have very limited depth and side to side space. You have to avoid the keels underneath. You have to avoid where the straps run to tie down with. You need to be aware of rivets under the hull, as well as not having the big motor (I say that tongue-in-cheek) block the side imaging sonar beam.

Fortunately, I was able to avoid most all of that by mounting close to the engine on the opposite side of the Lowrance transducer. The small lower unit and prop on the 10hp Mercury doesn't interfere enough to throw off readings. Cables were secured to the wood mounting board that the big engine was secured to on the hull, and the transducer wire run through the same plastic sheathing and into the boat transom space as the Lowrance. Interestingly, there is very little interference between the two units, even running both side by side at the same time. I'll probably speak to that a little more in the future.

The other biggie with a side imaging transducer is making sure that it is perfectly parallel with the water surface, and perfectly vertical on the hull, so as not to distort your image or really screw up the sensitivity of one side or the other. This isn't easy in a jon boat where something as simple as a person sitting in the boat can change the lean angle of the boat one way or the other pretty dramatically - a problem most bass boat anglers need not consider. As such, instructions recommended placing the transducer the first time but only partially tightening everything down, then testing out on the water and tweaking as necessary. This could take many times and a lot of effort on some boats. Fortunately, I pretty much nailed it the first go round with some careful measuring and thought, and only see the slighest weakness on the left side of the imaging screen, something I can easily live with.

So basic install of the head unit including mounting and wiring was Friday evening, and took about and hour and a half or so. Saturday morning was initial transducer mounting and placement + wiring (about 2 hours) along with on the water testing of all functions (another 2 hours). Sunday was permanent mounting of the transducer and final cleanup of the whole assembly (<1 hr), followed by my official trial run of the unit.

But there was one step in between final install and on-the-water testing that needed to be covered. More on that in the next post. 

Coming Soon...

We welcomed a new addition to the Big Indiana Bass family this week - my Lowrance's now have a baby brother from another mother :) He's a '798ci HD SI', and he really is kind of cute. Final install tweaking this weekend, then the fun begins...

 

First Look: Side Imaging

I got my first on-the-water look at side imaging today. Spent a few hours out on the water with Jacob checking out both down imaging and side imaging with a Humminbird 1198c unit. I ran a bunch of stuff that I pretty much knew "existed" to see how it would all look, and ended up with a pretty positive impression. Fish and baitfish schools were easy to read, as was prop wash. Cover depended on the angle, height and speed that you hit it as to how well you could decipher what you were seeing. In several instances I saw stuff off to the side that I was then able to immediately throw to and verify - that was pretty cool. Large brushpiles and rocks were fairly easy to discern, as were laydown logs. Smaller stumps took a bit more looking to figure out.

One of the cooler things was seeing how dock posts registered on the unit as you'd cruise on by. Jacob has said that he finds side imaging very useful for quickly getting familiar with waters that he's never been to, such as Lake Ouachita where he fished the FLW Cup. He prefers to run the screen with down imaging on the left hand 1/3 of the screen, and side-imaging taking up the other two thirds.

I didn't get a chance to mess around with back ground colors and different screen setting options due to a lack of time, but I believe we had it set on "blue screen" today, and things seemed to show fine. I've seen some online screen shots of various other color combinations, and would definitely like to play around more with the finer details. Jacob has run both the Humminbird as well as the Lowrance versions, and tends to prefer Lowrance for 2d readings and Humminbird for side-imaging, though he said they are generally pretty similar.

As for fishing stuff you find with these units...

 

IDNR Lake Waveland Topo Map

As mentioned in the previous post, the IDNR in cooperation with the staff of the Lake and River Enhancement Section (LARE) of the Division of Fish and Wildlife have been generating updated topographic maps of many of our Indiana lakes, about 70 to date. These maps use GPS in combination with depth soundings and mapping software to create a lake map with 5 foot contours, which is considerably better than the old 10' contour maps. No, they're not the super hi-res stuff many private companies are putting out, but they are a definite improvement over the old maps, especially considering that many lakes were never mapped in the first place and can only be had by using/altering USGS Quad maps. Plus, they're available for free download and use 24/7 at the IDNR bathymetry web page (link above).

Two popular lakes which were recently surveyed are West Boggs down in southwest Indiana, and Lake Waveland over in the west central part of the state. Both are very popular tournament destinations for bass anglers. The West Boggs map is going to take a while to create due to size and time constraints, and probably won't be available until sometime this winter. The Lake Waveland map has been completed and is just awaiting upload to the IDNR bathymetry page, which is usually done after they've gathered a few new ones to post. I was able to obtain a copy of the Waveland map courtesy/credit of the IDNR, and have it available at the link below while we wait for official webpage upload.

Download Waveland 5ft contours[1]

Graphing Summer Schoolers

Had a small window yesterday afternoon, a period where the Chevy update boat had left the lake and the reports were coming to an end, and then the tail end of the weigh-in when Jacob would finally hit the scales. Worked out to be about 5 hours. So I left work a bit early and hit the lake for a couple hours to chase crappie in between.

A good graph is invaluable this time of year for finding and fishing breaklines, submerged cover, and locating schools of fish. I only had to fish two areas in order to catch about 40 crappie, all on tube jigs tossed on 4# and 6# NanoFil line. The second spot had a thick school of fish that resulted in a bite about every other cast. When things finally slowed down and I had to leave to get back in time for weigh-in, I went to video the graph over the spot and the fish were gone. It was simply a timing bite where a big school of crappie had moved in on a point, fed and then moved on. Didn't have enough time to try and figure out where they went, so that will have to be a video for another day.

Can You Find the Crappie in this Picture?

OK, not much of a trick question. Courtesy of David Huang, a nice down-imaging shot of one of my favorite crappie holes on Eagle Creek Res. One of these days I'm going to have to splurge and go hi-tech...