Lowrance Electronics | Mysteries Revealed | Screenshot Interpretation
With a very long winter, many of our lakes just recently broke free of ice. Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho has been free of ice for a good period of time, but flooding and muddy water has been present for several weeks. With access limitations to the chain lakes, I hit the main lake in search of smallmouth bass. As you can see, the water temperature was in the low 40s; but these kokanee, or chinook, were hanging around 30-feet of water. In most cases, catching smallmouth around these schools is possible, but I found many schools of salmon that simply did not create enough interest for bass altogether. As a general rule though, find the baitfish like this and find the smallmouth.
Read Related: More Lowrance Screenshot Interpretation | Schooling | Lasagna | Diagonals
The very next weekend on Lake Coeur d’Alene, I had found some steep rocky bluffs that had many schools of baitfish hanging around. High winds made it nearly impossible to target this area at the time, but I ended up getting bit up on top of a rocky shoal, just after seeing these baitfish on the graph. While I scratched with a goose egg, it gave me confidence in an area that should be an ideal pre-spawn location for smallmouth bass in this area. The water temperature was identical to the situation above, but there was much more activity which has helped me identify some wintering locations. It’s not always about catching as it is learning and putting together pieces to the puzzle. This screenshot revealed some pristine smallmouth pre-spawn locations that would be considered a “highway” to a nearby cove. It may not be obvious above the water, but it certainly is underneath the water. We’ll label this shoreline “to be continued.”
Read Related: Lowrance StructureScan 3D in Action (Screenshots)
Lowrance’s StructureScan has given me the ability to look at ordinary locations with a pair of prescription glasses; sometimes seeing the fish on the screen is a dead giveaway as to where you need to be fishing. Most anglers only look for rocks, logs and other easily identifiable targets with SideScan, but what happens when you find smallmouth bass on an ordinary shoreline with nothing around? No rocks, no logs and no channel? This is just an average shoreline with minimal depth change. These too can be dynamic in pre-spawn conditions, which is exactly why having a pair of eyes underneath the water is just as important as knowing how to tune the settings and identify what you see on the screen.
This screenshot has multiple fish in the picture, a school off to the left on SideScan, and what appears to be a lone fish directly underneath the boat (single, white dot in the middle of the screen). When identifying fish on SideScan, all white spots can look similar, but if you look closely, they have “shadows” to the far side of each mark. These shadows are tell tale signs that these are fish.
With a few casts, a Red Eye Shad brought this smallmouth up to take a picture. While I searched for his school, this was the only fish caught in this particular spot, but without Lowrance and the ability to see this fish, I would have never made the cast in the first place. This is from Moses Lake, Washington with a water temperature of 42 degrees.
Watch Video: Jordan Lee on Lowrance Structure Scan | Depth and Beam settings for Lake Conditions
Advertising