Post by mwardncsu on Sept 13, 2014 17:24:21 GMT -5
Water: 77-78, visibility of a few feet
Weather: Overcast, temps in the mid 70's, light & variable winds
Techniques: alewifes on downlines & a lightline or two; jigging with flukes
Our Sept Club tourney was this weekend with "line in" at 4pm on Friday - so I caught a tankful of ales on Thursday night around 9:30. Was not one-and-done like it had been, but was getting a good 18-24 a throw.
My buddy that was going to fish the tourney with me came down with bronchitis and had to bail but Tyler came down and jumped on after work. I picked him up a little before 5 and we headed out in search of a big school in the mid-lake Roanoke-arm area. We did not have to ride too far before we spotted a number of boats hanging around an area so we dropped off plane and went into search mode and pretty quickly found some fish, which turned into probably the largest school I've seen in a long time - certainly this year.
Fish On!
It did not take long and I had two to check-in for the tourney...... picked up an upgrade somewhere in the mix - just under 55" for a two-fish total length when we wrapped up Friday.
Even got into a little jigging action while staying busy with bait rods...
We lost the school after about 30 min - moved around and intersected smaller parts again once or twice.
We've been noticing something about my sonar and how it just has not been showing those big schools as intense as it should - Tyler started playing around with the settings and we found that the Auto-mode, coupled with interference that the trolling motor is causing, was masking a lot of the image.
Here is a pic with the auto-mode off, sensitivity turned up some and the trolling motor off. Probably one of the best HDS images I've seen on my graph and one that looks like the old LCX units.
Something's up - I did not used to get that much trolling motor interference - not sure where it is coming from - my battery charger has been acting a little weird lately and wondering if something is going bad causing coupling through the charger - or something with the TM motor causing it to throw off more noise than it used to.... we spend most of the last bit of the evening bursting the trolling motor then drifting so that we could keep better "eyes on the water" - now I have something else to obsess over and try and figure / sort out...
We quit at sunset - good evening on the water and good way to get a head-start on the tourney - most fish came off downlines from 30-50 over 80-110'. A couple were jigged up and one off a lightline that was about 60' out and probably 30' down at the time.
Weather: Overcast, temps in the mid 70's, light & variable winds
Techniques: alewifes on downlines & a lightline or two; jigging with flukes
Our Sept Club tourney was this weekend with "line in" at 4pm on Friday - so I caught a tankful of ales on Thursday night around 9:30. Was not one-and-done like it had been, but was getting a good 18-24 a throw.
My buddy that was going to fish the tourney with me came down with bronchitis and had to bail but Tyler came down and jumped on after work. I picked him up a little before 5 and we headed out in search of a big school in the mid-lake Roanoke-arm area. We did not have to ride too far before we spotted a number of boats hanging around an area so we dropped off plane and went into search mode and pretty quickly found some fish, which turned into probably the largest school I've seen in a long time - certainly this year.
Fish On!
It did not take long and I had two to check-in for the tourney...... picked up an upgrade somewhere in the mix - just under 55" for a two-fish total length when we wrapped up Friday.
Even got into a little jigging action while staying busy with bait rods...
We lost the school after about 30 min - moved around and intersected smaller parts again once or twice.
We've been noticing something about my sonar and how it just has not been showing those big schools as intense as it should - Tyler started playing around with the settings and we found that the Auto-mode, coupled with interference that the trolling motor is causing, was masking a lot of the image.
Here is a pic with the auto-mode off, sensitivity turned up some and the trolling motor off. Probably one of the best HDS images I've seen on my graph and one that looks like the old LCX units.
Something's up - I did not used to get that much trolling motor interference - not sure where it is coming from - my battery charger has been acting a little weird lately and wondering if something is going bad causing coupling through the charger - or something with the TM motor causing it to throw off more noise than it used to.... we spend most of the last bit of the evening bursting the trolling motor then drifting so that we could keep better "eyes on the water" - now I have something else to obsess over and try and figure / sort out...
We quit at sunset - good evening on the water and good way to get a head-start on the tourney - most fish came off downlines from 30-50 over 80-110'. A couple were jigged up and one off a lightline that was about 60' out and probably 30' down at the time.
