Lowrance HDS & StructureScan - Post Spawn (South Africa)

[Fishton]

I took a couple of days off to hopefully target pre spawn or spawning bass recently, using my Lowrance HDS with StructureScan as my primary tool.  I was a bit disappointed not to find many fish on the nests that I had previously identified (pink fish icons on chart), but did find dozens of these shoals of fry.


I put my mask and fins on, and armed with my underwater camera, I went to confirm.


Then I started finding these shoals of fry everywhere, and as can be seen in this screenshot there is a bass feeding on the fry near the bottom.  The pattern was obvious, find the fry and target the bigger bass feeding on them.  My primary bait I used for targeting these bass was the Spro baby lipless crank in a "woops"y shad colour, and the Bomber Fat Free Fingerling in a Tennessee Shad colour.




Yesterday Brian (BigB) and I had a sonar setup session on Inanda and decided to do a little fishing as well.  Oh ok, we did a little setup and a LOT of fishing.  Sorry Brian – lol.  The first spot we identified was an old sunken boat with small bass holding directly above and on / in it.  We had to be extremely accurate in our bait presentation because they would not leave the boat and 'wonder off for a snack'.  And for good reason too, because as we proved throwing a DLN Tilapia crank around the perimeter of the boat, there were bigger predators nearby. 


We then set off to target shallower humps with small stumps on them with crankbaits, from a distance just using the charts.  Accuracy is just as important here, so we used our range rings to match up as close as possible to our casting distance.


Note:
I just received an email asking how I identified the 'Humps & Stumps'.  I recorded the SideScan sonar data using 'Log Sonar' on my HDS, then put it all together as chart using DrDepth's SideScan Edition.  All areas are identified, labelled and then converted to a chart (.lcm) that I simply load via SD card to my Lowrance HDS.



Next stop was a big single tree near the main channel where we saw no fish on the one side of it, but as we sneaked past the opposite side we noticed a shoal of fry with fish feeding on it.  Brian made a perfect presentation with his awesome Roboworm and pinned a nice fish.


Next we headed off to deeper steep drop offs in very windy conditions to try find bigger fish holding on these drop off's, it was not to be, so we headed back to the 20ft range again.  Almost immediately we found some active fish and soon found out why they were there – shoals of fry!  This time the shoal was suspended between 8 – 12ft on a tree with a feeding bass in the 12ft range.  Brian made another fantastic presentation with his jig, and just moving it up and down in this 12ft range got the best fish of the day.

[fishin couillon]

Nice....

[Mike Cork]

Very cool. I am so gonna have to get this technology!

[coldfront]

it took me a while to get my mind around this...

shoals of bass fry?  in 10-14 foot of water?  then when you look at the clarity of the water...that's when my mind kicked in...and too, the straight down look...

that DrDepth software that allows you to 'mosaic' the side imaging stuff looks interesting...and 'useful'...too...