Hi Y'all,
Here's yesterday's fishing report.
I headed off to Stormy Lake, my favourite local trout spot, in the hope that it would prove a bit more productive than the last 2 trips. I had been twice in the last month and blanked both times after spending at least 8 hrs each time out on the ice in serious sub zero temps. 1st time we got a few bites and missed them all and the second time I don’t think anything even swam by for a quick sniff, look or lick of the bait as i did not even register a bite the whole day. Well, i wont have that problem anymore with my new toy as I now have a Lowrance x67c which works awesome!!!, not to say i wont get skunked anymore just that i can now see if there are any fish around in any given spot. Still waiting for the Vex box and cover and have ordered the ice transducer, until then the skimmer is stuck on a hockey stick and my unit is in a cooler bag…but hey…it works…lol.
MY NEW TOY
I like the graph mode better as shown above than the flasher display, its like playing a video game in real time watching the fish swim up to the bait…great fun..
Anyway , I drilled my two holes as usual and set up two rods. I had the sonar set up on one of the holes and sat staring at my screen....lol....reduc
ed fishing to an X-box game....Nothing was showing....that is until i moved to check my other rod (not visible on the sonar) and that’s when the fish alarm would go off as a fish swam under the sonar beam....by the time i ran back to look at the screen to see what a fish looked liked on sonar it had swam by....funny thing is though, as soon as i got back to the rod with the sonar set up my other rod would get hit by the fish the unit had just detected and i ended up in the first hour being led on a merry dance between my two rods, oh well, although I still had yet to see what a fish looked like on the screen I know knew the fish alarm worked and I caught these two fish.
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1ST FISH
2ND FISH
The second one i got was bigger than the first, but i let it go because the regulations here allow only 2 trout per person per day.....and i still wanted to try and actually see a fish swim by my bait on the sonar!!! Its a good job i was using circle hooks because they always(99%) catch in the corner of the mouth for quick and easy unhooking and release.........
CIRCLE HOOKS ARE GREAT FOR CATCH AND RELEASE
After those 2 fish it went completely dead for 3 hrs....but it gave me time to play with the sensitivity, ping and chart speed, colourline, zoom levels and a host of other settings and it paid off. I had tried the machine yesterday while we were fishing for walleye. Only problem is the walleye here mostly stick right to the bottom and i could not get enough target separation to show the bottom and the bait as separate lines on the screen, i had to lift the bait at least 7 inches off the bottom before the jig line on the screen showed as separate to the bottom line on the screen, not much good for walleye fishing i thought as i have my bait 3 inches off the bottom.....well i got that problem sorted now and that’s when the fun began.
First up the screen and alarm lit up, the biggest school of bait fish swam by mid way up the water column (i was fishing 41 feet of water). At the same time red lumps started to show up hugging the bottom directly below the bait fish swarms. So i dropped my bait down to the red lumps on the bottom and then slowly jigged it up a foot or two. It was really exciting to watch in real time the red fish signal follow my bait signal up off the bottom. Sometimes it would just check it out and descend again, so i would drop the bait down and it would come to investigate again.
This gave me the opportunity to fine tune my presentation until i could trigger a strike.....which i did....seemed you first get the fish’s attention.....get it to follow up slowly for a foot or so....jerk the bait up another 2 feet and let it drop to the bottom....rest...wait till the fish comes back down to the bait and just lift the bait an inch or 2....that seemed to get them to hit....its soooooo cool to watch this all played out on the screen. I caught 2 trout this way.....they were the smallest trout i have ever caught...but at least i know the machine works. What’s even better is that the machine will pick up fish this small and it is easy to separate the bait signal and fish signal even when hugging the bottom. In fact the machine is so sensitive i had to re-tie my rigs omitting the swivel because it was picking out the swivel and giving me double graph lines.
ONE OF THE TWO SMALLEST TROUT I HAVE EVER CAUGHT…BUT THEY PROVED THE WORTH OF MY NEW TOY
