Fishing a shallow lake with sonar?

[markinohio]

My buddy has access to a condo on Lake Puckaway. I’ve read that there are some nice panfish (my primary interest) and walleye in the lake. However, I’m concerned that I have never attempted to fish a lake that shallow. Really a maximum depth of 6’? I don’t even understand how you fish a lake that shallow with 20” of ice……if you are in 4 FOW with 20” of ice….wouldn’t you really only be fishing in 28” of water. Further, I’ve seen videos of people using sonar on that lake, and I don’t understand how that is effective either?

Would really appreciate an explanation of how to effectively fish a lake that shallow with sonar, or any tips on Puckaway in particular as it looks like I’m making a trip next month.

Thanks,
Mark

[RapShack]

You can still tune it to show your jig and any fish that gets close to it.  That shallow you wont be covering a lot of square footage so just shooting down holes looking for fish is probably pointless. 

[havejigwilltravel]

drop the top on the flipover and sightfish. keep the vex on as another set of eyes.

[tentwiststhick]

Even at that depth my Showdown will allow me to see if I'm fishing a dry hole or not. No sense in wasting time. 

[OneMoreFish]

Put that bad boy in low power mode if you have it and you’ll be good to go.

[RapShack]

Even at that depth my Showdown will allow me to see if I'm fishing a dry hole or not. No sense in wasting time. 

LoL.  I hope you're drilling your holes real close together. 

[higbee]

work it by drilling lots of holes. find depths, channnels, weed edges, drop offs.  track with gps.  i always use a locator jig (jig that is hot most of time) and bring em in to you. In the places i fish, the fish move around and dont always hang out. i have caught panfish at 5' depth of water, at 2' below ice. good luck.

[mjk67]

I've fished backwaters of the Mississippi, where you had 18" of water below the ice, if you were lucky...

[Royalwapiti]

I have a Marcum LX7 and I found some settings for less than 10 FOW.  Set your cone angle wide.  Check around for settings for your flasher.   In 5 or 6' we usually sight fish, we are in reeds, we could see the jig near the bottom.  The sunfish and gills swim around the bait and nibbled.  But the monster crappies would just charge right in and hit the bait hard, then leave real quick.  It was tough catching the fast hitting crappies in the graph.   

For perch in the shallow water we used bobbers with minnows.  I could see the perch swimming around the bait with sonar but I wasn't actively jigging them.  We also have good sized carp and getting more larger walleyes in this particular lake, those are a riot to see swim by on the screen, a big wide band of red runs across the screen.  Even funner to catch one of them carp!     

[hardwater diehard]

Low power on a Vexilar

[nbaker]

Royalwapiti, what settings do you use on your LX7 in shallow water?  I fished in 6FOW and struggled to make my lx7 work right this weekend

[Old Goat]

I may be wrong but isn't puckaway a northern spot

[Royalwapiti]

Royalwapiti, what settings do you use on your LX7 in shallow water?  I fished in 6FOW and struggled to make my lx7 work right this weekend

Shallow water:
1. Sonar Settings, Sonar mode, Gain 1 Open Water <10 fow  Gain2 Ice >10 fow
2. Have the transducer only partially submerged, not an inch or two below the water.
3. Use manual dynamic - select the 10' or less range
4. Use the 20 degree cone angle
5. Change to a three color palette, not 6 colors


Look at the Marcum video that explains firmware 5.10. 

It can still be a struggle with lots of vegetation.  I have to keep a cheat sheet with the above tucked under my snow deflector for what settings are what.  I forget some of this when out on the ice.