Team9nine

One of my old favorites on the subject:

The answer is mixed. On some heavily pressured waters, it is getting more difficult to drive and fish right over the top of bass, witness KVDs comments in regards to his win on Chickamauga earlier this year. In contrast, look at all the bass still being caught “video game fishing” on things like dropshots and Jika rigs, especially on the smallmouth venues, but not exclusively. TPWD has done some research and studying in this area and I believe the number they came up with was that 1/3 of the bass left cover holding locations when driven over, meaning 2/3 stayed. Perhaps @Catt can chime in on that, as he’s been following the research down there.

Ned kills it in ponds around here, especially if you are creative with rigging and retrieve options. Caught over 50 this past week walking ponds in 3 trips, all on Ned. The advice to go lighter in jighead weight is solid - I almost never go more than 1/16 oz. in ponds unless I know I’ve got clean bottom.

Yep, same here. Eleven today on Ned to go along with 26 Friday and 15 Thursday. Finesse TRDs and Finesse WormZ.

Might look into BoatUS: https://www.boatus.com/towboatus/pickwick-lake

Might be the most "broken" rule in boating. For the times they sit in them (idle zones) and patrol around here, it's an easy "guaranteed" ticket writing day. Just turns out they don't patrol near enough, unfortunately.

I've got the little kit they sell. Fun little bait I like throwing from the bank on our reservoirs in the fall. Everything seems to bite them. Have done well on both largemouth and white bass in particular. I've got the little kit they sell. Fun little bait I like throwing from the bank on our reservoirs in the fall. Everything seems to bite them. Have done well on both largemouth and white bass in particular. I've got the little kit they sell. Fun little bait I like throwing from the bank on our reservoirs in the fall. Everything seems to bite them. Have done well on both largemouth and white bass in particular.

A friend of mine from up that way refers to pike as “the white bass of the north.” I don't think he was saying they’re stupid...just that their aggressiveness tends to make them easy to catch, I think ?

Quick 90 minute bank walking excursion to the largest pond I have access to produced 22 this afternoon, including this one that was pushing the 5 pound mark (but not quite). Midwest finesse scores again.

Guys above have nailed the reason. If you were to monitor and graph oxygen levels in a pond, what you'll see is they are at their lowest levels first thing in the morning, and their highest levels late in the day. This is due to the phytoplankton, plants and all other creatures in the pond being consumers of oxygen, and no oxygen gets produced at night since there is no sunlight to stimulate photosynthesis. Once the sun rises high enough, photosynthesis begins, and oxygen levels increase, sometimes to the point of being hyper-oxygenated in an extremely productive pond by late afternoon. This same phenomenon is also what is responsible for many summer fish kills. It's also why very cloudy days can also be poor for bass fishing in small bodies of water, because the oxygen levels don't get increased to the degree they do on sunny days. Low oxygen is stressful for all living creatures, and they typically respond by conserving energy and lowering activity levels until things improve.

Sounds like every Charles Bronson movie I remember from that time frame (e.g., Death Wish") - lol

If you know how much to adjust the setting up or down, you can do that in the driveway, but the only way to guarantee how much you need to adjust so you're reading exact is to get a measurement on the water. You can get close sometimes just using the waterline on the boat compared to the bottom of your transducer, but that won't answer the question of if your unit is truly reading wrong to begin with. If you just move out from the ramp over deep water and back and the unit tracks and shows such, you're probably fine and can shortcut if you want...or just leave "as is" as the foot or so difference usually isn't a big deal to most people.

I get that, and it could be for a variety of reasons that his is off so much. Not unusual in shallow water as was mentioned, but I was more responding to his topic title and request for how to calibrate a depthfinder. I do it to mine as nothing bugs me more than to have my front and back units on at the same time and them showing a foot and a half depth discrepancy between them because of where the transducers are mounted and how each unit reads and interprets depth - lol.

If you actually want to calibrate it, take a tape measure and slide out to a good clean and solid bottom in around 10 feet of water and then measure the actual depth and compare to what your unit is reading. From there, you can use the 'depth offset' or 'keel offset' feature, depending on exact unit, and adjust the depthfinder reading up or down to show/match that exact measured depth. Most likely the unit isn't accounting for the depth of the transducer in the water right now.

April 17, 1992 I was 26 years old at the time and practicing for a Redman tournament coming up on our largest reservoir. The day before I had checked the lower end of the lake and managed 3 fish over 5 pounds along with some other keepers and was feeling good. Met a buddy and headed to the lake to check out the upper end of the reservoir. Only managed two keeper bass; one was another 5 pounder, but the other was my PB, somewhere between 9 and 11 pounds. It was a big, fat prespawn female, caught cranking the main river channel, and that I was only able to get an approximate measurement on since it was way longer than my Golden Rule bump board. It was a weekday, so very little traffic, we were several miles from the launch (no facilities there, anyway) and still only around lunch time, so lots of fishing left. Long enough ago that nobody had cell phones to snap pics with, I didn't carry a standard film camera with me, and nobody had or carried portable digital scales like now. The guy with me had weighed an 8-12 in a tourney on that lake the spring before, and I weighed a 6-14 in an event a couple years prior, also the same lake. He said my fish was definitely bigger than his 8-12. Basically just a memory at this point, and 30 years later, I haven't come close to matching that fish, and doubt I ever will.

Probably going to need to see some screenshots to know exactly what you’re dealing with, but my first recommendation based on the fact it sounds like a “used” unit is to go into settings, figure out where you can “reset factory defaults,” then do it. It might have already been done, but just as likely might not have. This way you know you will be starting off with the unit set just like it came from the factory. Might solve a lot of problems you’re seeing pretty quick.

Oh yeah, orange baits

Both - in that clear of water, especially with any kind of clear skies and moonlight, especially a full moon, they can still see, though color vision is limited according to the science of rods and cones. They can silhouette against the sky pretty well, but lighter baits also work at times when contrasted against the bottom. The lateral line likely also plays an important role at night, though.

Around here, clear water deep strip pits usually mean suspended bass that don’t feed a lot through the day. They wait for cover of darkness to move and feed through summer, unless you can find some good weed growth. You’ll just have to wait and see.

Plan on night fishing it this time of year - you might struggle otherwise ?

You have to keep in mind that so much of what is done today is still a carryover from history and the way “it’s always been done.” That was the only way to rig them in the beginning. The bent worm on a SH started because the first shakey heads were all built the same way, a larger traditional bass hook on a crappie style jig head. This was intentionally designed back in the 1980s by Davis Baits and Fred “Taco” Bland concurrently, but you can find rigging examples of this going back to the 1960s. It gets popular, everyone copies the original, and the tradition is set until someone breaks the mold. The EWG hook wasn’t even introduced until the mid 1990s by Gamakatsu, and it took a lot longer than that before it got popular and was later incorporated into a fixed jig head.

Shaky head is best on a horizontal plane; TR is best more vertically penetrating cover.

THIS ^^ …especially the last sentence. I’ve always been overprotective of the spots I find and the places on a lake I catch fish.

Arkie style is not going to be your best option in milfoil. You'll specifically want to pick up a couple "grass jigs." They will come through the veggies better, and many will have special trailer holders built in like a screwlock or similar. TW sells at least 29 different brands, or look at some of the site sponsor options.