Triton_Mike

Paparock, Sometimes with new technology you just have to try it and interpret it the best that you can. I doubt you'll ever see it in color. Not much color under the water anyhow. The good thing is you can split screen the Sonar and the Side Imaging at the same time. Meaning if you run right over an object with your boat you can see that object on the sonar AND the Side Imaging screen to get a better idea of what you are looking at. Fortunately for me that bridge was on my map so I knew in advance what I was looking for and it is quite a ways offshore as well. I found that bridge on my first pass with the Side Imaging and if I just had a sonar I would probably still be out there looking for it because you will have to run right over the bridge if you want to see it with the sonar. Side Imaging I can scan up to 240 feet out on either side of the boat. Mine sweeping if you want to call it that. HEre are a few other posts you can look at to familiarize yourself with this new technology and it's sonar capabilities. another site Hope this helps!!! BTW do a search on google you can find it much cheaper than 1999.99. I bought mine for like 1699.99 from www.rivermarineelectronics.com out of Miami T Mike

BassHammer , We tried for just a little bit to do the sonar bite. IT was a little on the early side when we went. With this cold weather on the way things should get interesting ~ T Mike

K MAC, The dark blue you see right under the boat represents the water column, To a degree the depth of the water. I don't pay much attention to that part of the Side Imaging. Pay attention to what you see from the edge of the dark blue to the far edge of the screen. How big is a 5lb grasshopper????? 5lbs??? For more info on how to read this data go here.. http://www.humminbird.com/generic2.asp?ID=514 If you have any other questions about it let me know and I'll do my best to answer it. BTW this unit has sonar, GPS AND Side Imaging capabilities all in ONE unit. ~~ Very powerful!! T Mike

Sodakster, Experience is one thing but if you understand how the Side Imaging works it will also help you understand. If you run the 987 in Side imagin you will see ALL sorts of clouds like you see in the red rectangle representing shad. The white in the bars in the black rectangle are more solid and emit a shadow represented by the yellow arrow and line. More solid things like fish and trees and rocks will emit a shadow while a school of bait will not. I guess a school of bait COULD emit a shawdow but it would have to be fairly dense. Just to give you a little idea here is a picture of an underwater sunken bridge. This picture is TWO pictures joined together at the green line by a image editor ie photoshop. THey are two seperate pictures but I combined them to show the "BIG" picture. From what I see in this picture the actual bridge is no longer on the bulkhead in which it was built on. T Mike

I took this picture last week while on the lake and thought I would share it. This time of year we do alot of dropshotting and spooning for schooling fish feeding on baitfish. In a nutshell, this tactic requires you to use your electronics to find these schools of fish which are often found fairly deep 20-60ft deep. I am finding the Side Imaging of the Humminbird 987SI unit to become a very useful tool in finding the schools of bait and fish more quickly than if you were strictly using a sonar with limited bottom coverage. You can cover a signficant amount of water faster with the Side Imaging (300ft sweeps) than you can with a straight up sonar and more effectively at that. The SI is perfect for finding deep schools of fish/bait quickly with your electronics. In this picture, this particular creek was several hundred feet wide and my pattern was catching fish in the 40-50ft depth range. So I opted to put my boat over 30ft of water and follow the shoreline on the left side of the creek and scan the side imaging over on the RIGHT side of the boat and do the opposite on the way out to cover some water out over the deeper water to locate the bait and fish to dropshot and spoon. In this picture I have the SI scanning 139 feet scanning out ONLY on the right side of the boat. As you can see the cloudy part outlined in a red rectangle is the bait fish (threadfin) and the black outlined rectangle are schools of spots working the bait. If you look hard you can also see the shadow that is emitted behind the school of spots where the lettering is cut off. The schools of spots were approximately 70 feet off the right side the boat. I simply threw out a marker bouy and did an approximate 70ft U turn and a little bit of triangulating and worked my way back to this area with the trolling motor and working a little bit with my sonar on my front deck. Once I found the bait on my sonar on the front deck I quickly caught 8 fish on back to back casts on a dropshot then caught 2 more on a spoon before the school dispersed. It was a super quick 13lb limit of spots that were spitting up shad as they fought under the boat T Mike

Here is my favorite head to fish tubes on http://www.bassstalk...p/products_id/8 Here is how I like to rig them. another site I like to stand my tubes up vs laying flat on the bottom. Just something different I guess. T Mike

afroenginneer, If you don't have any luck with those emails and want to interview a Guide I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. mbucca@comcast.net www.tritonmike.com

Stratoscaster, My lake is different than most. My lake is currently in the winter drawdown to 18-20ft low. Right now we are about 6ft low and will be about 20ft low around Xmas/New Years. Funny things happen to the fish during a drawdown as compared to a lake without a drawdown. Our fish WANT to move back to the creeks but at the same time they don't want to get stuck back there in a hole due to the drawdown. So they migrate about halfway back to the last deep hole. Other fish don't even migrate they stay out in the main lake. Whenever you have a sudden drawdown or lake drop the main lake fish like to hold to vertical structures. WE don't have any boat houses with poles holding them up nor do we have any standing timber. But the fish like to hang around those bluff walls (semi vertical bluffs) for security ie if the water drops all they have to really do is drop down off the cliff of the bluff and they are safe. As for the next course of action for your fish is pre winter. They will start to migrate out of the backs of the creeks and stick around that last 20-30ft hole (relative to your lake in depth tho) in that creek and just school up and gourge on shad all winter long. I have found that the bluff fish will also remain in tact all winter long. Just remember these basic seasonal movements but keep in mind not ALL fish move at the same time so you can very much have several seasonal patterns overlapping on the same lake at the same time. Here are the basics of seasonal movements. Fall fish migrate to creeks, Winter fish migrate to deeper holes, Spring fish migrate back to creeks to spawn, Summer fish migrate back to main lake. DUring those TRANSITIONAL times is usually the easy part because you will have more overlapping patterns going on at one time. For example if your fish are in the middle of the spawn, You will have fish everywhere and that is part of the reason why the fishing is so good during the spring. During the heat of the spawn. Fish are still moving from deep to the backs of the creeks to spawn. You still have fish spawning and you also have fish moving back out to the main lake ie post spawn. So you got alot of things going on at one time and that is why the fish are generally easier to catch during the spring due to multiple locations. Keep in mind with seasonal patterns. Seasonal patterns doesn't mean you can't catch fish in the back of the creeks in the summer time or catch fish deep during the spawn. This is why I stated there are really 8 seasons to consider instead of the basic 4 season ie Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer etc. 8 seasons are Pre winter, winter, post winter, pre spawn, spawn, post spawn, pre summer, summer, post summer, pre fall, fall, post fall. And if your really good you can break those 8 seasons down even further. This is why a log of your fishing trips is so important. Fish patterns go in cycles and good detail notes will help you decipher those cycles. Kinda like data. The more data you have the better your decision making skills are for the situation at hand. If you have no data all you have is the basics. T Mike

Stratos... I think the further north you get the greater the changes. The northern fish seem to start things a littler earlier (on the colder side of what I stated). I think the key to finding out what stages they are in is to fish a day or so and see what the fish are telling you. Fish the moment so to speak. T Mike

The guys above have given you some great articles to read. Here is one that I wrote in the last edition of the Inside Line that you might find helpful. http://www.tritonmike.com/flattail.html T Mike

Roadwarrior , Thanks for your kind words . I'm fixing to go Spot Shottin here in a second ~ T Mike

Stratos, As a general rule of thumb I have posted some of my findings. Keep in mind that this will vary some from state to state and region to region. Again it's just a guideline. 45 to 58, early pre-spawn, moving shallow and staging. 58 to 70, late pre-spawn through spawn, locked in the shallows. Some bigger fish, which usually go first will bed in the cooler water as early as possible. 70-80, late spawn to post spawn, some stay shallow in heavy cover, others begin heading out to the humps, ledges and deeper breaklines. 80+ post spawn summer patterns. Some stay shallow in cover, many move to deeper water. When the temps fall back off in the fall, back to 70 down to 60, fall spawn takes place and fish begin active shallow movements, schooling and chasing shad in pockets, etc. Below 60 and the slow down starts till it gets below 45, when winter pattern sets back in. Again, this is general based on my observations, and according to my area. I guess that would make 45 to 58 early spring / 58 to 70 late spring / 70 to 85 early summer / 85 to 90+ summer / and back down the scale with 70 to 60 being early fall / 60 down to 58 late fall / 58 down to 45 early winter / then winter below 45. That makes 8 seasons which is important to consider. Going on only 4 seasonal changes will miss on important movements.

ahhhh a topic dear to my heart ~> There are only a few of us guides that actualy specialize in just Spotted Bass so I guess that kinda makes them unique and special in my eyes. Instead of rambling along on tactics that catch spotted bass I'll fwd you to an article I wrote a while back on the behavioral aspect of the fish so that you can catch more spots on your next trip. http://www.insideline.net/2004/wolfpack.htm T Mike

I got more than one thing that has helped me become a better angler. 1. Time on Water. Nothing replaces it 2. Versatility (know the strenghts and weakness of every tactic and know when to use them) 3. Keep a log of ALL your fishing trips (Patterns repeat themselves every year) T Mike