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Thermocline on electronics?

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First full year in a boat with electronics so I’m not very good at reading my graphs. Also I don’t have much knowledge about thermoclines in general. 
To me it looks like the top of a thermocline at ~13ft and some fish suspending over it. Do you think thsts what’s going on here? 
Thanks. IMG_1372.jpeg.657e9f13e7d84cccac875b30fd02fe31.jpeg

Yes.  You can verify this with a temp probe.  Research "thermoclines".  Glenn has info on BR.

  • Super User

yep.  That's a pretty clear one.  Also, you're electronics are pretty dialed in so well done for first year with them.

  • Author
1 hour ago, casts_by_fly said:

yep.  That's a pretty clear one.  Also, you're electronics are pretty dialed in so well done for first year with them.

Fish the moment’s YouTube videos have help me out a lot with settings and stuff but i’m still learning how to interpret what’s going on. 

  • Super User

Maybe, maybe not. What time of day/night did you take that pic? Most likely a thermocline, but several other scenarios can create that same type reading.

  • Super User
50 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Maybe, maybe not. What time of day/night did you take that pic? Most likely a thermocline, but several other scenarios can create that same type reading.

 

I mean, turbidity or a halocline would do that, but I doubt either are likely for him.  A plankton/algal bloom would do that if it was on the bottom, but normally you see that higher in the column rather than lower.  What else are you thinking?

  • Author
1 hour ago, Team9nine said:

Maybe, maybe not. What time of day/night did you take that pic? Most likely a thermocline, but several other scenarios can create that same type reading.

About an hour before dark. 

  • Super User
4 hours ago, casts_by_fly said:

 

I mean, turbidity or a halocline would do that, but I doubt either are likely for him.  A plankton/algal bloom would do that if it was on the bottom, but normally you see that higher in the column rather than lower.  What else are you thinking?

 

3 hours ago, 10,000 lakes Bassin said:

About an hour before dark. 


I asked about timing because the most common thing I see happening that people confuse with a thermocline is a zooplankton migration (diel vertical migration - DVM). It often starts right about dark and gets progressively heavier through the night. The longer you stay out, the more the “thermocline” rises in the water column, eventually often blackening out the screen, only to reverse in the early morning hours. If he’s on a highly productive fishery, it could be that. 
 

Not as common, but I’ve seen it enough are turbidity layers. In some cases it can be heavily silted/muddy waters from a storm that after a week or two of stable water create a silt line near the bottom as the “mud” particles settle, while the water is clear-looking near the surface. This is more common in reservoirs. 
 

Similarly, I’ve seen an influx of cold water from a storm (often murky from runoff) create a similar image because the denser, cool water actually stays sunk under the warm surface waters instead of mixing in, but that’s a fairly unique situation, and you could argue is still a thermocline, of sorts.

  • Super User

The screen shot displayed by the OP doesn’t look like a thermocline, too wide in lieu a few feet water density change.  The dense yellow looks more like a secondary bottom echo.

Team9nine is spot on!

Tom

If you set your split screen for 2d/DI to be left and right, you won't miss much, but you'll get better separation and what you see on the screen will look more like images you see on the internet. 

Doesn't answer your question, but it might make things easier for you to pattern-match.

  • Global Moderator
23 hours ago, 10,000 lakes Bassin said:

First full year in a boat with electronics so I’m not very good at reading my graphs. Also I don’t have much knowledge about thermoclines in general. 
To me it looks like the top of a thermocline at ~13ft and some fish suspending over it. Do you think thsts what’s going on here? 
Thanks. IMG_1372.jpeg.657e9f13e7d84cccac875b30fd02fe31.jpeg


I posted this last year and the consensus was most likely a thermocline.

 

 

IMG_3959-compressed.jpeg

  • 5 weeks later...

I don’t think that is a thermocline. Water too shallow. 13’ isn’t deep enough for the bottom water to be that much different temperature enough to show on the screen.

I have never seen a thermocline shallower than 30’, more often 40’.

  • BassResource.com Administrator

It's a myth thermoclines only set up in deep water.  They can be as shallow as 5 feet.

 

Hank Parker agrees:

 

And he says it again here: https://www.bassresource.com/hank-parker-fishing/hot-summer-fishing-dog-days.html

Quote

I remember a Bassmaster Classic held on Tennessee’s Chickamauga Lake. A competitor located good schools of bass on deep structure three weeks before the event, but I told him he couldn’t count on them.

 

Sure enough, when the tournament began, the thermocline had risen within 10 feet of the surface, and he never got a bite where he caught them in practice. The tournament was won by an angler who fished a jerkbait over the grass line in the back of a bay.

 

  • Super User

Thermocline isn’t static it bends with wind and mixes with current and displaced to reform again the same day in different area of a large lakes.

 

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