Another breezy trip last night

[6poundtest]

Temps yesterday were in the upper 70's with a steady breeze but I decided to test my luck and headed out to fish after work. With that temp at this time of year I just had to. Water temp was right around 60. I had a better attitude about the wind, too. Getting dark as early as it does, it was a short trip, about 90 minutes on the water actually fishing.
I did some testing and playing around with waypoints and navigating back to them for a while. That's a feature I don't use much and wanted to get more familiar with how it worked. I kept an eye out for schooled up fish while doing that and when a school was located, I'd drop down the jigs.

I went right to 1/8 oz. heads to start, with a BG threadfin color shad on one and a SP 2" crappie stinger on the other, grey smoke color. I did not anchor at all but did short drifts over the fish, then pushed back over them a time or 2 and then moved on to a different place. Not ideal I know, but I was experimenting a bit. Jigging with both poles at the same time.

I was able to see both jigs easily on the real time sonar so could see where I was in relation to the fish nicely. I landed 3 crappie total, all about 10" or so, lost a couple more. 2 on the shad, 1 on the stinger.

Since I don't jig with 1/8 oz. heads too often, it took a bit to realize how they (the poles) feel "pre-loaded" when being held still. All 3 that I landed took the bait UP and released that pre-loaded weight so my pole felt lighter. Once I realized that, I set the hook. Add another tidbit in to the old noggin to remember on another day. So not a real productive day in terms of fish landed but more experience to call on on some other day in the future.

[Crestliner08]

Sounds like a decent trip to me. Every outing should be a learning experience. What kind of sonar do you have? Love to be able to "see" our jigs during a drift. Thanks for the post.

[6poundtest]

Let me clarify on seeing the jigs. What that really means is when I slowed down enough or when I stopped the drift and pushed backward with the oars, the heavy jigs (relatively speaking) would end up under the transducer enough to be picked up as a reflection and I could then see how they related to where the fish were in the water column. Whether I had too much line out and the jigs were down in the thermocline or along bottom below the school of fish or too far above them to be of interest. I did not "see" them when they were planing along behind. Unit was the Helix 10 SI with both 2d and side imaging on all night.
I use short poles for the most part, longest being 6' so my jigging is usually quite close to the boat. With both sonar beams on for 2d standard sonar, that little bit bigger cone picks up the movement from the jig quite often so at least I know the depth, even if the fish are on the other side of the cone from where I'm working it.

[6poundtest]

Here's a couple of screen shots from last night. In this first one, I've got both screens on


And here is that school just a few seconds later as I went over them. Chart speed was on 1 as I was barely moving.


And the whole group


Another smaller batch for good measure



I haven't seen groups like this all summer. Maybe it's the time of year that have them schooled up like this?

[Crestliner08]

Great post & pictures. Thanks!

[jnebgud]

Nice pictures