Before there was sonar how did people find structure? I understand the triangulation method old timers used . But they knew the cover was there or they placed it! What did they do just drag a hook around!
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Before there was sonar how did people find structure? I understand the triangulation method old timers used . But they knew the cover was there or they placed it! What did they do just drag a hook around!
I used an egg sinker with a wire through it. I left about 6 or 8" stick out of both ends. One end I bent a loop in to tie the line too. A wire clothes hanger was just the right diameter to fit through. I sort of bent a dog leg in it so the sinker would stay about midway on the wire. It didn't hang up easy and I could tell if the bottom was gravel or soft mud or clay and could feel it "tick" brush and logs and rocks and things.You just got a feel for it.
Back before you had all these things to rely on you got better at doing things with the old eyes and brains and simple tools. Sort of like shooting a rifle with open sights and a bow by instinct alone.
Way back in those days before fish finders we fish hard in the spring time when the fish were in the shallows. Deep water crappies were unheard of. On shallower lakes we would just drift and hope we found some fish. Many lakes had much more timber lying on the bottom than they do today. Todays electronics makes the average fisher-person a fish catching machine. When the "little grren box" came al;ong it opened up a whole new world.
Electronics does help! I have a lowrance DI/gPS and would like to get a si, feel like si can put u on the fish quicker. My boats not really set up for it being a tiller steer.
Also the original Kentucky rig that had a heavy sinker on the bottom with two droppers above it. It allowed you to let down slowly and hopefully feel the brush before the hooks got in it. Still use that..for catfish too in the big rivers drift fishing...you feel that sinker touch you pull up before you can get snagged.Big Catfish will hit it a lot of times when you bang a log with that sinker.
Also a lot of lakes had more standing timber and a lot of the crappie used it more...you dropped it down in the branches and along the trunk. Many of the lakes you fish that have stumps you hang your boat on or are two or three feet were standing tall above the water 40
years ago.
There is no species that we did not fish for deep at least part of the year. The clearer the lake the more time you have to spend deep. Course some Ozark lakes you can see thirty feet or more deep. You're not considered really fishing deep until you exceed that. Then some of the swamps deepest water is only 5 or 6 ft at most. You knew where the underwater limbs where because you knew what Cypress tree or Tupelo gum they were by.
Not sure how the old timers did it, but I find new structure with my hooks all the time spider rigging lol[emoji51]
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I still have the (green box) my wife gave me for a Christmas gift in probably 1974.Quote:
Originally Posted by sparkie51
Fish finders were simply depth finders for the most part, and at least for me that's still the most important thing they do.
Trolling with a lure requiring 6' of water for example is much easier if you can keep the boat in the right depth to avoid hangups.
That is primarily what the green box did for me while fishing in the coffee colored Canadian lakes back then.
Anything different can be structure, and you don't necessarily need electronics to find it, although it certainly can help at times.
Large deep diving crankbaits with the hooks cut off make great structure finders. Just have to know where you are feeling the rocks, trees, etc. I used to have 1 special pole in the boat just for that purpose back in the day. Sometimes attached a smaller crankbait and leader to the back eye. It would occasionally pick up a crappie or bass. Then I knew that structure was there AND it had some fish on it.