Big Indiana Bass

"You've got to believe your electronics". That's what I was telling myself on a short after work trip to the lake last night. I had been working a jig along a secondary ditch trying to find some post spawn bass grouped up, when I looked at my graph and saw what appeared to be bluegill beds. Thing was, I was out off the bank a good 150 feet or more, and not in any type area that you would associate with bluegill nesting. 

Fortunately for me, I had a light spinning outfit on board, so I quickly picked it up and flipped a cast in the general area where the beds appeared to be. I let the small curlytail jig sink all the way to the bottom, then proceeded to slowly swim it along bottom. It didn't make it far before it was intercepted by a pissed off bull bluegill. The graph doesn't lie.

I anchored down on the spot and proceeded to have a blast catching hand-sized and better bluegill from this area "in the middle of nowhere". I never would have thought of looking in such a place for these nesters, and I can almost guarantee that nobody on the lake ever has either. Traditional sonar in 2D would likely never show such an area well enough to figure out what you were seeing, but thanks to side-imaging, technology now gives anglers the power to find such hidden spots. The caveat being that you need to respect the power and ability the units give you, and not clean out a whole nesting colony of oversized gills. They truly are rare and special in most waters, and every single one went back to the water after a powerful and rewarding fight.

It wasn't the plan, but I again ended up out at Cataract Lake on Sunday. The original idea was to hit Waveland and try for some bass, but the effort fell through at the last minute, and at 1:30 I had a decision to make about what to do to salvage the afternoon. Given the good bite on Saturday and the fact that everything tackle-wise from that trip was still loaded in the boat, I decided to head back out there again.

Didn't pull up and launch until 2:30, and again the lot was full and the boats were buzzing all over the lake - not terrible Raccoon-like though. I decided to start on the same hole I started on Saturday, only this time I got better positioning than the day before and it helped a lot. Thirty-five fish later, I was off to a good start and getting ready to move to the next spot.

I graphed down the bank where I had found 2 other schools the day before, but it appeared that they had vacated the area. I could have run to some nearby waypoints, but instead I decided to look around on a nearby bank and try and find something new. When you're faced with a new lake or a nothing looking bank that looks like every other bank on the lake (see pic below), you either need a good map, or a fast way of eliminating some water to find more fish. I decided to turn on the side imaging unit and go looking.

Knowing that my fish have been coming out of 7'-12' of water mostly, I just tried to move parallel to the bank and stay in that 10'-20' depth range. When the depth starts coming up, you move out a bit. When the depth starts dropping too quickly, you move in. Since I was headed in a single direction with the same side of the boat facing the shoreline, I switched the SI unit over to reading just one side. That serves the dual purpose of also doubling image size, like running 2X zoom on your depthfinder. I ended up finding 2 new groups of fish this way, and took this screenshot image of one of the spots straight off the unit.

I ended up finding 4 good spots, and catching 105 crappie in 3 hours. Many of them appeared to be females still full of eggs, though I didn't keep or clean any of them. I also caught several males both days that still had their darker spawning colors about them, making me wonder if they still might be trying to nest in some areas. Water temps were in the upper 70's, and the lake clarity was good as long as you weren't too close to a windblown bank, which were developing pretty good mudlines on them by late afternoon.