ND Live~Underwater World Comes Alive

NDLive · August 12, 2011

The Underwater World Comes Alive

Last week we looked into the underwater world of fish through the eye (transducer) of a Lowrance. Most of what I talked about was how to interpret the arches and marks. This week we will take a look into the fascinating world of bait fish. Few things grab my attention as hard as a school of Smelt mixed with Walleye hooks. A certain recipe for fried fish.

Bait 1: Typical groups of bait. On Sakakawea this normally will mean Smelt, the primary bait fish on our lake.

Bait 2: Bait connected to bottom can often be confused for trees. One way to find out is drop down the cranks. Trees, way more than walleyes, love cranks! This is bait.

Bait 3: This picture is what I hope to find. Bait is broken up into smaller balls, likely due to predators. You can even see the walleyes tight to the bottom, perhaps waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Bait 4: Cloud of bait fish with a walleye at the far right. We used to have miles of this on our screen. Smelt is on the comeback.

Bait 5: Beautiful walleye arch under the bait and up off the bottom. Gett’n ready for breakfast.

Bait 6: You can use the arrow key to stop the screen. It will also bring up all kinds of cool stuff like a depth cursor as well as GPS location. Works great to mark the top of bait or walleyes in order to target a depth you want to pull.

Bait 7: Fish fry in the making. Small cluster of bait with lots of walleyes. It is impossible to drive past this without gett’n the equipment down there.

Bait 8: Bait with an awesome group of walleyes on the bottom. Fish are everywhere. Notice the arches going down at a 45. Likely these were spooked by the boat.

Bait 9: Opportunity knocks. I have good luck catching fish like this. That is if you get them before they are too full to eat another bite.

Bait 10: I used the curser to stop the screen. This is the same bait we have been looking at but at 32 mph. Yes you can locate bait at high speeds!

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