Mud Flat location

[beer batter]

How do you tell where the mud flats are on a lake when you have no idea where to start looking? Not talking about Mille Lacs, but I've heard that there's a hot bite on the mud flats of a lake and I don't even know where to start looking.

Are they typically a deep, flat area of the lake or more of a shallow shelf off the shore? My guess would be deep this time of year. If it's in a deep area of the lake, how do you tell if it's mud or sand or other? Can you detect the bottom substance on deep areas with a graph? Mine might not have the granularity to do so, but what are the keys to detecting it?

Looking for general ways to find this location on any given lake. Thanks in advance.

[PERCHJR]

Hey Beer, you will probably get morein depth replies other than mine, but in my experience in the NE part of South Dakota, the lakes we fish, like Waubay the mud flats are locacted exactlly where you said, mostly in the middle of the lake in the deeper water!!! Not that every lake is the same as Waubay but in my experience most are!!! The best tool to use is of course a camera, in the winter the water is the clearest and you can drop the camera down and locate the mud flat and if you have a GPS you can mark those spots, there mite be smaller chucks of the flats that you would like to mark, for the next time you fish the lake!!! If you have experience jig fishing you can sometimes feel the bottom change from time to time also, in my experience on different lakes I can tell the difference between a rocky or sandy bottom and a muddy bottom by how the jigs contacts the bottom!!! I hope this rambling on helps yah a little bit, like I said hopefully more guys can give you some pointers also!!!

GOOD LUCK AND GOOD FISHING!!!

[18 inch Crappie]

Pick up yourself a lake map, there a couple of good ones (Lake Master and Hot Maps)$15-$20 that will show you the flats and give GPS # for you. You can find them that way or your best bet is pick up a GPS.

[Willy]

Usually the mud starts where the bottom of a breakline bottoms out. You can see on your graph that the bottom isn't reading as solid. This is mud. If you have an area where you can tell it is hard bottomed(you'll get a double echo), follow that out until the echo disapears. This will most likely be the transition line from rock, sand, or gravel to mud. Alot of the times, the bottom of bays have mud flats too that can slowly taper out into the deeper basin.