Westernbass Magazine - FREE Bass Fishing Tips And Techniques - Spring 2014, Page 39

Westernbass Magazine - FREE Bass Fishing Tips And Techniques - Spring 2014, Page 39

Story & photos

OUGHT

BY KEN SAURET

drought years, such as the western United States is currently experiencing, you can study those fish producing areas that are out of the water and find patterns to the structure that will help you find fish with your Lowrance electronics especially when you have Structure Scan too. Not only when the water comes back up, but even now in these lakes when you go fishing with these lower water levels.

I like to look at every situation from a positive angle. It is always easier to take the negative viewpoint, but that is rarely, if ever productive.

Since the water level is currently lower than you have previously experienced, you may not be familiar with some of the terrain that you will be fishing ,so use your Lowrance Structure Scan to find new productive areas.

These areas are probably high and dry. Study the bottom structure make up, take pictures of the areas where you caught fish before and try to figure out why they were holding in that area. When taking these pictures always get the hillside above the high water line in the picture so when the water comes back up you will be able to line up something that you can still see and position yourself over the structure you can see in the picture that is under water.

For us “old guys” triangulating was the way we found offshore structure over and over again before the advent of GPS and waypoints. Triangulating is when you take a couple objects on land like a big tree on a point and line it up with the mountain peak in the distance and then at a 90 degree angle to one side or the other, you find another object and line it up with a distant object. When you would come back at a later date and line up the two different objects in one line of sight and line up the other two objects in the second line of sight, all at the same time, you would find you were pretty close to the structure you found on the earlier fishing trip.

Explaining triangulating makes me appreciate my Lowrance Electronics and especially my Point One GPS antenna that not only keeps me on a waypoint without the need of a notebook with instructions on what to line up, but also keeps my heading oriented with the bow of the boat while I fish offshore structure.

This may seem like a lot of work, but the most successful fishermen don’t go out and just get lucky every time. They have spent countless hours learning these old time methods, studying

SPRING 2014

39