®
Winter 2018
looking for the small things
ON A LOWRANCE
with Mike Iaconelli
Story by Tyler Brinks
page 24
T
oday’s electronics have made it much easier to
locate bass and fish-holding structure. With so
many different technologies available and their increased power and clarity, it has never been better for
bass anglers.
Bassmaster Elite Series pro Mike Iaconelli has witnessed the advancements in fish finding technology over his career and has learned to rely on them to catch more fish. As a general rule of thumb, he is always looking for any change when viewing his graphs and says that even subtle changes can pay big dividends.
GRASS
When fishing around grass, Iaconelli prefers the use of StructureScan and DownScan.
“You can notice small changes, like a boulder within the grass or small bald spots where the grass isn’t growing, because the bottom is too hard and that is where you will often find the fish,” he said. “On 2D, it kind of jumbles everything together on the screen.”
DEPTH CHANGES
Depth changes and drop-offs are common things that bass anglers look for, but even the smallest changes matter. Iaconelli shared an example of how a one-foot depth change helped him.
On Lake St. Clair, he was fishing a long distance with a depth of 19-feet and once it dropped to 20.1-feet he started catching fish.
“I kept fishing and it went back to 19-feet and I stopped catching fish until I went back and made a drift through the area I got bit that was a little deeper,” he shared. “Without your electronics, you would never find these changes besides luck and then you wouldn’t realize what you have found. The smallest of contour changes can make the difference.”
BOTTOM COMPOSITION
One of the benefits of watching your Lowrance units closely is finding small changes in bottom hardness.
“I like to watch the thickness of the bottom line,” he said. “On the softer bottom, the line will be much thicker because the soft bottom absorbs the signal.”
Conversely, a thin line shows hard bottom and this is often what he looks for.
“On some rivers that are heavily silted, most of the bottom is soft, so the areas with hard bottom are key,” he added.
VIDEO GAME FISHING
The use of electronics to visually see fish, drop lures to them and watch them bite has become an essential way to fish in some areas of the country, according to Iaconelli.