Fish finders — Too bad technology can’t make ’em bite
THE LAND, AUGUST 19, 2011
Like most every other fisherman, I have a couple of computers hanging on my boat. In fisherman’s lingo, they’re known as “fish finders.” I’m no computer geek, but I’d be willing to bet the banks of computers NASA relied on back in the 1960s to get men to the moon and back weren’t much more powerful then those we now use to pursue pea-brained fish. By any technological measure, mine rank as relative antiques. The newest fish finding wonders featuring side-imaging and high-definition resolution require far more computing power still. Yet hitting
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the water without even my “vintage” modBut even when one seemingly has the els would be akin to fishing blind. fish located, it’s never a sure thing. Signals from orbiting global positioning Last weekend my GPS unit led me to satellites high above the earth triangulate the customary areas on a local lake that our positions and allow us to get within a few typically hold fish at this time of year. As yards of an earlier hot-spot. The sonar tells expected, most locations indeed held us what kind of bottom material or structure promise as tell-tale arches moved across is down there, if there are fish in the neighthe screen. I baited up and watched as borhood. But even after all of that, how to the lure disappeared into the depths. catch them sometimes remains a mystery. On a virtually windless day, there was THE OUTDOORS Two weeks ago, on an Iowa lake that no drift so the lure descended vertically nearly always is a sure thing for a mess of below the transducer, its fall recorded as By John Cross fillets and after six hours of following the a slanting line on the scrolling screen. GPS plotter to a variety of reefs and other known At 10 feet where a series of arches suggested a haunts, only two fish swam in the livewell. What was school of suspended panfish, I closed the bail, expecteven more puzzling was that very few fish even reg- ing a tug shortly as the bait dangled motionless over istered on the sonar anywhere on the lake. them. Nothing. Had we not known better, a week earlier a day’s I jigged it gently, the blip on the screen carving a worth of fishing had the livewell sloshing with two wavering line just above the fish. Still nothing. limits of walleyes and a mess of panfish, it would After several minutes, I changed colors with the have been easy to conclude we were on the Dead Sea. same results. Then I changed baits entirely. Again, I felt nary a nip. It was a similar story at the succession of fish haunts I checked out. Sonar revealed that fish indeed were in the neighborhood but except for one sheepshead and a small crappie, they evidently were in no mood to sample the variety of baits I offered them. Back at the access, other fishermen shared similar tales. Plenty of fish marked, but few takers. Summer doldrums? Wrong time of the day? Wrong wind conditions? Wrong baits? Wrong colors of baits? All good questions, to be sure. Better yet, they were all great excuses. ••• John Cross is a Mankato (Minn.) Free Press staff writer. Contact him at (507) 344-6376 or The Trailers We jcross@mankatofreepress.com.
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