18 November 2008 - Electronics Tip
There's no secret about the fact that I like to jig-fish in heavy cover. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way and unless we're willing to stay at the house (and I'm not); we have to expand our methods for other seasons. When the fish are deep and holding on structure I rely on my electronics to give me a helping hand in pinpointing isolated cover on those structure breaks, as well as bait schools and bass.
I use one of the top-line Lowrance LCG units such as an X-70A that provides gobs of power and a good pixel count for detail, the more pixels, the greater detail. I set the unit in the upper part of the range on SCC (surface clutter control) and DISC (discrimination) which blocks out most of the signal return from algae, plankton and thermocline layers. I'm looking for baitfish, brush and bass.
To show even better detail in the target zone you can manually set the unit's upper limit. As an example, let's say we're fishing a series of 30-foot humps that drop to a 60-foot bottom. I set the upper limit of 30 feet and the lower limit at 60 feet. Now the bottom 30 feet is all that I'm looking at on the display screen, effectively making everything appear twice as large, or a 100% improvement in detail. Set up in this fashion the graph will even show your spoon or jig on the screen. Don't hesitate to experiment with the settings on your electronics, it can make a difference when you're going deep.
Jim Cliburn
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