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Posts: 2680
Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | Ya know until the last couple of years, discussing the viability, usefulness and/or strategies for using GPS coordinates to river fish, would have been considered by me to be about the silliest of any fishing related subjects.
But more and more I'm starting to see the real need and use for such things, even on the smallest of river systems. Especially and foremost since discovering that the Saginaw River has a late fall trolling bite, that seems hinged to not only exact trolling speeds, but to precise trolling angles to the underwater cover and humps. Plus, if you only get to fish these systems on rare occasions, or get only the occasional chance to actually mark hidden pockets and other fishlike holding areas when the water levels are low, you may get confused on just where exactly these otherwise secret spots are.
Hate to use it again, but I gotta take Saturdays trip on the Tittabawassee as an example. The spot we were fishing was a unique spot. Of course looking at it from the surface only gave you the smallest of clues as to it's potential. I used precise anchoring, so that when we casted and fished it with our 1/4 ounce jigs and minnows, our lures bounced exactly through the fish's underwater highway.
I of course know these spots through years of fishing them and marking onshore landmarks that never change or move. But if the conditions were to change because of high water or other altering factors, I'd have to start all over again. So marking this spot left to right and up and down via the GPS, makes all the sense in the world. Just ask the guys who saw us catching fish Saturday, and anchored virtually in all corners of the globe around us and caught zip. |
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Location: Manitowoc, WI | I have spots on the Detroit and the Fox that people would kill for. They are marked with GPS and produce every year, depending upon where we are in the spawn/post spawn season. |
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Posts: 3899
| I've got a bunch of river spots that I have waypointed. Just makes things so much easier for me. I gotta terrible remembery, and if I don't get to a spot more than once a year, I...
What was I saying? |
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Posts: 2300
Location: Berlin | We had fish right behind a channel buoy last year at Spring Valley. After the first day we were in 17th and really had the fish figured out and were axiously awaiting day 2. After our second fish, a barge got a bit of course and ran over our bouy. Snapped the chain like a piece of 2lb test mono. I watched in horror as it floatd down stream. Never marked the spot on the gps because there was a friggin 2 ton buoy marking it for us. It was far enough out from shore so that we did not know the exact point where it was at. I believe the fish were using its base as a current break and I cannot imagine it was very large. If you were not right behind it you did not get bit which is why we were the only boat to catch fish there on day one. Nobody figured out what we were doing and it did not matter after the barge. That will NEVER happen to me again and can only imagine how much money that costed us. I pretty much live on rivers and have become very good at learning how to mark position but I will have waypoints from now on just to be safe. |
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Posts: 1188
Location: Chicago IL. | I fish 7 different pools on the miss river and 2 pools on the IL river. I have alot of waypoints and a note pad I use. Also a pocket tape recorder comes in handy. There is no way I could remember where the fish were on what pool time of year/ river stage/current/weather on that much of river. |
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Posts: 526
Location: blue mounds,wisc | i like to plot trails along the channel edges to keep me right on the edge. this way i can keep my cranks right where i need them. then when i hook up i mark the spot with an icon so i can come back over the fish. then all my spot on the spots i have saved as waypoints for pitching jigs. i rely heavily on my boat speed as one of the most important pieces of my trolling program,speed makes the difference between fish or no fish!!! |
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Posts: 2680
Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | larry eaton - 3/8/2005 4:57 AM
i like to plot trails along the channel edges to keep me right on the edge. this way i can keep my cranks right where i need them. then when i hook up i mark the spot with an icon so i can come back over the fish. then all my spot on the spots i have saved as waypoints for pitching jigs. i rely heavily on my boat speed as one of the most important pieces of my trolling program,speed makes the difference between fish or no fish!!!
Larry.
Your post hit the nail right on the head. And was exactly what started me GPS marking these spots. This past fall while night fishing the Saginaw, we decided instead of casting the shore lines to troll along them. At one point I had to troll across in front of one of the many ships turn-around points not used any more, and kinda strayed towards shore. So when I see the bottom coming up sharply on my graph, I turned the boat slightly away from this shallow hump and BANG, fish on. It didn't take but one more repeat of this scenario before I had 3 different GPS plotted points along that shore, that gave us the best night we ever had on the Saginaw in the many years I've been fishing it. |
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