More and more anglers using sonar to find fish

Forget about ice fishing this winter, unless you’ve booked an expedition well north of our latitude, so what’s an angler to do to stay busy until spring?

We’ve already changed our line and oiled our reels, sorted and organized our lures and other tackle, cleaned up the rods, and started to go through the pile of magazines that stacked up during the fishing season.

And it’s still two months before most of us will wet a line for the first walleyes and crappies of 2008. What else can we do to pass the time to chew through a few more weekends before cabin fever reaches epidemic proportions?

Most of us, I’m sure, can use a refresher course on reading and understanding the structure that spreads out across the lake bottom under our boats. Maps, sonar and GPS have contributed to our knowledge base about finding and maximizing bottom structure, but it’s a complicated subject that is fully understood by darn few anglers.

If the truth were known, it is likely that most anglers have only enough grasp on their sonar to use it to tell how deep the water is. But sonar certainly is capable of telling anglers much more.

A growing number of fishermen, for example, are using their sonar to actually guide their lures to the fish they are targeting. Pro bass anglers are perfecting vertical presentation techniques such as drop-shotting and spooning in the signal cones of their sonar units, and watching as the fish grab their baits.

Sonar also can enable anglers to determine the composition of the bottom under their boats. That can be a particularly useful advantage when the fish are really picky about locating on deep cover.

Anglers who can tell the difference between mud bottoms and those comprised chiefly of sand and rocks will fare better than those who are forced to roam willy-nilly across the flats.

Sonar can be tuned to show the location of weed lines and the height to which they are growing above the bottom. Again, that’s good information for anglers who want to know the depth they should select for their lures.

All the knowledge you need to learn about tuning your sonar and reading its screen — whether it’s an LCD or the old-style flasher — is in your owner’s manual. Remember that little booklet you tucked back in the box after installing your unit? It’s packed with information.

The same kind of knowledge is shared in the owner’s manual for your GPS.

Plan to spend a couple of midwinter Saturday afternoons reviewing the manuals. Settle into your chair or huddle over your desk with a highlighter marker to underscore the passages that are particularly insightful on the subjects you’d like to study.

Several review sessions will go a long way to refreshing your familiarity with the useful electronic gadgets on your boat. Store the manuals in a dry space in your boat for reference. The highlighted sections will be easy to find when you want to refer to them out on the water.

And the best part of your Saturday investment in study time will be the additional fish that you catch in the upcoming season.

jwwollitz@aol.com