Humminbird Side Imaging and the Mississippi River fall sauger run
I made a quick trip through Red Wing yesterday on my way home from Mille Lacs to check on the progress of the fall sauger run. In short, the bite is on!
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I'll talk about the fishing elsewhere, but I wanted to share some screen captures from yesterday with visitors to my website. These show the power of Humminbird Fishing Systems at identifying typical river structures, as well as the fish that relate to them.
In this first screen capture from my 1197, I had just passed over the deep tip of a wingdam. This dam is clearly shown on the right hand side of the split screen as a dark line extending from shore. I was running the new Lakemaster for Humminbird map chip, which (like the other Lakemaster products) includes the wingdams on Pool 4. The main body of the dam is to the left of the boat, and you can see the dam rising from the bottom on the left hand side of the Side Image (with just its tip on the right).
This next screen captures show the target for yesterday's fishing time: saugers. These fish were stacked up in small depressions in the sand....smaller versions of the typical washboard bottom that forms in many sandy areas. You can see these depressions on the first Side Image (which is the right hand Side Image), with most of the depressions filled with fish (brighter marks against the blue bottom). If you're having trouble, look at the second screen capture....the depressions that are filled with fish are forward of the red lines, and the (few) empty depressions are forward of the green lines.
Here's another that shows a PILE of suspended fish (a mixture of crappies, white bass, and sheephead....as we found out by swimming some small jigs through them) in a slack water area. That the fish are suspended is obvious by looking at the 2D sonar (left side of the split screen), but what isn't obvious is the sheer number of fish and the fact that they blanket this area. The Side Image (right side of the split screen) does a great job of revealing that fact to us...all in one upstream pass covering 250 feet of water from side to side.
Even though we were focusing on saugers this day, I made several trolling passes through this area, just so that we could enjoy the show provided by Humminbird's Side Imaging.
And this, of course, is what we were looking for. Now's the time to catch and release a few of these "fat-bottomed girls" as they work their way upstream through the fall.
Dr. Jason Halfen
Professional Walleye Angler
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