My graph went ca-put. So I'm going to look for striper/whites on PK today. I've never fished without a graph, so I was wondering what you would do? I have the navionics app on my phone. Should I look for ledges with that or just troll around?

I discovered that you can turn off your Sonar on a 798 Humminbird while the chart is still on. I was on Tawakoni Wednesday for the morning bite with a split screen of Chart and standard Sonar and spent the whole morning with only the chart. On Tawakoni I was able to follow the birds and catch 30 to 40 sand bass and undersized hybrids with no depth finder screen. There were fish around several humps but only the birds would reveal if they were active. I did not try trolling but feel that a Hell-pet rig would have caught fish. Late in the morning I ran into Matt Cartwright and he jumped in my boat. He scrolled through my menu and found that the Sonar was in the off position. He turned it on and everything was working normal. I said that I did not turn it off and Matt said that it was fixed now. Matt sure is a great guy and of immeasurable help to people on the lake. He also knows his Humminbird stuff. We used the Sonar to catch another 30 fish in the evening.

The point is that you can still catch fish even if your sonar goes out. I have the Navionics app on my phone and Verizon as my carrier. It doesn't work on Tawakoni because of low signal strength. I had the same problem on Lake Limestone. By the way, try to get your depth finder replaced as soon as possible. There are lots of good deals on Ebay. Good luck fishing.

When fishing the Brazos look for points that meet the river channel. There are some schooling fish but they move and don't school on top in the same place everyday. Slabs with flies have been the best Sand Bass bite recently.

How did you do? I've been catch loads of small stripers down by the dam and in Neely Slough on live shad. I even got a nice 30 incher that I'll post up soon once I get the wife to take a picture. You won't need a graph to chase the top water action on the points and coves. Not sure you can get the stripers to take a lure but maybe you can.

PK is going to be in excellent shape in the years to come as far as stripers goes. We must have had an awesome spawn because every cove and creek is chock full of 8 inch stripers. On live shad, I've been catching more than I can count. I use up 5-6 dozen shad and call it a day. Very seldom catch a keeper but the 14-16 inch fish are fun to catch.

Looks like I'll need to spring for a grayline bait tank. This five gallon bucket does not keep those nasty threadfins alive very long unless I switch the water out all the time. Been using two buckets, and moving the shad to the second bucket after they muck up the water. Unreal how much [censored] comes out of 4-5 dozen shad. Within a few minutes, the bottom of the bucket is totally covered and you can hardly see in the water.

If these threadfins move deep I'll have to get a guide trip with Randy to show me how to catch shad in deep water. I've tried to use the graph and catch them with the net with no luck. Right now it's simple to just go into a cove and drop the net over a 50 foot wide cloud of threadfins.

The whole time I was there it rained, so we didn't fish much. We mainly drifted over the river channel chunking kastmaster spoons using the mepps method. Not a bite....however, we did fish the tailwater behind the dam and had some luck. A ton of Striper were dead on the bank (40-50) and I saw a few swimming around that looked like they had sores on them. Looked liek a fish kill was going on. I wonder what the deal was?

The day we left whites were boiling the water 50 ft from our dock, which is just east of Sandy Beach on the North side. I was furious! HAHA! But that's how things go sometimes. I think its time to re-up for a new graph, anyway. I want a lowrance so I can wi-fi to an ipad and not have to buy a graph for the bow (its a skeeter.)

I hate that for you. Back when I was still working my fishing trips went like that a lot. They always seemed to be really biting when I was not there.