I've still got the photos of the logs online and I'll post um here so you can print them out. with a little explanation.

this first one just shows a catfish with a couple of small scaley fish back behind him. probably large shad.


on this one you can see several scaley fish that's after the balls of shad and has them busted up somewhat.


on this one there's three catfish close together within about a 30 ft path of the boat which is only about 30 ft wide and 30 ft long path of the bot movement .. knowing that there's three catfish close together like that there's usually a lot more around as there's a good number of scattered shad in the area also ... we stopped and fished here and caught 26 fish in just about 3.5 hours and moved on up the main channel and caught 4 more to limit out before 1pm that day. of the three catfish in this picture the two on the outside is between 7 to 8 lbs and the one in the middle is about 4 .. maybe 5 lbs. the way I can tell how big the fish are is by how thick they are on the fish finder ... can't go by the length of the arch because sometimes the boat is moving faster than other times so ya just can't go by that.. if the boat is moving 4mph for instance it only takes a second to go over a fish and the arch will be fairly small but if you're going 1mph the arch will be really big so unless you're some kinda expert on telling how long they are according to how fast your boat is moving then ya just can't tell ... but you can tell on the thickness of the fish at it's thickest point ... for instance ...those big yellow umbrellas we're looking for when we're trying to spot big catfish on the fish finder using the tm ... a fish that's showing about 2 ft thick will be about 20 lbs or a little bigger .. the fish isn't actually 2 ft thick but that's how thick they show up .. 3 ft thick would be about 30 to 40 lbs and you tell how thick they are by the ft lines on the right side of the fish finder but you have to have it set so that it shows the feet markers.


here's the one where shad were 14 ft thick from 24 ft down to the bottom which was 38 ft deep and it shows my net going down and then coming back up .. it took all of one throw to get enough shad to fish that day. the guy asked how I found the shad in the winter and I pointed out the weather underground site which is http://www.wunderground.com/history/airp...eq_statename=NA
and anyone can use that site by putting in a local radio weather station in their area and it'll tell them the wind direction for the last week or even a month if they want .. it's very handy to have that and that way ya don't have to pay attention to the weather for several days before you go fishin.
with a front just moved in and the wind out of the north to northwest I knew the shad were going to be on the south side mostly so I just went over to the south side and slowly went through the area and then gunned it and got on plain for about 200 yds and went slow again watching my fish finder each time along the southern side and then moved 200 to 300 yds under power again and again until I found what I was looking for which was this.


you can see that the shad are really thick here ... with 40 ft of extra handline added to my handline on my 8 ft net I throw and let the wind go ahead and push me along until the net hits bottom ... gotta have a long handline for this as you'll move 30 ft or more sideways while the net is going downward towards the shad. it's the best way I've found anyhow ... I can also catch shad with a shorter handline but I'd have to deploy my trolling motor in order to hover straight over them without spooking them from underneath the boat.

now I'll try to reconstruct the post on how to locate big catfish in the winter ... paying attention to the wind direction is critical or you can go to the link above to weather underground and punch in a local radio show and it'll show you the weather history for the last week. anyhow ... we'll talk about wind being out of the south for several days and looking at this first map we'll try to figure out where the fish are holding and at what depth the majority of the fish are at by slowly going through the area on the north side of the lake watching our color fish finder and normally wintering fish will hold in the intermediate part of the lake ... I've checked the deepest part of the lake several times in mid winter when the water temp was 36 and lower and it's like a deadzone out there but I've always found fish holding about 45 to 50 ft just below where the shad are holding and I'll work my way across the northern part of the lake's depths until I figure out where the majority of the catfish are holding using the info above on how to tell the catfish apart from the scaley fish. you should have a good gps map loaded on your fish finder for the lake you're wanting to fish ... this is critical for fishing for wintering bluecat because without it you don't really know where to start and having a good contour map of a lake is like knowing the lake better than you ever could by fishing it for 30 years. this picture below is what I'm talking about ... notice the 50 to 60 ft depths and then abrupt changes from 45 ft to shallower real fast near the bank .. catfish will bunch up right in there on that ledge in the winter with a good south wind for several days or they may be holding just 50 to 60 ft off that ledge but this is a good place to start looking.


now in this next photo I show a path of my boat or similar to what I'd do if I found the fish holding mostly on the 50 to 60 ft slope working my way back n forth in a zigzaging motion to try to spot those big yellow umbrellas that I'm looking for once I've found one I'll go back n forth at the fish in several directions to pinpoint it's location and then i'll get off to the side ... either east or west about 20 yds or so or maybe just 10 yds and then go south about 50 ft and let out my anchor and then let the wind carry me back even or parallel with my waypoint that I marked the fish at .. more instructions under the photo.

once i've gotten positioned I'll throw out a rod with a bottom float rig if the fish is on bottom ... I never want to see these fish suspended because it's hard to get them to bite if they're suspended but if they're on bottom they'll feed readily. so if they're on bottom I'll throw out a bottom float rig baited with shad head cut fresh from live shad just past the fish about 10 yds and to the right or left of him and drag it back slowly until I think I've went past him just a little and do that again on the other side of the fish and if I want to make sure I've got good coverage on the fish I'll throw out two more rods just to the right and left of the first two just so I've got plenty of baited lines around the fish ... I don't ever remember missing a fish like this and the one trip I went trophy fishin on last year there were two big umbrellas that looks like fish near 20 lbs or better and they were close together ... just a few feet apart ... I did a drag n drop on both sides of the fish I seen and then just a few seconds went by and one of the rods took off and bent down hard ... then just a few more seconds the rod beside it started bending down and I told the young man not to get it because I think it's hung up with this line ... but then they seperated ... we caught both the fish I spoted at the same time ... one was 24 lbs and the other was 17 or 18 if I remember right.

if the wind is out of the north for several days then I'd be focusing my search on this side of the lake where the arrows on this picture is. hope this helps

Im still learning.......but on those photos that would a mud bottom correct

tiny: what kind of graph do you use?

yes you're correctamundo ... solid yellow bottom is mud

on the first 4 photos the bottom is the mostly yellow going across the bottom of the photo ... the one that has the hump on it, the second photo, is where I ran the big motor for a short burst to move over or deeper into the thick shad in order to get to the thicker shad ... see those lines above where the hump is ... that is the disturbance caused by getting on plain where the fish finder just shows a bunch of clutter ... when I first took off I was a little deeper than when I shut down and started going slow again ... what that shows on the second photo is where I stopped and didn't see shad thick enough to throw at and then I moved a couple hunerd yards with my big motor and then when I stopped I was in a few feet shallower water.. only took me a few seconds to go about 200 yds or so but that's what it looks like on the fish finder when I take off and get on plain. the bottom on all those photos but the bottom one or 4th photo it's easy to see the bottom as it's the solid yellow with a slight bit of red on top of the solid yellow bottom. yellow is the soft signal ... red is a medium signal and purple and black is the hard signal or reading ... however you want to say it ... when you're over soft mud it's going to be mostly yellow until it penetrates the mud a ways and then it's red and on down is purple ... that's how it pics up fish also ... if the fish are soft like catfish and don't have a very reflective covering like catfish and spoonbill/paddlefish the color you see will have yellow in it ... the more reflective fish like all scaley fish send back the harder signal which is red and some fish show red/purple or purpleish blue ... it's hard for me to tell whether that color is purple or it's blue ... may be right in between but you get the idea ... anyhow the transducer clicks and it sends the sound signal down into the water and then when it bounces off something and sends it back to the transducer it interprets what shows up on the screen by how dense the object is ... soft density or not very reflective is yellow ... more reflective like striper, largemouth, smallmouth, walleye etc etc are more reflective than catfish so it interprets the signal as mostly red ... some scaley fish like sandies or white bass send back red on top and purple/blue on bottom of the arch because they're a more dense fish and as the sound penetrates the fish it bounces off bone and scales and sends back the harder signal as it goes through the fish ... solid rock is sent back as red or blue depending on it's surface or how well sound bounces off it ... sandrock will actually show up as yellow also ... I guess sandrock is pourous so it shows up the same as mud. hard packed bottom is most of the time red in color ... sometimes you'll come to an area that is soft mud with a layer of red on top ... seems like whenever I send an anchor down after picking that up on the screen the anchor will be clean .. probably sand on top of mud or whatever but who knows for sure ... might be all sand but that's not really all that important ... the important thing is to get a feel for reading your color fish finder ... the color units just give us a little more information to work with ... the best way to get a feel for what fish look like and most of you have probably already read this on my posts but tie a heavy weight of about 3 lbs on the end of a stiff fishin pole then tie on one of those spring clips so that you can clip fish onto your line and drop them down near the back of your boat so that the transducer will pick them up and you'll be able to see what color comes back on the fish ... I've done this with several species to get a feel for what they all look like so I'll know. each species of fish has it's own density ... some are similar like largemouth and walleye or striper and carp but if you'll do this with several species you'll be able to tell a lot of times exactly what's under your boat. this is handy info for everyone that fishes ... for instance ... lmb fishermen if they know this info they won't waste their time trying to catch a fish that isn't the right species ... same with catfishermen or striper fishermen and so on. time saved when you could be catching your target species instead of throwing cut shad at a school of buffalo or something like that.

the one I took those logs with was a lowrance 334 igps ... the one that took it's place is the 520 lowrance ... I think they're the same unit with a few minor enhancements but maybe they just changed the numbers because the seem to be indentical

Good stuff

Hey tiny, great info as always! I can't seem to locate the info you once posted of setting up the graph to read as you have it now. I have a Lowrance LCX 38. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

set the colorline on about 75% to 70% with the white background I think it is and it'll be like the logs I posted, I think. but if you have doubts tie a heavy weight on the end of your fishin pole and then about a foot or two above that tie on a metal stringer clip or some kind of clip so that you can clip a fish on the line and the next time you catch about a 10 lb catfish clip it on there and drop it down so the transducer will pick it up and then set your colorline so that it'll show a little yellow on the fish and then it'll be set about right ... if you set it too low then the smaller catfish might not show up with yellow on them though so be sure to send a small one down there also to make sure it'll show a little yellow ... what you'll see is two solid lines instead of an arch ... it'll show a black line across your screen just below the fish which will be your weight that you tied on and it'll probably be black because it's so hard and the fish will show up as a different color .. from red to yellow if you have the color set to show yellow,red,blue,black ... those colors will also be the hardness sequence as soft is yellow, red is medium, blue is hard and black is extra hard ... also I think the factory default will be that same set of colors but if you can't set it like that then just do a little discovery on how your lowrance interprets the fish and put a catfish down there then take a picture of it and print it out and do the same with scaley fish .. put one down there and take a picture of it or log it to your SD chip so that you can compare them and you can tell that way also. cause your unit will interpret what hardness the object is by the different colors ... also the bottom color on muddy bottom lakes will be the same color as the catfish ... the catfish will show just a little bit of red on top with yellow just underneath but scaley fish will be solid red but if your colors don't show like that and you have them set to some other setting besides default you can go through and find the deal to set it back to factory default but that'll reset everything so just do that as a last resort... it'll change your overlay data back to default also so if you reset to default you'll have to go back and reset all the overlay data that you've set too.

the overlay data is the options you want to show whenever you're viewing a certain mode like split screen mode ... if you want it to show the time and date on screen then you have to hit menu then overlay data then click add and add the time and date feature through that or if you want it to show your battery voltage you do the same thing except checkmark battery voltage or water temp or speed ... all those options can be shown one whatever your favorite screen is but each individual screen has it's own overlay data settings so you have to set each one individually. I always liked having all those settings showing because if my battery voltage got below 10.2 then my motor wouldn't start but I fixed that and changed all my accessories over to the two trolling motor batteries but it's still handy to know what your battery level is. I also liked having my local time showing on screen and my gps speed and also the water temp so if you have it on gps mode it'll show those settings also if you've got it on gps screen it'll show fish finder info too if you set the overlay data to show whatever values you want to view while in gps mode.

Dang Tiny, that's some good info. I'll have to talk the War Dept. into letting me buy a color unit. Thanks for taking the time to re-post the info because I missed the first one. As always we appreciate the information you share on the forum. You still thinking about becoming a Texican???

Thanks Tiny, I'm gonna fiddle with my settings this weekend. Once again all your info is much appreciated!

you should do that more often. cool pics. thats a really big shad. lol!

what shad you talkin bout? ... those shad I've got marked are like hunerds or thousands balled up together

Tiny - thanks for taking the time and effort to import your pictures and type all that info for us all. I've got the 522i finder and often I feel like I'm using it wrong. This will help I'm certain... I'm going to print this and keep it in the boat!

Now look what you've done, I'm all pumped up about getting on the water and I'm stuck in the office... THANKS!

Quote Rooster 99
"This will help I'm certain... I'm going to print this and keep it in the boat"

No No No, The wimmen wil find out about it and swear you have stooped to reading the instructions