Now remember, this is on tawok. Fish probably don't look the same on other lakes.

Got on the water at 2pm, about the same time the big winds hit. Only had to scan one point out of the wind to find a large school of active fish. It was one fish after another till we left.

When looking on the sonar, look for clouds on the bottom, it generally will be sandbass. Hybrids often are suspended and make more pronouced arches. On the sidescan, you will find that the sandbass are bunched very close together, but don't give as strong returns as the hybrids do. And, more times than not, sandbass will not have shadows under them like the hybrids do.

Here is a pic of sandbass, and lots of them. Several hundred in this school.



Here is a pic of hybrids, and lots of them too. But, they are larger and give off shadows which let you know they are off the bottom some and therefore you would alter your retrieve some to make sure your bait was up in the water colum some.



Here are the fish, not bad for 3 hours fishing and the kiddos catching MOST the fish!









Right now the bluecats, channel cats and white / hyrbrids are biting extremely well. Come down and get ya some!

EXCELLENT screen shots. love seeing those.

Here is a good example of sandbass that are thick...but if you're not familiar what they look like on the sonar, you will drive right over them. Look for a thin layer of clouds on the bottom.

Pic from today, 75 fish in 3 hours. No surfacing fish, all fish caught off the bottom w/ slabs.

Nice screen
Great kid photos

awesome tips, thanks for the info...i've incorrectly assumed all this time those clouds were shad-

great kid photos too.

Salsa,

Thanks for the screen shots. I have been on the water 5 times now with my new HB 898 and I still have some problems knowing exactly what Im looking at. Shots like this are a great help.

One quick question. In the first set of screen shots you posted in the down scan pic. The cloud that shows in the middle of the water column, what is that? Bait fish or turbulance from the boat? I see it often on my unit, especially in down scan mode and never know what to make of it.

i'll jump in on this graph pic thread. not to detract from Salsa at all...just to toss a few cool pics up. mine are not actual screen shots but were taken with my iPhone so they're not quite as clear.


this first pic is from 4/22. they were hugging the bottom kinda like salsa said. after we got a few bites, they went into a feeding frenzy and started coming up a little to feed. when that happens i tell everybody to reel up a crank or two to get to the more aggressive fish. sometimes they are a little bigger up there.


this one is from about a month ago. we were on a drift and got mauled with sand bass and small hybrid. just like salsa said, I'm going to agree that these are sand bass for sure because they are not casting larger shadows.


this is the down imaging picture from the same fish as the 2nd pic


this picture is also about a month old and was from some schooling action in about 30ft of water. graphs don't always look like this but the streaks look the same when u find even a few fish.


CAN ANYBODY SAY....FISH ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BOAT!!!

Thanks for the great info and shots of the sonar Salsa and Paul. I am getting a 798 side imager and down imager this week so I will know what to look for now

Great shots guys!!! Keep them coming.

Great and Thanks! I've been breaking in a new HB 597ci HD DI, and I think I have wrongly assumbed those "clouds" were shad.

on the sonar pics are you guys using switch fire on Max or clear mode?

Usually with Sandbass fishing since you find them deaper than 10-15 ft I try to go with Max. Is that right? All what surface clutter? I try and stay around 5-6.

that is BADA$$

Well thanks A LOT! I had just about convinced myself that I didn't need to spend all that money on a SI graph to go with DI graph since SI is really just about structure. Thanks for reopening my internal debate! Anybody got a couch I can crash on when the wife finds out I'm planning on spending $1200 on another graph???

You can hide it at my house, she'll never know.

Great post. I learned something for sure.