I almost gave up on off-shore structure fishing and fishing 'deep' (30-50 feet) in general. I've always been a big fan of flipping and pitching into trees, reeds, etc. and doing the shallow thing, but over the last month I've made a commitment to fishing deep and learning how to fish points, structure on the bottom out deep and all the other things that go along with fishing in the 30+ range.

I eased into it last month with committing to the C-Rig for a solid week. I did well on it. Then I started extremely slow crawling medium/large hollow body swim baits on the bottom and did awesome on that (out here in Cali). Then I fine tuned working a football head jig and finally, this last week I've committed to figuring out how to 'spoon feed bass'!

After days of reading and watching and learning how to finally use the basics of my Humminbird fish finder, I was able to put 2 and 2 together and FINALLY 'play a fishing video game' out on the water today (Ya know when you spot fish and then drop on them and call it before you catch 'em). Yup, I stuck 4 in a row in a matter of 2 minutes. It was AWESOME!

All were stuck on the LFT Flutter Spoon (which seems to sashay slowly back and forth versus dropping quickly... and the fish liked that a lot!). I was out at 45 foot depth way out on a small structure area where the rocks changed 3 feet in depth and that made all the difference.

Anyway, just wanted to report how cool it is when ya really figure out how to fish deep and use the electronics! My next objective is to figure out how the heck to STAY PUT on the spot ! I would've caught 10+ in 20 minutes if I could've stayed dialed in right there haha. All I could figure was to run the GPS on one side with the Way Point locked in (and aim my boat icon as close on it as I could keep it) and then just watch the very right of the Sonar and look for fish and drop away. That is how I did it, but it was hard staying put in the wind. Anyone have suggestions (besides getting a GPS trolling motor?) lol.

Thanks for reading! Sorry, no pics because I didn't want to miss out on the school or drift further away from the hot spot than I already was with the wind, to add taking a pic today would've made me lose them all haha.

Nice work and Congrats!


Try keeping a marker bouy ready to go on the front deck by the rail and kick it over when you're fighting the first fish.

Drop a marker bouy next time. . .

Don't be scared of a marker buoy! Good job!

I dont know if anyone has brought this up yet...But trying having a marker bouy handy!

Just kidding bro, great job! Its a great bite when they are eating it good!

A big homer simpson 'dohhhhh'! On not thinking about a marker buoy LOL! I have one too LOL. I used it shortly before spooning, to aim at a spot for casting a swim bait lol but didn't think to use it for the spoon= eediot.

If I drop that right into a school, will that possibly have an adverse affect on the bite? I would think a metal piece with a long white line landing into the strike zone could cause some issues?

I like throwing it out before I start just as a point of reference... Try to drop it off the the side of a school and remember where the school is in comparison to where your bouy is. If you have something to look at, you can the area over well from all angles. It's really easy to get off a spot 20-30yds out in open water without a visual reference and GPS units have a buffer zone when your running GPS... Depends on the day as to how good of a signal your getting. I usually like to have two bouys handy. One put down before I start fishing and one to kick over when you catch the first fish. Find a system that your comfortable with...

Thanks for the feedback guys, very useful. Any thoughts on how to tweak the settings on the unit to get a visual of the lure streaking up and down on the screen, as well as the fish streaking up to grab it? My view was mostly 'static' images. I was flirting with the following most of the time:

MAX MODE- On
Speed- I used 3 or 4
Sensitivity 12-14... anything after 14 and things seemed too cluttered

I could def. use some advice on fine tuning the unit for off shore structure fishing with a spoon or even a Drop Shot. I have a 997c and 898c HB... just moved the 997c up front today and I think that helped me a ton (bigger screen- should've had this configuration from day 1!. It appears the transducers are interchangeable so no issues moving them I suppose.

Marker buoy and put the nose of your boat into the wind.

Listen to EOB.....

This sounds like a great application for an I-pilot.

Kicking the speed on your graph up to as fast as it will go. And make sure your graph is set to the proper freq. 200mhz is the one I use, and you'll see it better, YouTube it , youll find good instruction there

You're quickly learning that deep water structure fishing takes some time and effort but the rewards can be well worth it.

When they're bunched up and you can put a sack full in the boat in just a few minutes, it is unbeatable.

Good work.

Good job man!