Willard again today 5/23/23

[wiperhunter2]

That is still a good day. My wife and I hit it Monday morning and nearly got skunked. Trolled cranks, bottom bounced, and could not find any concentrations of fish. Freeway, Westside, out in the openness, nothing. Ended up with a decent crappie in the marina to break the skunk. Bugs were BAD. Not biting, but were everywhere and covering everything. Just annoying.

Yea, the nats were bad for us as well, when the wind wasn't blowing, lucky for us we bought our head nets after having to deal with it last week. Glad you two got that crappie to beat the skunk off. Were there lots of people fishing for them from shore? 

For those that have questions about what you are seeing on your side scan.
Here are some pics I took of my side finder screen, I'll describe what I'm seeing but if you have any questions please ask. I'm by far no expert but these fish I have put marks around are what we are looking for when fishing and when you see 4 or more on the screen at one time you are in a good spot.


on this pic and all that follow, the white mark is the fish and the dark mark is the shadow of the fish, it gives you an idea of how far the fish is off the bottom


There are many fish on this screen imagine but only the two that are marked have the shadow, when we see fish but no shadows we assume they are very high in the water column or the shadow is off the screen



in this pic you can see the true direction the fish is facing by looking at the shadow

Hard to see in this pic but there is a shadow imagine of both fish, plus other fish with no shadows that I did not mark. I tried to clean the screen but could not get it any better




here are three fish that are close to the bottom off to the right plus another that did not show up with a shadow, so I did not mark it but if you see something like this you are in the right spot and even if you don't catch them at first, you need to stay in that area and keep circling it and changing colors until you find something that works. 



three fish on the left that are close to the bottom, when we see the imagine like the one on the right, that is elongated, we assume the fish is moving along with the boat