Mapping a New Lake

[thebus71h]

To be completely honest, I never look at Topo maps, depthfinders, or any of that stuff. Well, maybe a depthfinder every once in a while, but thats only if I'm in a new spot of water so I know how deep it is.

Reason being, we had a tourney on Lake Summit a year ago, and I had a topo map all marked with where we wanted to fish. We hit the first couple spots, not a darn thing, I threw the map in my tackle bag, fired up the motor, and started driving around lookin for a good spot, well we found one just by looking at structure coming up out of the water, points, and al that good stuff. We ended up 5th in that tourney out of 18 boats, and it was our first time on that lake. What looks good to you, try it out, and if it doesn't work out, before you leave, figure out WHY it didn't work out, and remember that.

[WallStreetAmigo]

I guess the downside of having a bunch of information readily available about a certain lake is exactly that: every one else knows about it too. Over time, when everyone keeps fishing the same prime spots, eventually the fish will move on. I do use visual clues and my intuition a great deal. I don't expect anything to come easy. But the major advantage for me to try to map out my lakes and use electronics to identify and save good spots is that I do not have the advantage of a motor to cruise around looking for spots. When you're rowing around it is a painstaking process to try to find good spots you found before and then position yourself at the best angle to effectively fish them. Right now I spend more time rowing around then fishing. My hope is that by developing a good mapping system I can eventually fish more than row!

[jasonfish320]

I don't think that you can ever put your complete trust into lake mapping, many of them are not very accurate. Atleast that's been my experience here, in the Northeast. I have found that depthfinders work really well to locate underwater structure that otherwise you would drive right over. Finding a downed tree in 20 ft. of water can be like a golden nugget! I typically use a site like maps.live.com it works better for me than googlemaps, this will atleast give me locations of coves, inlets, outlets, islands..etc. without driving all over hell and wasting that precious commodity a.k.a GAS.

Wallstreet, I've got a portable depth finder unit that I don't use anymore..it's only a year old, I used it to map a small brook trout pond. It would work well for what you're trying to do...if you want it, it's yours if you want to pay for the shipping...let me know..it's extremely easy to use..I've still got all the instructions..I think

[links_man2]

Found just what you need to map your lakes. This is PC software that takes input from Depth Finder & GPS. Need Depth Finder & GPS that have NMEA-0183 data output or data logging function. Software is only about $115, of course Depth Finder & GPS are going to be much more than that.

http://www.drdepth.se/