Or, how to increase your quality fishing time without taking more time off from work.
For the 2008 Sturgeon Excursion, LakeMaster came out with the ’08 mapping chip. This new and improve chip is perfect for the folks looking for the routes and holes our quarry uses to move out of Lake of the Woods and into the Rainy River each spring. One of the many new features of the ’08 chip is the coverage past Baudette and the addition of Rainy Lake.
About the same time, LakeMaster released it’s 2008 version of their Contour Pro computer software.
I’ve found over the last few years that I have spent too much time looking for the deep holes in the Rainy River and the river channel in Four Mile Bay. Time that could have been better used fishing instead of looking.
This is where the Contour Pro software excels.
I used a MMC card to load my old waypoints into the software. Not only did this give me points of reference, but I could see trends in the patterns I was fishing.
One trend that became evident was that most fish caught were outside or on the edges of holes. Not in the center of the hole where I was marking the most fish.
Looking for new areas I’ll move to the general area that I’m planning on fishing. Then I’ll want to find the deepest water in the area. By selecting the different water depth ranges, I can quickly find the deepest holes in the area I’m fishing. I’ve found that I’ve fished some of these holes in the past, but there are many, many more areas that I’ve simply over looked.
Now that I’ve located a new hole, I can mark them with a waypoint and label it as "new xx hole". This will let me know when I’m on the water that I’ve never fished this hole before. If I don’t have any action in 15 minutes, I’ll be pulling up anchor and moving directly to the next new hole.
The image posted with the waypoint called 36′ HOLE, has given up 13 fish. One point to remember is that the anchor is up stream of the waypoint and we are actually fishing down stream toward the edge of the deepest water.
Less time boating around looking for holes, more time boating directly to the spot I want to fish.
One other benefit to using the Contour Pro software is the ability to record information about your catch in each location. From species to water temperature, that data buff will have a organized history of each fishing spot.
Once all of your new waypoints are recorded into your Contour Pro software, it takes but seconds to download them into a MMC card and then load them into your locator.
The walleye and bass guys have been using this type of information for years to win tourneys and for recreational fishing.
For more information on additional features and computer compatibility, click on LakeMaster Contour Pro Information<<<
Good Fishing and we’ll see you up at the ’09 Sturgeon Excursion!
