Finding panfish

What is the best way to find panfish? With electronics.

Drill baby drill

I’m not sure if this was a question or a statement. Yes, the best way is with electronics.

Many people just head to the largest concentration of other fisherman and go from there.

Wisconsin fish finders –

Gavin Dickinson wrote:

What is the best way to find panfish? With electronics.

and find weed beds!!!

Edge of a weeds flats or weed flats next to drops. Or just find a basin and start drill and move around.

I’d start will a good map of the lake. Find any larger weed flats. There should be panfish both on the flat as well as just off the edge of it. Then like others said – Drill, Drill, and drill some more. Use you electronics to check each hole. If not marking fish I’d keep moving till you do. I won’t even bother to fish a hole without marking fish. Yes its possible to pull a fish in that may be outside the cone angle or hugging the bottom, but till I mark fish I will not even bother to drop a line.

This time of the year panfish will often roam out in deep water basins as well. It takes a lot of work to find these fish and they often move around a lot. They are rather easy to spot on electronics and are often rather aggressive once located. Will need to drill lots of holes to locate them and keep drilling holes to stay on them.

An understanding of the lake. Either from soft water experience or a lake map.
Then start drilling. I usually drill a lot of holes. I drilled 3 holes Sat late afternoon on a lake I dont know well and landed ON TOP of them in 7 feet of water. It was ridiculous. Sometimes its nice to be lucky.

Does the weed line theory work when the weed line is so shallow due to extremely green water in the summer?
Some of the lakes I fish have a weed line that is almost cliff like at 10 feet.

Tom schmitt wrote:

Does the weed line theory work when the weed line is so shallow due to extremely green water in the summer?
Some of the lakes I fish have a weed line that is almost cliff like at 10 feet.

to me a weedline is a weedline. Rather its in 6 feet of water or 25 Feet of water. weedlines always hold fish. Somedays fish roam a little farther off them than others.

One of the biggest thing for me when fishing the waters near me is dropping all the way down to see if I can pull something off the bottom. A lot of guys mentioned drilling a ton of holes; often I see nothing at all on my flasher, but I’ll drop all the way down with a wax worm or plastic, bounce the bottom & lift up just a little and see movement.

Dan wrote:

One of the biggest thing for me when fishing the waters near me is dropping all the way down to see if I can pull something off the bottom. A lot of guys mentioned drilling a ton of holes; often I see nothing at all on my flasher, but I’ll drop all the way down with a wax worm or plastic, bounce the bottom & lift up just a little and see movement.

Like I said, that happens once in awhile. Most of the time those tend to be real inactive fish and you have to work real hard to get them to bite. Most of the time active fish are up off the bottom far enough to easily mark them on a flasher. I just find that waiting to find active fish to bother to fish works way better for me.