The Master Gets Schooled! Or, What I’ve Learned About Artificials for Walleyes
By Bruce “Doc” Samson
Over the past 30 years, walleye fishing has been a major element in my life. Early on, I learned from the boat seat of Jerry Anderson, one of Mille Lacs best guides ever. Since, then, with live bait, the trophy case has added eight major walleye tournament wins and many more “should-haves” while using live bait.
I was out with Bill Lundeen the owner of Lundeen’s Tackle Castle (located at SW corner of Mille Lacs Lake). We were testing a few shallow water presentations and only caught one Northern Pike in the weeds trolling and one walleye on boulders with slip bobbers so we decided to troll the lake basin for walleyes. Bill used floating Rapalas and Salmo Hornets and failed...
Everybody wants to know what a fish looks like with their sonar. The next question is, how am I to find baitfish using a fish finder? Bait is important for finding fish that bite and other times it makes no difference. I have fished some lakes where you must find the bait to catch fish and on other lakes the bait location does not matter. When I can't figure it out, I believe we just have to wait until we receive enough information on fish and bait to solve the problem but in 20 years someone may have studied the prey-predator relationship in detail on the lakes and we will have the information to make educated decisions.
Lowrance HDS Gen2 Review Part 1
Lowrance announced the new HDS 2nd generation December 2011. This has been a hot topic on internet marine electronics forums with many questions about how it compares to the 1st generation HDS. For this discussion I will use Gen1 and Gen2 for the 2 generations of HDS models.
Here is my review of the Lowrance Elite 7, with pluses and minuses. Elite 7 is a great standalone model.
Samson strong, tames weather and walleye
Minnesota pro goes wire-to-wire in Mille Lacs Pro Walleye Tour victory
By Lynn Burkhead
ESPN Outdoors associate editor
Heading into the final round of the Professional Walleye Trail's Lowrance/Evertroll Central Pro Am stop at Minnesota's Lake Mille Lac, angler Bruce Samson was in familiar territory.
I get many questions about adjusting the color lines on sonar. The correct setting depends on your preferences and sonar model you are using. ColorLine was developed to show differences in the strength of echo returns. By adjusting the color lines on sonar, we can tell differences in bottom hardness and determine if the bump on the bottom is a fish or the bottom. I have a nice example showing fish as bumps on the bottom.
Some fish are structure related to boulders and using sonar to understand the bottom of a lake is key to catching them.
This is an example on how sonar paints images that aren’t what the bottom really looks like. A person has to learn how to read a drop off on a sonar. Sonar can only paint an image with information using how far the target is from the transducer and how strong the sound returns (echo strength). This image is from a drop-off..
How to take screenshots (screen captures) with your Lowrance HDS Gen 1 and older software for Gen 2. Also read about screenshots for for HDS Touch and Gen 2 with the latest software updates.
