I often use my Garmin eTrex Vista GPS unit to find underwater brush in 25ft of water. I use a humminbird LCR 8000 unit with a 20 Deg cone on it's transducer. I put the transducer up on the trolling motor and then put the LCR up on the bow of the boat where I can see it while facing forward. Now sometimes the GPS will get me within 7ft of the spot and other times it more like 15 ft. So I have to search for the small submerged tree a while before I can see it on my depth finder. You see my depth finder only sees a small amount of the bottom of the lake. I can see about 3 ft circle of the bottom in ten feet of water. So I have to hover right over the top of the brush before I can see it on my depth finders screen.

Now last night I found a brush pile that was in only 7ft of water and the top of the brush was just under the surface. On a bright sunny day with little chop on the water's surface I could see the brush under the water from 50ft away. But later in the day as the sun when down I found it harder and harder to see the brush unless I got right on top of it. But then the boat was going too fast and I would run right into the brush pile and spook the fish.

So I got the trusty GPS out and went to the brush pile and marked it as a way point. I then used my GPS map screen to show me where the brush pile was in relation to my boat's position. Using track up mode I was able to steer the boat to the brush pile every time and slow down in time to hover near the brush pile but not over the top of it. Using a 10ft long crappie pole to tight line minnows down into the brush pile I was then able to catch a few fish.


What I liked about this use of the GPS was that I could not see the brush pile from a distance but could see it when I got within about 10ft of it. This made me depend on the GPS but when I got close I could tell how good the GPS was in finding the spot. If you did the same thing on land you would know where the marked spot was before you got there and that takes the fun out of it.

Not knowing where the brush pile was and then seeing just how close the GPS got you to it was fun. It gave me more confidence in using my gps unit.

This will come in handy when fishing for crappie in shallow water next spring. Knowing that I am 40ft away from a underwater brush pile in only 7 ft of water will allow me to anchor the boat 40ft away and cast to the brush pile. This will allow me to sneak up on known marked brush piles in shallow water and use the silent slip bobber method. I have read that the larger slabs are spooked more easily and using a long cast with a very light weight foam slip bobber with a small 1/32 oz jig set at 4ft depth is a killer method for catching big slab crappie.


Regards,

Moose1am