I installed Garmin Live Scope this year and it has finally paid off fishing salt. It was a game changer for Crappie fishing. Mainly due to the fact that Crappie are pretty much stationary in their habitat all year long. So this makes it easier to identify and target them using the scope. Sea Trout and reds are a different story! They are always on the move! Most of the time…
I was able to identify and target the trout on the shallow flat at high tide using my scope. See picture. The small school of trout can be seen at the top of the screen near the upper left corner next to the 6.7ft. The trout were moving but at a much slower pace.
A few things to note….
The water temp was 49 at 930AM. All hits were small ticks. I had to switch to a smaller Killer to catch the first two trout.
My retrieve was SLOW. Two Short twitches. Long pause. Pretty much drifting with the current. The tick was almost impossible to feel…picture trying to feel a gnat landing on your line as a similar example
We fished for two hours before we figured out the bite pattern.
Some schools fed and hit our lures and some did not. But that changed as the water temp increased.
I don’t think color mattered. But sometimes it does.
there were some 8-10blers on the scope. They would not touch anything! This intrigues me! I’ll be back.
When the water temp hit 52 the bite turned on. We ended up with 27. All were 20 to 22 inches
The negative tides were key this weekend. The flat is normally dry at low tide and only has about 3.5ft at high tide.
Hope this helps someone….thanks for reading my posts this weekend!
Keep playing with it. I suck at live scope, but our friend PQ has it dialed in.
This is a pic I took on his boat a few months ago, he has it dialed in to the point of identifying specific species.
Great report and thanks for the pics too. Those lures are really starting to produce for you. Good stuff
on a side note, I’ve never figured out the reason for such a lite bite when the water gets cold. It’s almost like they just hold it on the front tooth for a second without moving much at all. Almost like a taste if you will.
Maybe @Optiker will school us s on what he sees in 50 degree water
@EF1 You might be right…one other theory is that the tick is actually a tail slap. I tried to follow my lure on the screen but there was too much noise. Several ticks early that morning while using live scope but I did not see anything worth noting.
Thank you for awesome report!
I just installed livescope & am a total newbie. Only used it 2xs so far but, I was able to locate & catch a few trout by a dock & couple of reds in another area I usually fish. I can only tell you I believe they are fish but, not what kind yet lol. It was enough to get me to slow down and make repeated casts , when normally I would move on. And it payed off. Haven’t even tried perspective or down mode, only forward facing. I plan on spending couple of days the week of Christmas inshore playing with it & maybe even attempt to catch a couple sheepshead. I’ll definitely post my results!
Since I know you like the HMG I thought you might like this. I got the new designed Elite and its a step up for sure, (my favorite rod now) but always wanted one of the World Class series. They are usually over $500, so theres that.
They are currently on sale at Scheels, never seen them this cheap. I might ask Santa
I think if the trout have time to acclimate to the water, they will still sometimes bite aggressively. For example, last year I was in 44F water bumping to 43F, and the trout were hitting aggressively. I caught 12 that day. I learned this from some Texas forums and having experienced it myself, I’m a believer. But, there are definitely days where the bite is super spongy. Technique makes all the difference. It takes me a while to get dialed in. I feel like I have dead hands
