Fishing "blind"

[Slobber Bob]

I find I fish "blind" more often than not even though I have a Humminbird side scan FF. For short trips and trips to locations I already know well, I find it's just simpler to read the water and fish the way I already know how.

[J.A. Veil]

When I am doing a focused trolling trip, I really do like having my GPS screen on. The sonar is less important, as I am usually fishing in shallow water. I don't have side scan capability on my unit.

On Sat morning I fished at a spot in Prospect Bay and did well on stripers. Each time I caught a fish, I marked a waypoint. Soon, my GPS screen looked like spaghetti with a few waypoint dots. I returned to the same vicinity this morning. I paddled nearly 8 miles but found 7 of the 9 stripers I caught in a stretch of less than 50 yds in about 4 ft water depth. I was able to focus in on that small zone by watching the GPS screen and making passes through the highest concentration of waypoint dots.
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I trolled paddletails through that small zone 8 times and caught stripers on 7 of the passes. Included among the fish from that small area were 19", 21", 22", and my longest of the year at 26.5". All fish were caught on paddletails. The largest one and several others hit a 3" chartreuse 12 Fathom Fat Sam mullet (still my go-to plastic).

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I could have gotten close to that spot visually as it is close to shore, and I now know some features/landmarks along that shore. But that would only have gotten me close. The waypoints and previous tracks on my screen made the difference in allowing me to go directly to the spot with highest probability. I hope to return there tomorrow morning to see if the fish are feeding in that same spot.

I returned to the same spot on Tues morning. Despite the higher wind, I managed to catch 7 stripers in the same area shown above, and only 2 others anywhere else.