I just finished a great 4 day Bluegill fishing trip with a good friend to Reelfoot Lake in West TN. It is a very shallow cypress lake known for great Bluegill, Crappie, and catfish fishing..What a gorgeous lake and what big ole Bluegill!
I rigged up a portable setup with my Mega 360 No Mount by using a Minn Kota trolling motor clamp on mount (thank you Wayne P) along with a Solix SI+ transducer attached to the shaft. I had that connected to a portable setup of my Solix 12 G2 with a 20AH Lithium battery in a Harbor Freight Padded watertight case. The Mega 360 with trolling motor mount worked perfect to clamp onto the side of the Jon Boat provided by Blue Bank Resort. I also had my Minn Kota 55lb thrust Endura Max mounted to the Jon Boat to augment the 8HP motor they had on the boat.
The Mega 360 was a beast for finding the Bluegill beds and pinpointing exactly where to fish. Not only could you see the bed divots but you could see the brighter fish returns in the divots. The largest bed we found had very few fish and we did much better with the smaller active beds with fish in every divot.
It's the first time I've used the Mega 360 in such shallow water. We were fishing in 3.5 to 5 ft of wather. I was surprised that I was able to get very effective imaging all the way out to a 60' radius. I'm sure I could have gotten even better images with the Mega 360 but, when I got it tuned enough to see the beds and fish, I spent my time searching and fishing rather than tweaking.
In the attached images, you can see the fish streaks in the small bed as well as the bed along a log by the reeds. The largest bed was mostly void of fish so I assume that the Bluegill had already moved off that one. I have both a regular and zoomed image of that mostly emoty bed.
We ended up with 225 big ole Bluegill over the 4 days... Catch & release. I don't like keeping the fish when they are on the beds.
Reply With Quote
