check the fish on my screen

[acadian101]

i was out fishing a little lake in the backwoods today looking for some trout (lakers ,specs or rainbows) and after wanting to see what this lake looks like for years i finally found a way to get to the damn thing (really remote) and figured i'd prospect the lake for spring next year. To get a better idea of the lake structure ,bottom ,fish etc, i made a gerry rig bracket for my humminbird 899 ci si hd fishfider to fit on a 12 foot aluminum canoe and worked pretty damn good.
This lake seems like the perfect little trout lake ,cristal clear water , 815 meters long by 250 meters , ,,it's got plenty of deep water from 90 to 145 feet and when i got to 2 certain spots on the lake , my fishfinder LIT UP with fish on the screen ,, i'd never seen anything like it. At first i thought maybe my sensitivity was too high (9/20) First picture with all the blue,,, then i lowered sensitivity to 1/20 and still ,loaded with fish. Now what i want to know is , if this isn't fish , what could it be? warm water??? what could cause the screen to show so much fish?
I had this same fishfinder at a outfitters last week trout fishing and the screen never got close to anything like this
let me know what you think
take care
Camile

[toobinator]

I would turn the fish id off. I doubt that all those fish pictures are actually fish (would be sweet if they were though ) With the id off, fish show up as arches, or part arch. In your last picture, it looks like a fish on bottom.

ED

[lape0019]

I was originally thinking that line was the thermocline but I have never seen it that deep.

[acadian101]

i too thought it was the thermocline but why would that spot in the lake make the fish finder see what it's seeing? it would be the same (thermocline)all across the lake. The transducer is obviously picking something up , just don't get it. i would sometimes stop trolling to make sure it wasn't any noise from the electric motor and it was still the same. Now i'm dying to get in there in the spring to see if there is a difference on the screen once the water is colder.

[laker taker]

Do just what Toobinator said and turn off the fish ID. It will show every bit of weeds or whatever down there as fish.
Laker

[CBB]

Do just what Toobinator said and turn off the fish ID. It will show every bit of weeds or whatever down there as fish.
Laker

X3

[NMG]

I agree with turning the Fish ID off to try and get a better sense of what it could be. It does seem odd. I was going to suggest a thermocline, possibly an algae bloom or maybe even a giant school of fish? Maybe whitefish or something like that?

For what it's worth, I've never seen trout school up like that. The closest I've seen would've been a school of kokanee (landlocked sockeye salmon) or a giant school of salmon fry. Saw both of those quite often on the big lakes back in BC.

[acadian101]

so if fish id is turned off , i shouldn't see what i'm seeing? unless it were fish but i highly doubt that, heheh
Obviously there maybe a few arches in that column but nothing like what fish Id is showing.
It's thick too ,, i mean it goes from 20 feet down to 60 , if it's bait , that's alot of bait. If it's warmer water , how can the warmer water just stay there constantly and be 40 feet thick ,,,
i'll need to investigate more for sure ,, there supposedly is large speckled trout in the lake but i'll have to wait until the spring to find out (or maybe on my day off thursday . I was watching for splashes of trout jumping on flies on the surface as the lake was sooo calm,,and only seen 2 surface ,they were far from me but sounded VERY heavy.
For the rest of the lake , when i did spot fish on the screen they were mostly between 18 and 40 feet deep as well so probably not lakers and most likely specs. Minnows were jumping ALL over the lake in the deep water ,, tiny little minows , never seen it like that

[Lunker Larry]

It can happen though. I had my shallow alarm go off in 85' of water. Shocked the hell out of me. A huge school of what I think was mooneye. Sonar couldn't penetrate it.

[Masterbaiter101]

just bait fish. schools of bait fish have tricked me into thinking im shallow in 80ft