WOW! Thanks guys. All of the above is helpful information to me. Especially the detailed intel from ab1752.
Well, I finally made it over to the other side of the local pond and got to Thrasher at about 9:00 yesterday morning (low 7:00 high 13:15). Water was awesone - UBC to Thasher 40 minutes.
Saw a few boats in the area and spent about 15 minutes observing what they were doing. No Action, so decided to motor slowly north-west at about 10mph to see if anything appeared on the sonar. About 1/4 of the way to the Silva entrance I was seeing 'fish' and 65' and 80' so we set gear down and worked that area.
Had a 3.5" white glow hoochie on a green & silver flasher with 60' of rigger out, and a TrapShack Needle G behind an Army Truck flasher at 90' on the other. (I figure that if I have 90' of rigger out on a 45 degree angle, the weight is really only down about 64').
Soon had a 35cm Pink on the Skinny G and then it was fish-on about every half hour after that. Would have been more but still getting used to the whole landing/measuring/re-setting gear process. Over an hour of nothing on the white hoochie I changed it to a 3-1/2 green splatter-back hoochie with anchovie scent on it. Then put rigger counter down to 120 and 145. In about 15 minutes had a 12lb 72 in the boat. Over the next couple of hours we boxed another 2 Pinks on the splatter-back and an undersize on the G. Also put back a nice 65cm Chinook from the splatterback. Two of the pinks and the Chinook each had 4" anchovies (tail first) in their stomach. Water depth varied amongst the catches.
Take-aways from the day.....
- sounder only ever displayed fish at 65' and 80' but all catches were deeper than that.
- although the fish had larger food in their gut, they hit on way smaller, different coloured bait
- contrary to "head-first science" the fish had eaten anchovies tail first
Summary: use whatever works
my 2-cents
