How to tell what kind of botom you are fishing in?

Mikeel1987 · Post by **Mikeel1987** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:25 pm

So always hear people talking about fishing hard botoms and stuff like that and was wondering if there was anyway to find out with out having expensive electronics what kind of bottoms you are fishing. for example hard bottoms soft botoms or silty botoms. I have a cheapy depthfinder so its not color so I cant tell on that what kind of bottom I have. I will buy a good depthfinder when money does permit but in the mean time anyone have any tips?

YellowBear · Post by **YellowBear** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:58 am

If you set the sensitivity on your unit it should tell you the differance between a hard or soft bottom.
If you are getting a bottom reading and then it goes away indicates a transition from hard to soft.
A hard bottom reflects the signal and a soft bottom absorbs it.
You can also use a heavy weight.

kzoo · Post by **kzoo** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:29 am

Heavy football heads with fluoro line.

davidwat1 · Post by **davidwat1** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:13 pm

Agree with kzoo, or also braided line with a 1 oz. Carolina rig. When you can "count rocks" as you bounce over them, you have your sensitivity dialed in!

Here is a depth finder trick I use all the time .....make sure you are in manual not automatic depth range mode. set your max depth to 3 or 4x the depth you are in and start idling, when you're in the soft stuff, you should have a faint line at the top of your screen. As you progress over harder bottom areas, you will get multiple lines horizontally at the different depths intervals. For example, If you are in 25' of water and have your depth set to 100 and go over rocks, you should see an echo line at the 25', 50' and 75' depth levels. As YellowBear suggests, you may have to tweak your senstitivity up to get the desired effect, but it will work. Try it.

Mikeel1987 · Post by **Mikeel1987** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:10 pm

Thanks I will so let me get this straight the higher the faint line is on the depth finder the softer it is and the lower the line the harder the bottom is

davidwat1 · Post by **davidwat1** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:37 pm

basically yes, the "true bottom" will be at the top of your screen. In my example, If the line at the 25' depth is faint you won't see anything at the deeper interval levels. If the line is hard/strong at the 25' then based on whether you see another line at the 50', 75' or 100' marks, dictates how hard the bottom actually is relative to it's surrounding area.

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How to tell what kind of botom you are fishing in?

How to tell what kind of botom you are fishing in?

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