This is what I see coming

[John Bales]

Going fishing...... Will finish this later. John

[Team9nine]

Thought you weren't going to fight the wind today? I'll be waiting...

Crazy here - I decided to leave the boat home and just walk a pond.

[John Bales]

I wasn't. But........ after breakfast I went out and thought I could handle it and the bad stuff wasn't supposed to come till around 3pm . I stopped at the ramp yesterday on the way home from catching 40 smallmouth and the ramp was the only thing that was not open. Its in a channel and it was still quite thick. I took two shovels, a coal type and one sharper and narrower. The ice was still there but there was an opening off of the ramp where I stuck the boat in. Not easy but didn't tear the transducers off. Then I ended up running through it with the boat and it was gone when I came back. Anyways caught 4 small bass today and might have had one decent one on for a short time. I shouldn't have even been out there. It was a good 25 with gusts. Hard to feel. I just spot locked on a few spots and casted with the wind. No cross casting today. Anyways, yesterday when I was out, the first spot we hit was the mouth of the river which for this time of year has the biggest group of fish and one other spot. We only got 5 small ones so we left to check another spot. Got 20 off of the next spot including our biggest LM of a little over 3lbs. What we didn't know was that when that was over, it was like someone shut a light switch off and it got tough. On this lake, this usually doesn't happen like this. You can usually go to another spot or check out different speeds and keep them coming. Not yesterday. I told my brother in law that after noon, the bass boats will be piling in because they all want to be on the water as soon as the ice comes off. This lake is known for lots of fun and full of small to medium sized smallmouth. We were checking a spot opposite the mouth of the river where we caught the 5 littles ones and here comes 2 bass boats. I didn't move fast enough and they both got to that spot and both spot locked on it for the next 6 hours. There are three hot spots near there, a 15 ft hole right at the end of where the river digs a hole, a little point that you can reach from the same anchoring position you use to reach the hole and 75 feet over, the deep water swings close to the island. All three produce. One guy was casting into the hole, one to the little point and both were catching the crap out of them. We ventured to the inside turn and only got a couple and we wished we would have never left that spot. When we left at the time, we were the only ones on the lake. By the end of the day, there were 9 bass boats that put in . The second time we got close to them, I worked a blade bait on the outside of them(deeper) and the guy that was casting into the hole asked me if we had been there all day. I had seen the guy there every season for a few years but never chatted, just always waved. So I got a little closer and he said to spot lock so we could reach the fish so we did. Turned out he was the cousin of the amish kid I taught how to spoonplug and knew every thing about me. We chatted for 30 minutes or so and during the conversation he mentioned he had both the humminbird 360 and also garmin livescope. I asked him how well the 360 showed the hole and he said it showed the hole well and also the little point which he pointed to. After I got home that night, I realized how hard we had to work to find spots like that and now a guy can drive around and see it like it really is without having to use any interpretation methods such as running a lure or going over a spot 100 times using a flacher and try to put together what you think is there.
My other thoughts are that one reason spoonplugging never took off is because just about the time he was drawing some attention, here comes the tournament guys who put their guys up on a pedestal and made heroes out of them. Spoonplugging could not compete with them and all the fishermans attention was pulled their way. My initial thoughts were that this new electronics would not benefit the fisherman who had very little knowledge of what structure is and how to present lures for most of the season but then again, there will be no spots left that were once only known by spoonpluggers and a hand full of the bass guys who got pretty good on their own, however they got there. These guys will never know how depth and speed can make a fish take a lure on the troll, will never know how to find a contact point or know the importance of knowing where that is, or understanding how weather and water effects the movements of the fish, will never have the basics of spoonplugging ground into their minds without doing the work that it took to get there. But.... is it really necessary now? You can say what you want but there has never been a short cut to fishing success. I have always said that a fisherman or spoonplugger who already has good basic knowledge already will benefit using this new stuff. Could this be used to limit the amount of time it takes to size up a fishing situation. With a few passes, have a map drawn, see the breaks on the structure that is drawn as if you were looking at it in detail. But then again, without basic spoonplugging guidelines and many years of doing the work, there will always be something missing. To tell you the truth, I cannot wait till the day I can use some of this new stuff so I can have the opportunity to learn even more. But then again, will my head be buried in the unit all day? It might!!!! John

[Steve Craig]

""" But.... is it really necessary now?""
"""Could this be used to limit the amount of time it takes to size up a fishing situation. With a few passes, have a map drawn, see the breaks on the structure that is drawn as if you were looking at it in detail. """

I have been having that same conversation with myself for a while now. Jerry ,Chris and I have all talked alot about Auto Chart Live, sense it came out.
It is my personal belief, that it absolutely does save alot of time in my mapping. Are they perfect maps? No. But I will say they are pretty darn close to what is there, and they will be getting better.
Live Scope?
Im still not sure about this. Talk about having your head buried in your screen!
The bottom line......we still have to have that lure moving at the correct depth and speed to make the fish take. Sometimes, you cant crank that lure fast enough. It takes Trolling to make the difference.
Look at all those Pro's wondering why they can see those fish on their Live Scope, but cant catch them and are wondering why.
Thanks to Buck Perry, we Spoonpluggers know why!

[John Bales]

One of the reasons us old guys like trolling with the flashers is because it is real time. It allows us to make adjustments in our trolling passes a little faster and maybe stay on a breakline a little better. Livescope is not real time, it is live and the picture is like being down there with the fish and the image stays on the screen and does not go away in an instant like a flasher. A flasher has no image but must be interpreted by us. There is no interpretation to do when you can look at a screen and see the fish are there. Most fishermen do not take speed control to the slowest speeds. They troll and when they do their casting, the spoonplug or the blade bait comes out and if they don't get bit, they think the fish are not there or not biting. Remember what Mr. Perry said. "If you put a lure in front of a fish at zero speed he may suck it in." A fisherman can catch a few fish out of a school if he knows they are there by putting the lure in front of the fish and leaving it sit. As spoonpluggers, we know that the fish become active once or twice a day and the rest of the day, they are pretty inactive. Why do we troll? To locate the group of fish. Your map you make while trolling gives you confidence that what you just looked at is really there and shows you the best area to concentrate your efforts but does not show any fish. You must go through the mechanical process of running the lures both trolling and casting to find them. What we learn by going through these motions is fishing knowledge that is not known by the mass, only we know, only we understand that Mr. Perry got it all right in what you and I must do for fishing success. We have this knowledge and they do not. You are correct in saying that some days, the only way to get a limit of fish is by trolling. What do we do when we find them on the troll. We anchor up and we chose the correct tool to control our depth and speeds for the situation we encounter. It's all about trolling to find them and then cast like the rest do. Now there is a tool that will show the fish on a screen and we have the ability to see them swim around and watch them react to our lures and speed controls. After fishing my local lakes for nearly 50 years, I pretty much know where every good fish spot is located in over 100 lakes in my area. There is a tool out there now that allows me to drop the trolling motor and look around and see if they are there and cast to that group of fish and maybe get them to take one of my speed controls. You get to watch them react or not and maybe change the speed to get them to take. Would that not be the coolest thing to actually watch? And it takes place live!!!! With two units linked together, you can put down the trolling motor, go to the back and change screens to put the livescope on the back and drive around and check all your spots. No trolling passes needed. Just look to see if the fish are on your spot. If they are, you sit and cast and check out the speeds to see what it takes to catch them. What is the good and bad about this new stuff? I personally think the fish are in more trouble than they have ever been. Is this even fair to them? Will this tool help the spoonplugger answer some questions we could never quite know without it? I think maybe. One thing it will do is reinstate that Mr. Perry was right about everything!!!! But how much will this take away from what we would normally do on any fishing day? Will we have our heads buried in a meter and eventually forget how we got to where we are? Will we be able to seperate when to burry our head in what I might call a real fish finder and know when to get back on the troll? Flashers and then regular sonar and then downscan and then side scan and now front facing live scope. Each advance in technology left the question of is it fair to the fish? Is the A rig fair but I throw it when it is called for and it is a great tool at the right time in the right persons hands as is all the rest of the tools we have available to us. Each advance in technology should make spoonplugging easier for the average person to do but we are still limited to how many have gotten pretty good at it. The time on the water to become pretty good may be more then the average person has to get there. Again, the new stuff should give some answers to our questions. Is this the end for the fish? Is this the beginning of the end for spoonplugging? John

[CHAMP]

Is this the beginning of the end for spoonplugging? The end of spoonplugging is coming very soon within the next 20 years, Why, because all of us old farts will be dead and gone. With this new technology and this is not the end of new tech. No telling what there will be in the next 20 years. I imagine it will get to the point you put on sun glasses and you can see all the fish in the lake.

[TN_Explorer]

John,
I seem to remember the tournaments banning trolling when Buck caught all the big fish. I imagine that if I came up with an electronic box that allowed me to catch more and bigger fish than the tournament boys, they would change their rules in a heartbeat. The technology is going that way, and it is going to change things, but I don't expect it will destroy the fishery or kill spoonplugging. Here's why:

1. It's expensive enough so only a portion of the fishermen will have it.
2. Most of that equipment will be mounted on $75,000 bass boats that will have the horsepower equivalent of the space shuttle
3. The majority of those will be on the water 12 days per year "during the season"
4. The people that buy the fastest boat, the prettiest lure, a box to point them to the fish - are not going to take the time to learn anything from it.

I also foresee the possibility of "primitive" tournaments that limit or prohibit electronics -- and perhaps even lakes that limit use - like no wake or no gasoline.

- Mike

[Steve Craig]

I dont know. Maybe Champ is right.
Mike makes several good points as well.
As far as Live Scope, I am going to wait until Humminbird come out with theirs at the end of May.
Supposed to be far better than either Garmin or Lowrance. We will see.

One thing i have learned over the years, is that after moving to Az and fishing these Highland/Canyon type lakes, I catch far more fish Casting. It is just something that has evolved over time here. Deep clear water. Deep feeder creeks. Deep structure and deep contact points. Trolling is ALL wire line here. Nobo rarely gets used if at all. It is why I say that on these type lakes, I consider shallow water to be water less than 25 feet!!! Only in the Prespawn/Spawn period does this NOT apply. The rest of the year......... Wire line, JB's, and Manns Stretch lures and Casting all kinds of jump type lures.

So maybe the Live Scope would be a huge help? We will see.

[Team9nine]

Homer.JPG (32.68 KiB) Viewed 1001664 times

This is pretty long winded for me, but bear with me. Just my thoughts and opinions on the subject right now.


"Over the future, we see the day when most of this knowledge will be absorbed and forgotten by most. It will be replaced by the same thoughts and sayings of the past and of the present." - Buck Perry


The greatest anglers/Spoonpluggers were the originals - because they had to be. I’m sure you've all heard Buck state that before, but we now finally stand on a ledge overlooking our own demise, as every little step in technology along the way has slowly contributed to the death of Spoonplugging.

Spoonplugging; the orderly elimination of unproductive water. In the beginning, it was you, a simple boat and motor, and a bag of spoonplugs. Then the flasher came out, and you could now begin to find breaks, breaklines and structure without having to troll the lures all the time. You drew hand maps to remember everything, and added to those maps as you became more and more familiar over time. But a lot of people were never any good at fully undertsanding what a flasher could show you, and certainly didn't want to take the time and energy required to draw a map on the water.

Then came paper graphs that would draw a picture for you of what was downstairs, including the fish. It made things easier to interpret, but they were large and expensive, and only the most serious anglers had them. They required constantly buying paper, storing the old rolls, and occasional servicing.

When the first LCRs came out, they were crude compared to the paper graphs, actually a step behind in the interpretation world. But as technology improved, along with cost efficiencies, they eventually became on par with, and then superior to, paper graphs. You still had to map spots, create line sights, etc. in the early days, but that too, would change soon enough.

It happened when we got GPS technology, and especially the GPS in combination with the higher end LCD units. Yes, rifle sights were still more accurate than a GPS, partly because of SA (selective availability), so a Spoonplugger would still be the more effective angler, but now the masses didn't need to write down and remember every single spot, or every single break (which most wouldn't do anyway - Spoonpluggers did!). Again, you wouldn't be as good as a Spoonplugger, but it brought the recreational angler close enough that he too, would be able to catch more fish than he ever did before. It actually started getting some of them off the bank regularly, a place previously reserved for Spoonpluggers and only the most avid anglers (tourney guys included). It also created a culture of laziness, as now all some of these guys had to do was drive by a Spoonplugger sitting out in the open somewhere and push a button. Instantly he just marked the general spot that took that Spoonplugger years to find with his flasher/graph...and they eventually turned off SA making accuracy for the average person nearly as good as military grade - certainly good enough for just marking a fishing spot.

Technology continued to advance, and we then got side-imaging. Now you no longer needed to idle around for hours hoping to go directly over a stump or a breakline in order to find it. You simply set your range out 100 foot to either side, and made long passes in some type of pattern covering 200 feet in a single pass, marking every break, breakline or piece of structure you could see - which was most of them. The first time I got SI, I went out to a couple lakes I had been mapping for years and years. I had stuff marked that I know no one had ever taken the time to find. I missed very little...maybe it was a clump of 3 stumps instead of just one, but I had it on my map. The good news was that my maps were incredibly close to what was really there. I was amazed at all the stuff I had been able to find with years and years of time on the water and a flasher and paper graph. The bad news - I just "refound" all that stuff in one hour of idling around with my SI - and so could everyone else who had it. The first time I took it out on a new lake I hadn't ever fished before, I marked over 125 spots in about 2.5 hours of idling. It's just incredibly efficient.

Finding all this stuff, and marking and remembering, had just gotten easier still. And the picture that was created was actually a picture that people could relate to. Even with the advancement in pixelation that came with high end graphs, so many anglers still couldn't interpret what they saw. Now, SI actually created a photograph level picture of what was below the surface. Sure, everyone used the wrong terms, calling brushpiles and bridges and foundations "structure," but it didn't matter, because they still ended up finding and fishing these spots - proper terminology be damned.

Then came Power Poles and Spotlock trolling motors. Probably only 10% of bass anglers ever carried an anchor with them, but Spoonpluggers did, because we knew the value of sitting on the right spot and thoroughly checking depth and speed control, regardless of conditions. The average person, including the average bass angler, would never take the time and effort to throw out an anchor, or even pull it and reposition as necessary, maybe two or three times, until they knew they got the right spot that allowed them to reach the break or the breakline and get into the fish.

With Power Poles, anchoring on shallow structure just became as easy as pressing a button. Out deeper where the poles wouldn't reach, press another button and your trolling motor would hold you in a tight spot and not budge. Why get off the couch to change channels when you can just point a remote and click. The effort and learning it took us to develop proper boat positioning and control just became available to everyone, and people gladly paid for the convenience.

But Spoonpluggers still had their maps! Except, live mapping came to town along with high definition maps supplied by the sonar manufacturers, and that was another nail. Yes, you can argue that those maps aren't as detailed and exact as a Spoonpluggers, but again, who cares (relative to the average angler). The ones that don't want to take the time to do their own maps just use the 1 ft contour maps supplied with the unit. A good 90% of all breaklines and structures are probabaly captured by them, more than enough to keep most anglers occupied for a lifetime, and pull more anglers off the banks.

As SI and DI developed into "MEGA," pictures and ability to find fish just got easier and easier. Good anglers, or younger anglers who grew up with computers and technology to begin with, could now just drive around using their in-unit mapping and the incredible detail of SI/DI to actually see the schools of fish that Spoonpluggers had traditionally found by trolling. Even the smallest group of fish can now be picked up in most instances by an angler well versed in the use of his electronics, marked with a waypoint, and then held in position for casting with his PPs or Spotlock TM. Proper terminology is long gone at this point - no one even cares anymore. Use the maps, idle and find the fish, mark the fish, then try and catch them. But we're not through yet.

Now comes Livescope. It's been huge in the crappie world for about 3 years, but is just now gaining traction in a big way in the bass fishing world. Most every major tournament is being won with it. And if you've been paying attention this spring, you know huge numbers of big bass in Oklahoma and Texas have been caught with it in the past couple months. Buck said don't go out into sanctuary areas and run around looking for fish like a lost chicken, but Livescope is revealing just exctly where these big sanctuary bass (and crappie) have been "hiding." To add to that, depth and speed control, long the realm of Spoonpluggers, and one of the last things we had to hold onto, is now available to everyone. In the past, most anglers would never take the effort to check things like depth and speed out in the deeper waters, not to mention the aids of size and color and action - Now they can (and do) - with confidence, because they can see the fish RIGHT THERE in front of them, and they want to catch it.

You see the fish in real time on your scope. You watch your bait drop to his level and maintain the proper depth based on watching the screen. You can see how he reacts to your bait, try different speeds, colors, actions, until you trigger a bite. Only Spoonpluggers used to go through these procedures because we believed (even knew) that fish lived in these areas because of what Buck taught us about structure, breaks and breaklines. Almost nobody else had the discipline or patience to cycle through this process because they didn't have the knowledge (or belief) that the fish were there, and they couldn't see them. That is no longer an issue. They SEE them, live on their screen. Their lure is LIVE on their screen. It's now no different than playing a video game, and all the young anglers in the sport were all brought up on them (video games and technology). It's in their wheelhouse - it speaks their language - and their heads are buried in their units, something Buck warned us to not ever do.

And don't be fooled by the price tag! If your average minnow dunking crappie angler will snap up a Livescope unit for $3,000 (and they almost all have!), you better believe a guy with a $50,000+ bass boat will have it, too. That door, Pandora's box, has now been opened. They have seen the pros use it and win. They have seen the biggest bass in the lakes get caught with it this winter/spring. The reports are lines are out the door with people buying them up this week at the BPS Spring Classic sale going on now across the country at every BPS and Cabela's. And like all technology, with the increase in competition as Lowrance and Humminbird now release their units, plus the inevitable increase in technology yet again, prices will drop, and those who didn't initially purchase, will.

The last of the big schools will now all be found. Same with the last of the best structures, breaks and breaklines. Spoonplugging has nothing left to offer to the masses except trolling, and most bass anglers aren't interested in that. Its been that way since it was banned by the bass tournament organizations back in the 1950s, forever marking it as a pariah technique. It's "cheating," similar to the way live bait is also viewed for the same reasons (banned by bass tourney organizations).

So we at least have our summer speed triggers that will allow us to catch a few fish others won't...but that's about it. We have our history, our friendships, our terminology, and arguably a better understanding of the complete picture, but no one cares any more. Stand at a boat ramp and ask every bass angler coming off the water if they've seen or heard of Buck Perry or Spoonplugging. I'm guessing most will give you a very strange look.

In the end, Buck was right; it just took 75 years for technology to finally catch up to him and prove it. Spoonplugging as we know it will pass soon enough when we do. What they do after us could still be called spoonplugging, but it won't exist as we knew it. And though technology will continue to evolve, Livescope is the final nail in this coffin. We are the last - be sad, but be proud. It was a great run while it lasted!

"There will be no regrets or losses, but in the meantime we Spoonpluggers will continue to have a ball." - Buck Perry

[Steve Craig]

Wow Brian!
That article is probably one of the best, thought out, and insightful articles I have ever read!
Very eye opening to say the least.
Thank you for taking the time to post it.
You hit the nail on the head, and just conveyed what my gut has been feeling for a long time now.

[John Bales]

Brian, Bravo on that writing. Absolutely perfectly written. John

[John Bales]

Brian, Bravo on that writing. Absolutely perfectly written. John

[TN Dave]

Mega Dittos, Brian!!!

Excellent, Excellent article. Insightful, to say the least, and much the same thoughts as I have wondered about over the years. However, your writing is far more concise and better stated than anything I could have ever imagined.

Well Done!

TN Dave

[Jerry Borst]

Brian, excellent writing!!!
All I can say is, sad but probably true. The only other thought I have is most fishermen are lazy but some are not and it's those who actually make it out to the off shore structures that will be in our way and that'll suck!

[John Bales]

Lazy has been a word Terry has used for years for those who want fishing knowledge and just aren't out there enough to get it. The bad part is that we have so few people involved in spoonplugging that if you call them lazy, you lose a few and we need to keep the ones we got. We have plenty who talk a good talk, never post a pic of a catch, yet are right there telling everyone how to do this. This new electronics is not sad at all to me. It's just another opportunity to learn more and I am excited about that. I see the bass guys on the water using this stuff and they are not stupid at all. No Jerry, I don't think you have to worry about many getting in your way just yet, most likely never. John PS. The ice has been of for 7 days and I've only been out there 4 times and I feel a bit lazy myself.