The Spoonpluggers Forum

Steve,

Would you share with us how you use one of the needle units (the original depth meter) to find a 6" breakline in the Florida type lakes??

Good review of those of us who have been around for a while; and, might be interesting to some new Spoonpluggers who have never seen a needle type depth meter.

Thanks,

TN Dave

Pretty simple really......
Don Dickson and I were on a shallow dishpan lake way back in 78.
I watched in awe as Don went out and showed me how easy it was to see a 6 inch breakline using that old meter!

All you had to do was watch that needle out of the corner of one eye, while marking a line of sight with the other. As soon as that needle moved to 8 feet , the boat was GRADUALLY turned out until you saw the needle hit between the eight and nine foot mark, then you GRADUALLY turned in toward the eight foot mark. You could follow a breakline all day long with this thing.

We started out trolling 250's on a medium line length and simple figure 8'ed the breakline for miles.
After Don had caught several nice bass, and me zip.....I finally got smart and asked a question.........why?

What I didnt see was Don actually adjusting his line length to just tip the tops of the muck, while I was at least a 6 inches to a foot off the bottom. Or as was the case many times.......trolling that lure below the muck! So sometimes only a half layer of line is the difference between catching and not catching fish.

It was a great experience, and a hard lesson learned.

Steve,

Thanks for the lesson. While the use of the needle unit (the original depth meter) was straight forward; putting them into practice (at least for me) was eaiser said than done.

Yes, indeed, hard lesson learned and a great experience!! Those exact line lenghts had to be adjusted constantly to be at the point of "just tipping the top of the muck".

I, all to well, remember fishing Lake Kissimme on a first trip..I have found an area with a "hard bottom"; thought I was doing a bang up job of "bumping the bottom". Only problem was, I was not catching any fish! Mr. Perry along with Bart Barton carefully explained that the "bumping the bottom" I was feeling was the Spoonplug actually running under the top of the (hard) sand bottom. Again, they explained the need to "just tip the top of either the muck or the sand (hard) bottom.

Does take a bit of practice but the technique can be learned and can be applied to other waters fished.

TN Dave