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Posts: 391
Location: Northern Illinois | I fished a lake for 15 years and only had the 1960 contour map and general knowledge of the lake through my expiernce. I was really surprised when I saw the one foot contour map of the lake a couple of years ago. There is amazing structure in spots that looked completely flat. Obviously this has helped me tremendously.
Edited by mm3 3/23/2025 1:42 PM
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Posts: 187
| Yes. Started with the DNR paper map in 2013. Got electronics a few years later. Still learning even more when I take the time to actually drive over and fish some spots instead of staring at the contours. |
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Posts: 1470
Location: Brighton CO. | I have old Clarkston maps of the 60's of the lake I grew up fishing on, then later Hot Spots maps and books, then in the mid 90's with a dept finder. We have seen some big fish and caught a few too, but nothing like the giants my dad and grandpa saw swimming by in the 40's and 50's. |
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Posts: 366
Location: Long Prairie, Minnesota | The contours sure do make finding the spot on a spot much easier! Sitting in my boat in the garage and going over the maps on the Humminbird has found me a couple of new spots I can't wait to try out. |
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Posts: 3877
| Surprised for sure. But my surprise is with how well my grandfather had figured out a 300-acre SW MI lake (Gravel Lake) long before there were motors. He learned the lake row trolling a welded steel boat for monster pike in the 30s and 40s. Bait casters and silk line and prototype, hand carved Flatfish. Check this...
Take a look at the map. It shows 3 distinct basins separated by sandbars (Windy Night Flat is a sandbar). This map is one I copied from a DNR website and I added all the detail, about 20 years ago. Did it to gift it to my kids and close friends. Long before we had fish finders my Grandpa taught me about the 3 basins, the sand bars, deep marl, the steep drop offs and the thermocline.
I stayed with my grandparents on the lake every summer since I was a wee tyke. Grandpa took me fishing three or four times a week. He was into bass fishing in those days and so we had a duck boat we toted in a small Chevy pickup truck. There were 10 or so smaller lakes within 15 miles of our house and he knew all those, too, including the owners if it was private. A buck in the coffee can at the house, make sure to close the gate so the cows didn't get out. We fished the pads with Johnson Spoons, never another boat on the lake and boy did we catch fish. Anyway, my Grandpa knew the water.
When I was about 9yo Grandpa bought a 12' aluminum boat and a 9.9hp Johnson motor. Grandpa took me around the lake and we fished structure he just knew was there. At 10yo I was allowed to take it out by myself to go fishing, but I mostly just flew around the lake in the boat. Do you know how fast a light 12' aluminum V boat goes with a 10hp motor and a 60lb boy? Fast as ****, that's how fast. OK, back to the point.
The lake I learned from my Grandpa turned out to be the exact same lake I found, 30 years later, when I had my own boat and a depth finder. Grandpa never had a depth finder. He used lakefront cottages and trees, line of sight #*#*, to decide where he was on the water. And he learned that by row trolling. Turned out he was remarkably accurate.
Last thing, and this is sorta sad. In the late 60's the lakes in SW MI were nearly fished out of huge, 25lb+ pike. (There were no muskies.) Some of my earliest memories, mid 60s, are of big pike heads varnished and nailed to trees at the few cottages where the owners were serious pike guys. I bet some of you other old farts remember this stuff, too.
Well, enough reminiscing. Tight lines.
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 Gravel Lake Map.jpg (184KB - 7 downloads)
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| My uncle, who taught me how to fish, used to go out every winter on first ice on a backwater of the Wis. River and catch big pike. It was good fishing only for a week or two. After that the pike left the shallow bays and headed to the deeper part of the river. He had a couple of those varnished pike heads in the garage.
He had a cabin on a lake in the Harrison Hills and we learned if we caught a small perch, it was almost sure to catch a big pike. Lake had so many small blue gills that the perch were rare, but they made fantastic bait. Sometimes we fished to deliberately catch small perch, then at dusk go out with the perch on trebles under big bobbers and slowly row along lines of lilly pads. Other times we attached the perch to a big spinner bait and row trolled them. That was deadly in deeper water. |
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Posts: 8801
| I wouldn't trade what we have now for what we had when I was a kid in terms of quality fishing, but there's something to be said for the "old ways". One of the old guys who introduced me to fishing took me out, tied a 1/4 oz sinker on my line and had me cast all about with it, dragging it along the bottom so I could "feel" the bottom composition. Muck, sand, gravel.. Then he had me cast with a sinker and a bare hook to see what kind weeds I snagged. Every green thing I dragged back to the boat had a name and a story. Then he had me in the water turning over rocks to find crayfish, telling me to remember where those rocks were in relation to stuff on the shoreline. Then he handed me a bunch of soft plastics, worm hooks, worm weights etc. and showed me how to rig them. That stuff sat in my tackle box unused for the better part of 20 years.
By the time I figured out that the old man wasn't just yanking my chain I'm sure he was long dead. But thanks, old guy! I'm probably older now than you were then, but I'm still using the stuff you tried to teach me when I was 7... |
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Posts: 569
Location: WI | I have always been curious to go back to Utik Lake with today’s mapping capabilities. Did a fly-in pike trip back in 2000 when they handed you an old map on a piece of cardboard, a beat up, old boat and an extra tank of gas. I don’t think the modern experience would come close in comparison. |
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Posts: 2041
| Does Kmart have these one foot maps ya’ll are discussing ? I don’t understand this conversation? |
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Posts: 391
Location: Northern Illinois | Ya, Kmart, Sears and Circuit City usually stock them. Check back by the VHS tapes. |
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Posts: 20233
Location: oswego, il | Side imaging has shown me there are deep rocks, how big when I thought it was hard bottom. I've even found sunken boats. |
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| ToddM - 3/27/2025 10:59 PM
Side imaging has shown me there are deep rocks, how big when I thought it was hard bottom. I've even found sunken boats.
Yes, when I went to Mega SI/DI saw things differently. Near a bridge on the lake where I live, I thought there were boulders based on old sonar but with Mega, they are basically flat slabs. Concrete? And yes, did find a sunken boat while fishing a weed edge I had fished many times before. |
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