Mississippi River can be unpredictable

By Eddie Roberts (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Sunday, August 16, 2009

The Mississippi River continues its unpredictable ways.

A rise early last week slowed the fishing down for most while others continued to catch fish. The river is falling today with a stage of 29.7 feet at Natchez.

That’s down from a crest of 34.9 feet last week. The fall river level drops will turn the fish.

We have yet to see a river level low enough to land-lock the Old River bend lakes and that is a good thing.

Normally by August the stage would be below 14 feet and the Old Rivers would be land-locked from any influence by the river.

When that happens the current is gone, the fish scatter and the water clarity is not good. This has been and continues to be an exceptional year for fishing the river bend lakes at Deer Park, Vidalia and Yucatan.

A week or so ago, the river rose from about 25 feet to 34 feet. The white perch bite that was so good prior to that rise shut down for most but other fishermen and ladies continued to catch the fish.

I’ve had a dozen phone calls from people wondering how these people caught big slab white perch on a rise when they couldn’t buy a bite.

The successful fisher-people were drift fishing offshore with multiple poles. To drift fish the perch fishermen will use eight or more jig poles in poles holders and rig three to four jigs and/or minnow hooks on each pole sat at different depths.

When one pole gets busy all others are rigged to cover the productive depth and rigged with the most productive color tube jigs or minnows.

Many use sonar and drift over the deepest water in the Old Rivers while watching for big balls of shad on the sonar screen. It’s much like playing a video game.

You can see the bait, you can see the fish and you can watch the fish strike your lure if you have everything set-up right. Most of the newer sonar units work just fine with the sensitivity level on automatic.

A unit a few years old may need to be adjusted manually to get the best reading. Sensitivity is much like gain or you can compare it your volume on your radio. The further you get from the speakers the less you hear.

The deeper the water you’re in the less you will see unless you turn the sensitivity up. On the down side too much gain will kick back secondary echoes and other false signals that clutter your screen. To eliminate this problem turn your filters.

In the units menu filters are called Fish ID, Fish Track, SCC (surface clarity control) and/or ASP (advanced signal processing).

Turn one or all of these features on and the clutter will be eliminated but so will some of the signals you need to see.

To visually see your lure(s) and see the fish take your lure it takes a sonar unit with a minimum of about 230,400 pixels or 480v x 480h. Expect to spend $500 or more for a unit with that many pixels.

My preference is 480,000 pixels (600v x 800h) but those units cost $1000 or more. My guess is about 80 percent of the people that own sonar units do not understand how to set the units up nor do they understand how to interpret the signals.

Get someone that knows how to initialize the unit and you will get the most from your sonar and catch more fish.

Eddie Roberts writes a weekly fishing column for The Democrat. He can be reached at fishingwitheddie@bellsouth.net.