Lake Finder Maps and Finding the Hidden Gems

Trout Whisperer posted on April 12, 2008 09:58 :: 2618 Views

Lake Finder Maps and Finding the Hidden Gems

I check quite a few lake maps. Im looking like everyone else for the fabled less water, more fish, kinda fish lakes. Most maps have the basics. Your body of water hopefully drawn to match actual conditions. What type of access if any, Acreage and any inlets or outlets. As the map quality goes up you may get secchi disc readings for water clarity and depth contours to include substrate info. Littoral zones and fish species sampled or known, current stocking reports makes is about as good as it gets.

Some maps contain the legal description and adjoining sheets info in the margins. Some contain by neglect little historic pieces of gold. If you look at the enclosed inset from an online map still in use today, there is history.

The lake was hand sounded in the ninth month of the calendar year 1961. Not a big deal. So somebody or some bodies rowed around the lake dropping a pre measured rope with a weight to the lake bottom establishing a subsurface contour. In good faith they sounded the depths to find the deepest hole or perhaps showing the lack of.

What’s interesting at times is the back door or hidden gate if you will, to what could be considered an in accessible lake. A very big deal. Some of the newer field reports will tell you “no public access”. But by pulling up the relic maps you can navigate the ancient old trails with current hand held gps’s. On occasion I find tree blazes or surveyors tie in notes. One is on a tree, and some are written in the margins.

If you hunt trout, like I hunt trout, some of the best remote trout lakes are winter access only. I wait until the boggy terrain around the water body freezes and I snowshoe in. Less wood ticks, less mosquitoes. Less human predators.

With the new portable electronics I can probe the historic lake depths and even see active modern fish. By reading the map. Words and pictures. It’s a treasure map at times. Ive hit some clunkers, but that’s part of fishing. Satellites, mapping software and the new hi-tech computer era have really enhanced remote fishing; just don’t forget that some of the history recorded is map to a better fishing report.

Trout Whisperer

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