How Finding Fish in Open Water Leads to Better Ice Fishing

Finding and camping on a big school of fish is your best chance at awesome ice fishing. As Wired2Fish’s Ryan DeChaine demonstrates, the best way to accomplish this is locating gamefish from the boat using an LCD fish finder before the lake freezes.

Ryan scans a small, rudimentarily mapped lake using Humminbird’s MEGA Side and Down Imaging and 2D sonar to find panfish while simultaneously building a high-resolution custom map using Humminbird’s AutoChart Live. While finding fish using sonar is useful, it’s much more powerful when combined with accurate mapping; correlating fish location to the lake map provides powerful insights that can be applied throughout the body of water.

This video details how to use AutoChart Live and its very useful bottom hardness feature for locating hard/soft transition areas. AutoChart Live mapping data stored to a Humminbird Zero Lines Card allows you to transfer the card to a compatible Ice HELIX 5 or 7 Fish Finder. You can then combine the power of CHIRP sonar and accurate mapping on ice — knowing where to drill holes saves tons of physical work and time.

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If you are new to ice fishing, we recommend you to start by reading our article on ice fishing basics.

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