Lowrance SA loant me their LSS-1 for the weekend again, and I had an absolute blast with it. I found it difficult to force myself to fish, all I wanted to do was look at structure. I eventually found the fish and just had to drop a lure on them. 
What an interesting weekend with the Lowrance StructureScan™ (LSS-1) on Inanda Dam. Due to the windy conditions on Friday afternoon, I was restricted to a little bay just before Joe’s Banks. Inanda Dam - KZN - South Africa
Step one was to turn the transducer around on the mounting bracket so that left was left and right was right. You have no idea how confusing this was when I first got to test the LSS-1.
Step two was to create a ‘known structure/cover’ and see how the LSS-1 ‘sees’ it. I wanted to use something light (branch attached to base to keep it upright), that will make it difficult for the LSS-1, because we know it works great on the big heavy stuff (like the stump on the left).
While in left and right side scanning mode, the ‘known structure’ was clearly visible in the water column, also note how clear the spawning beds are. Like dimples on a golf ball.
When searching from a distance, this light structure is not visible at all on the StructureScan, as suspected.
But once passed over in the DownScan mode with a split screen 200kHz view, it becomes VERY clear.
Saturday 14th:- The next exercise was to go over a known tree in Rocky Bay. Due to the water level having dropped by around five feet, this tree is now visible from the surface in the clean water and is in about 24ft of water. The tree and a couple of predators were quite clear in this 83Khz image. But I had no idea what I would find once changing over to DownScan …
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first spotted this tree in DownScan, the detail was just amazing, and not to mention the fry shoaling around the main branch on the left. The predators could also be seen hanging around the tree and in the tree.
After a couple of passes with a Norman DD14 Tennessee Shad I managed to pick up one of the fish a few metres off the tree. You can see the tip of the tree from the surface in this image.
Here’s another great shot of the fry in this tree …
I then remembered another similar tree in Barbel Bay, so I headed off that way to see if the tree would be similar to the one in Rocky Bay. On my way there, slap bang in the middle of the bay, in 50ft of water I came across this showing on the DownScan and immediately took a waypoint (64).
I then changed over to 83kHz on the Broadband and voila, fish everywhere! I took another waypoint in this mode just to be sure (65). These fish seemed to be suspended above an old field of bushes in 50ft of water. On my second pass I noticed that they had moved down a little deeper. I threw everything but the kitchen sink at these fish and I could not get a nibble. I then thought it might be carp or bream, so the only way to find out was to send my camera down on video mode.
Check out this video, unfortunately the original sound track got lost. It was quite classic, because you could actually hear when the camera’s seal went and you could hear it leaking. The Optio W20 is only meant for 3 metres maximum, and I sent it down to nearly 40ft!
YouTube - Lowrance DownScan
Modified by Fishton at 8:10 PM 11/15/2009
Modified by Fishton at 8:11 PM 11/15/2009http://www.humminbird.co.za
The curbs are not really crooked, I had just started to turn away, hince the crooked curb.
