Try this next time you are out fishing.

Around where I live some of the lakes are begining to be drained some for winter pool. My friend, Daniel and I took my little john boat out to one of the local lakes this past saturday to do a little scouting and some fishing.

This is what we took with us.

Digital Camera
Meridian Platinum GPS
Paper and Pen
Couple Rods and very limited tackle ( for weight )
Legal items needed for boat

1st thing we did was clock the speed of the little boat. We hit 16.1 MPH and combined, me and D weigh about 520 pounds. I dont think this was too bad with a 9.8hp.

Next we noticed the lake was about 5 feet down so we began looking for sunken structure. When we would find stumps or something that would be normally under water, I logged the GPS coords and Daniel took a couple pictures of the bank/area ( landmarkings too) and we also logged the picture numbers for these locations.

I am going to upload these to google earth and also mark them on my lake map ( when I buy one LOL )

I hope this little tip helps. I have a friend who did this in the winter and the following summertime, he won almost all of those wed. night tournaments at the lake, I think he said he won about 3400 total in 2 years. Then people began to follow him, so he quit the tournys since he didnt want the punks to find his fishing holes.

That is a good tip.
I attended a Wally Marshall seminar @ grizzly jigs and he was talking about fishing a tournament on Reelfoot lake. he came and prefished when the lake was low and marked a lot of stumps and trees with his GPS and fished them in the tournament. I don't think he won but he placed good with the information he had from marking those stumps.

Good tip Cyber... something I've used for a long time.

Most of the lake around my area fluctuate between 25-40' in the winter so it's a good time to get out and see what you've been fishing during the summer.

great advice! I have done this at several of my local lake - one I did on foot with waders and that has paid off big - although, I need to re-do it again because some of my spots have changed as a result of natural decay and ice moving my structure

We talked about doing this winter, problem is our usual lake is sitting around 15 feet over summer pool right now, much less drawn down for the winter. #-o