Anybody ever use a program on their fish finder to create their own lake contour map? I guess Humminbird has something called the Autochart Live Hummingbird and Garmin has something too. Just started researching this. I have a Humminnbird Helix 7 GPS and trying to determine if it will do that job with the appropriate SD card.
I know of a small tannin stained large natural pond that I will be visiting on vacation that apparently has no contour map or surveys of as I've asked the state fish and wildlife biologists and done a lot of searching. It's quite isolated with no development although it is open to the public, and only accessible by kayak, but even that is difficult. Shore fishing would be impossible although it was at one time years ago. People seem to ignore it, and two locals I know claim it may have become too acidic to support fish (It's also very dark from tannins), but it used to support brook and brown trout along with some very large largemouth bass due to thousands of frogs and stunted panfish when I lived nearby from 1968 to 1971. I haven't seen any frogs since I first visited back in 1990. And the lily pads have disappeared.
According to some literature I found, it had a maximum depth of 30 feet at 13 acres, and it only had a Ph of 4.5 in the early 60's, but was treated with ag lime which brought the Ph up to 6.9 in 1962. I'm thinking the Ph may have dropped again to to the humic nature of the bottom and acid rain over the decades.
I'm also going to test Ph, clarity, oxygen and temp profiles along with alkalinity, hardness, an phosphorus. I have all the equipment as I've used it in my fish farming.
So anyway with my education in fisheries science I want to do an unofficial survey of the pond, which will include fishing to determine if there are any fish in the pond although if the Ph has reverted back to 4.5 it would probably be a waste of time.
Here's picture of the lake. If it had to be limed again it could be a hell of a little bass lake if the frogs would come back. As a kid I had bass wrap me around lily pads that had to be in at least 7 lb. plus range. I didn't have the tackle requirted to land them and had several snap me off. I saw one bass take off from the bank that had a back that had to be pushing 6 inches thick.
