To help anglers catch more and bigger fish in the 2015 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series National Championship presented by Bass Pro Shops, Lowrance has used its Insight Genesis custom lake-mapping service to create the most detailed map ever seen of the tournament venue, Wisconsin’s Lake Du Bay.
Insight Genesis is the innovative mapping tool that helps anglers find fish faster in several ways: offering them free downloads of community-sourced contour charts from Insight Genesis Social Map; enabling them to create their own custom contour maps of un-mapped bodies of water; and helping them discover and dissect potential tournament-winning “sweet spots” that don’t show up on other marine maps. Insight Genesis maps are exclusive to Lowrance, Simrad and B&G chart plotters.
Bassmaster College Series Tournament Manager Hank Weldon announces the winning weight for Justin Brown and Brandon Bissell of Northern Michigan University, who won the College Midwestern Regional to qualify for the National Championship. As Lowrance users, they will benefit greatly from the custom-made Insight Genesis map of Lake Du Bay, the tournament venue. (Photo by Greg Huff)
“It really says a lot about Lowrance’s commitment to college anglers and the Bassmaster College tournament circuit that they would devote time and resources to guarantee that our National Championship qualifiers get the best possible fishing map — not only for competition, but for practice as well,” said Hank Weldon, Bassmaster College Series tournament manager. “With such a highly detailed Insight Genesis contour map, no matter where in the country our qualifiers are coming from, they’ll be able to fish Lake Du Bay with the confidence of a local.”
Lowrance Regional Sales Manager Dan McGannon (right) and a local angler embark on Lake Du Bay to help create a highly detailed Insight Genesis map for use in the Bassmaster College Series National Championship there on July 9-11.
To create such a highly detailed Insight Genesis map for the Bassmaster College Series National Championship, Lowrance hosted a mapping excursion on Lake DuBay in June. Each participant used the Lowrance transducer on his boat to survey a pre-determined quadrant of the lake. The sonar data from each boat is being aggregated into a complete chart of the lake, with one-foot, blue-scale contours — light blue indicates shallower water; dark blue indicates deeper water. The Lake DuBay map will then be available for FREE download through Insight Genesis Social Map — free not just for college anglers fishing in the National Championship, but also for any angler that opens a free Insight Genesis account.
A free Insight Genesis account gives anglers access to thousands of free, highly detailed contour maps of lakes close to home, across the country and around the world. Sign up for a free account HERE.
Essentially a wide spot in the Wisconsin River, 4,649 acre Lake Dubay features visible cover such as stumps, rip rap and aquatic vegetation, as well as abundant submerged fish-holding structure like humps, saddles, sand bars and hard-bottom, rocky flats. (See screenshot of map below)
And since Lake DuBay is home to more smallmouth than largemouth — according to Wisconsin DNR information posted online — that submerged structure will likely hold the winning fish. And that’s exactly what Insight Genesis excels at uncovering.
“You may be surprised at how much detail you may be missing out on” if you’re not using Insight Genesis maps, says 2014 Bassmaster Classic Champion Randy Howell.
2009 Bassmaster Classic Champ Skeet Reese agrees.
“The mapping that you know and use today, really isn’t that accurate,” he says. “Insight Genesis allows you to really, truly see those sweet spots, within a sweet spot, within a sweet spot.”
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You’ll get no argument about that from Jacob Powroznik, who used an Insight Genesis Social Map chart to find fish in the 2015 Bassmaster Classic, in which he finished 5th.
“The Insight Genesis helped me make the top [5] in the Bassmaster Classic,” Powroznik says. “The contour lines and everything that are on it, they’re all shaded up and they actually show you where the ditches are and stuff like this. And that’s very key. … It was basically cheating, it’s so good! You can ride around and see there’s a good drop right here, here’s where the deep water meets the bank, or is underneath docks. Check Insight Genesis out. I promise you, it will help you be a more successful fisherman.”
For many bodies of water — especially lakes on the East Coast and in the Upper Midwest — accurate fishing maps with real one-foot contours have not been available until the advent of Insight Genesis. In fact, many lake maps are merely glitzed up re-packagings of antique charts. And while such maps often show one-foot contours, many of those lines are often just computer-drawn estimates.
Such estimated contour lines can actually hide fish-holding bottom structure of interest to anglers. How many times have you noticed a hump on your sonar screen, but your map just shows straight lines at a consistent depth? If a hump or drop off doesn’t show up on your map, you probably won’t find it and fish it, unless you just happen to randomly idle over it.
Tournament anglers must be efficient on the water. That means quickly eliminating dead water and fishing more in high-yield “sweet spots” — areas likely to be holding more and bigger fish. Fish congregate predictably on bottom structure like shell beds and rock veins, hard-to-soft-bottom transitions, and off-shore humps and ledges. Locating such key structure faster than others anglers — often before even launching your boat — can help you win tournaments or braggin’ rights over your fishin’ buddies.
“Insight Genesis mapping is helping us find those locations and record those locations and allow you to be a lot more efficient on the water,” Skeet says.
The Bassmaster College Series National Championship championship will be contested on Lake Du Bay from July 9-11. Up to 90 teams are expected to compete. In the first two days of competition, the entire field will compete. On the third day, the field is trimmed to the Top 5 teams catching the heaviest cumulative five-bass daily limits.
C-MAP Fishing 