Playing with your "new" toys is half the fun Tom! A fish finder is critical more a multitude of species, espeacially walleye. Those deep water blips could be Burbot> fresh water Ling cod or walleye, even winter smallmouths.Hard to tell unlessyou hook one. nice report. Jiggy

Great report Tom! Nice to see the fish are still biting for you. Did the fish have any size or the usual 15-16"? Haven't been out in a couple months, you may have just influenced me to give it a go again.

Your 85-foot-deep fish were probably walleye, which gives me some good intel. Sometime about now each year they stage along there, headed for the Spokane. But Jiggy is right....we have also taken burbot/ling at that depth, and I have indeed caught smallmouth that deep (down to 107 feet in fact) when fishing for walleye. Thanks for the info! Don't forget to try a suspending Husky Jerk occasionally for the bows. They run a little deeper than a jointed Rapala, and the bigger 'bows can't resist 'em.

Thanks for the replies everyone. To answere dbrowing's question yes they were the usual size. After doing alot of reading and research about walleye fishing I am now going to target them on Lake Roosevelt. You guys all say the deep fish were either burbot or walleye and now that I have a depth finder it is time to step it up a notch. I know it will be slow at 1st but at least I will be out there fishing. There are two types of people, those who like to fish and those who fish. Thanks

I was there yesterday too Tom, we launched at Seven Bays about 9 and headed down to below Keller to try for kokanee, which turned out to be a bust. After a couple hours of that we changed gear and targeted 'bows in and around the mouth of the San Poil. We limited there in 3 1/2 hours. I have to agree you may be seeing burbot but may also be seeing some sturgeon which do exist in Roosevelt. I see returns in the Spokane arm under the Hwy 25 bridge in 200'+ deep water that look like logs, and those can't be burbot unless they're as big as a log. LOL. Only advice I have for your sonar is spend time playing with it and turn off the fish symbols. You'll get better info with fish arches than fish symbols. Also, remember the trout this time of year are in the top 10' - 15' of water and you will not see them on your sonar unless they are directly under the transducer. Since rainbow scatter as a boat travels over them, you will almost never see them on your sonar. I didn't see a single fish on my sonar yesterday above 100', yet we caught plenty. I use the sonar primarily to ID bottom structure and as a warning for shallow bars/rocks that can create with motors. Enjoy the toys! :-)

The large fish deep (below 60 feet) if you are seeing a lot of them are Lake Whitefish they range in size from 3 to 7 pounds. These fish are the forgotten fish as they are generally tough to catch. However, there are a lot of them, they out number walleye and burbot but are in similar numbers to hatchery rainbows.