The greatest challenge for many late-season anglers, and those first-timers who try, is their inabilities of identifying likely wintering areas (and locating them), and poor usage with electronics. Finding wintering areas on a new lake is challenging. Finding wintering smallmouths on lakes you’ve fished hundreds of times is challenging likewise. Rather than immediately fish, spend some time first idling around several hundred surface acres searching for schools of fish with electronics, maybe even deploying an underwater camera, and observing the charts and screen. What you can find during your first 30 minutes to hour of idling around will help shape the rest of your day. Years of trial and error, knowing the fishery history of my waters, and many long hours of idling around with my Lowrance HDS-Live units has helped me identify and find these wintering bass communities. Picking out likely wintering locations with Navionics HotMaps Platinum North, and C-Map Reveal lake charts is my first priority. I utilize both chart cards which are compatible with Lowrance, because they can display lake contours and topographical detail differently. Some waters displ