Structure-Fishing with Mark O'Neill

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Structure-Fishing with Mark O'Neill

Educating anglers in marine electronics, mapping and fishing.

08/23/2026

Mixed bag of SMB and walleyes this morning on Geneva, but the real fun was dealing with these bluegills in attack mode, a catch on every drop!

08/22/2026

Thats a wrap on another successful Lowrance On the Water Training session. A bit of a challenge today having to restore a few hundred waypoints lost because somone telling client to do an unneccesary hard reset, but all good in the end.

08/09/2026

Time on the water this morning was cut short. In the old days I would have stuck around longer, but today my plan was to get off the water and hope to have boat in the garage and put away by the time this stuff hit today. I will be up on the Canadian side of LOTW in a few weeks and I can deal with this sort of stuff then, just didn't need to today. The nice thing about the SiriusXM Weather package that is displayed here on my Lowrance unit, it will work when your cell phone won't, including in Canada and on the Great Lakes.

08/03/2026

I have always used the HDS-8 Gen 2 as my baseline for sonar, no doubt about it. This first screenshot was from Lake Geneva and taken using an HDS-8 Gen 2 keypad unit and to this day, it has always been my target to achieve when testing and setting up my system. The second screenshot is from LOTW and achieved while using an HDS-12 Pro unit, while a different body of water, but I would say we are still on target (and cleaner) after all these years.

07/27/2026

Anglers make a significant investment with today's modern electronics, but most don't realize anywhere near the full potential of these devices. Since 2012, our Lowrance On The Water Training sessions have helped shorten that learning curve and take clients understanding level to a whole new level.

If you already own your own boat, this is a great way to make sure everything is working properly and configured in the best way possible for the way you fish.

Don't own a boat yet or looking at which Lowrance units to buy, demo the units on my Ranger 620FS and learn before you buy to help you make an educated decision based on your needs.

For more information go to: https://structure-fishing.com/on-the-water-training

07/26/2026

Today, I decided to practice what I preach....

On the water this morning and once again saw the developing thermocline in about 26 feet of water. Found the fish I was looking for, SMB and walleye in that depth range at the edge of deeper weeds with their food source right there, not sure one could ask for more.

07/24/2026

A screenshot from last Sunday on Lake Geneva.

I have previously mentioned this, but I think it is worth mentioning it again. Everyone always talks about the thermocline in the fall, but as the water warms earlier in the year, it starts shallower and continues through the summer and gets deeper in the water column until it reaches its maximum depth before lake turn-over on many lakes. Pretty easy to see it developing on this screenshot in about 25 feet of water, so what does that mean when I see this? That depth is usually a good depth to start fishing anywhere on the lake, as that is where many of the predators will be located based on my experience. Worked like a charm as I ended up with six SMB and two nice pike with the SMB being caught in 26 feet of water and the pike in about 30.

07/12/2026

Set out looking for SMB, caught a few, but then followed the lead of what I saw on my Lowrance AT2XL screen, couldn't pass up some quality Lake Geneva Bluegills.

07/09/2026

Lowrance has released a software update for the Active Target, Active Target 2 and Active Target 2XL (the same file supports AT, AT2 and AT2XL), this update can be found at: https://downloads.lowrance.com/software/index.html?r=4912.

06/27/2026

Went out this morning looking for bluegills, I changed my approach when I saw this AT2XL screen. Turned out to be numerous active SMB that were hungry and very active. I was amazed how aggressive these bass were as they were basically competing with each other and chasing away other fish to get to my bait. Say what you will about live sonar, but it is an amazing technology!

Address

Algonquin, IL

Telephone

+17733309702

Website

http://www.structure-fishing.com/

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