Why Use A Fishfinder?

[Paul J]

i found this article from a US site interesting

 

First of all, there is no 200 or 400, ....it's either 50 khz or 200 khz.

Next, sonar is only as good as the guy who is reading it,....if you don't know what your looking for or at, you will be following party boats & others & will be totally lost if there's no one to follow.

Speed, Ha !,....I run 60+ mph & my Furuno 6100 gives me a perfect picture just like I'm trolling at 2 mph.

There is no cavitation at 60 mph on the sonar because the transducer is mounted in front [ ahead ] of the lower unit by at least a ft. so there's no way cavitation can go forward.

The difference between someone who knows what to look for on his sonar & some one who dosen't is huge.

I'm concidered a master at Striper trolling & if my sonar would go out, I'd go home because your only guessing there's fish below your boat & at what depth without the eye under the water.

Granted, I'v caught plenty of fish without looking at the sonar, but only after I'v found them with the sonar.

Fish love structure & if you don't see that structure there's no way in hell you can fish it.

Just this last October I had 2 guys in my boat & was trolling for stripers in 12' of water, we went over 3 fish in a school that were laying right on the bottom, [ I said let out enough line, like 125ft to hit bottom than put 1 or 2 cranks on the reel to get the lure about 1' off the bottom in order to litterally put those lures right into the fishes mouth ] I told the other 2 guys we will hook up as soon as the boat travels the 125 ft of line we have out,......Zzzzzzzzz , my rod goes off & not more than 1 second later Randys reel starts screaming & we both caught 22 & 21 pound stripers, their mouths fell open & said, Mr., you really know your stuff.

When we had traveled approx 100 ft of the 125 ft I refered to, I told them we should get hit right about now.....I didn't even get the "W" out on "now",....so don't say sonar dosen't improve your catch ratio.

Theres more than just seeing the fish on sonar, there's knowing how much line to let out to put the lure[ s ] right in their moth, there's the correct speed, the right color lures, ....it's called presentation & everything hinges on presentation & if you don't see the fish on your sonar, how do you present something to something if you don't know what your doing or can't see what your fishing for.

There's plenty of places I troll that have huge snags & the fish hang right in the snags & if you don't get within 1 ft of that snag, you don't catch anything & if you get to close, you loose $10.00 in lures every time you go by it.

I have people following me every single day & I just laugh because I know they will loose every thing in their tackle box on the snags.

I commercial fished Alaska [ Bering Sea ] for 30 years & sonar is absolutly one of the most important tools on the boat.

My Furuno LS6100 also reads the speed to withing 2 mph of being dead on even at 60 mph.

I'v spotted sturgeon on the bottom in 70 ft of water while I was traveling at 30 mph,.....try that without sonar.

Saying you just follow another boat dosen't say much about your own talents or know how.

Sorry for getting so windy & kinda testy but when people try & tell others this is no good & I do just as good without it, it only says you don't know what your doing,.....yes, even a blind mouse finds a crumb to.

He who masters his sonar, soon stands in the 10% group of fishermen who consistantly catch 90 % of the fish group day after day.

Sal

 

Bob, Whens the next tutorial?

 

PJ

[Adam F]

Very self righteous isn't he!

 

Personally I don't think I have ever seen a single fish on my sonar...but then I don't have a Furuno LS122XCV whatever.....!

 

I had a picture in my mid of him buzzing over the surface at 60 knots and then spotting a single flounder on the bottom, before whacking the boat into neutral throwing the crew to the floor before they all angle for this ellusive fish he has seen!!

 

I use mine to check Im not going to hit the bottom in the run and for checking the bottom contours - never for 'finding fish'

[alun j.]

Ditto..........

 

 

...... some of those 'fish' - echo s are far from fish !

 

lobster pots throw up big, big 'fish' symbols......

 

.......seaweed can be good as well......... when I last fished the 'blocks' out of Portsmouth....... every drift showed 'fish' behind the lumps on the bottom, ... mais non !!........... weed !!

 

............. but don't you just love these cocky fellas ???

 

Alun.

[Paul D]

Only fish I have seen on the sonar and then caught were those herring in Poole Harbour ( and even then I was astounded that I had actuallyused the sonar to find them ! ).

 

I guess that is why I am not in the 10% who catch 90% of the fish group day every day eh

[Paul J]

[Fugazi]

The article is written with a certain American flair, but I would have to agree with all the points made. Personally, I would never fish where there is nothing on the sounder as fish always seek out a rock patch, reef, sand bank or wreck to inhabit. In the good old days before we had fish finder, I spent a lot of dives drifting over featureless sea bed topography because the anchor wasn

[Coddy]

<snipped>

 

Personally, I would never fish where there is nothing on the sounder as fish always seek out a rock patch, reef, sand bank or wreck to inhabit.

Otherwise you need to be incredibly lucky and patient. On the plus side, you don

[Afishionado]

I agree with Coddy, I often fish an area twix Ballard Down and Peverel bouy about 1 1/2 miles out. It is a constant 60ft with nothing showing in the way of features. I uptide, and whoever is with me downtides and we have never blanked Rays, smoothounds, tope, bass (sizable ones too), mackerel and LSD of course. I didn't fish it much last year as I felt with the new boat I ought to try new places. Well more fool me, this year I'll stick to where I know there are usually fish. I would value others opinion as to why an area that seems to be a flat shingle small rock bottom, that only fishes when the tide is running is so regularly productive. The mark is not even specific the whole area fishes the same.

 

Mad Mike

[shytalk]

what on your sounder looks barren and featureless is often totally different when you get down there the ares off ballard has plenty of sand ridges and other features when i dived there several years ago i saw a tractor tyre a complete car exhaust system in among the sandy ridges which at 1m or so wouldnt show on sounders but held fish the same was true on the plaice mark off ventnor nothing but sand and shingle but plaice everywhere

[Afishionado]

what on your sounder looks barren and featureless is often totally different when you get down there the ares off ballard has plenty of sand ridges and other features when i dived there several years ago i saw a tractor tyre a complete car exhaust system in among the sandy ridges which at 1m or so wouldnt show on sounders but held fish the same was true on the plaice mark off ventnor nothing but sand and shingle but plaice everywhere

I never touched that tractor tyre Guv! It wernt me I was fitted up 'onest ossifer.

 

A TRACTOR TYRE????

 

By the way what sort of car was the exhaust sytem for? If the water was not too deep it might have been a Ford

 

Mad Mike

[blueboatdriver]

Yeah Mike. And if it was really deep it might have been a Fjord .

[Seamouse]

This 'barren ground' thing really bugs me. I know the mark Coddy is referring to and I have been given and used one or two others like it. You steam up and down looking for any kind of feature and there's just nothing, yet they do produce the goods. Can only assume it is a general food holding area, maybe a quirk like a convergence of tide streams or even a transit route for fish? I still prefer to find feature if I can, even if it's only a small bump.

As for seeing fish, my cheapy set can spot dirty great shoals of herring or mackerel but that's about it. I'd like to see a dolphin go under the boat some day. I'd guess two lungs full of air would give you the mother of all signals

 

"Jeez, what's that on the sounder?"

 

"I dunno, but I think we should go home. NOW!!"

 

Steve

[Afishionado]

Yeah Mike. And if it was really deep it might have been a Fjord .

Ooow Mr Shmarty pants dats veery fujni

 

Mad Mike

[TomBettle]

The way the yank wrote his piece was certainly condicending and distinctley annoying. It doesn't bare an awful lot of relevance to the type of fishing we do here, but I have to say I did agree with the principals.

 

Without my fishfinder I would be completely scuppered (and am from time to time as it has an intermittent software fault).

 

On my open boat, the fish finder is simply there to help find features and larger shoals as it is fairly basic, however on Quest II we have a high spec jobby which really does show you everything.

 

When we started using it I was gobsmacked by the difference between a basic unit and a high spec one.

It is so detailed you can easily see your lines dropping up and down as you drift a wreck and it does easily pick out smallish individual fish (even down to 350 feet)once you start to understand how to use it and interpret the information.

 

Understanding the readings has helped produce better catches for me (only sometimes as I am still in the 90% who rarely succeed), mainly by helping to decide whether or not to stay drifting a particular wreck or move to the next...

...the principal being if I can see fish over the wreck I am fairly sure they will feed at some point of the tide. Also not every part of the wreck holds fish, and by using the sounder effectively I can establish which sections of metal they are hanging around by.

 

By using the sounder effectively it is possible to work out the bottom structure, a rough idea of the size of fish or the size of the shoal, whether there is a net or loads of weed around the wreck (when we started we thought these were huge shoals of fish, but the signals are fairly weak and by hooking into the substance we established that it was either a bit of net or weed). It will even show up turbulence and small particles in the water.

 

Having a good sounder hasn't necessarily boosted my catches much as I don't think I am a good enough angler or skipper yet with luck playing as much a part, but it certainly has helped understand more about what is going on down there.

 

Tom

[duncan]

I just enjoy playing around with mine - wouldn't be without it.

 

have to agree with Tom 100%

[TomBettle]

I just enjoy playing around with mine - wouldn't be without it.

 

have to agree with Tom 100%

Two things Duncan

 

1) I have heard that you like playing around with yours , do you mind keeping this sort of info to yourself.

PS: We are NOT sharing a room in Alderney!

 

2) This is probably the first time we have agreed on anything!!!!!

 

Tom

[duncan]

This is probably the first time we have agreed on anything

 

nah - that's why we are going to Alderney..............

[Newboy]

I just enjoy playing around with mine - wouldn't be without it.

 

 

1) I have heard that you like playing around with yours , do you mind keeping this sort of info to yourself.

PS: We are NOT sharing a room in Alderney!

 

 

Tom

Room is not a prob, plenty of space to run, but in a boat, vert tight, everywhere is within hand reach.....

[TomBettle]

Kam

 

I have just decided that Quest II is in need of maintenance over the week 2nd to 5th May and won't be able to go over.....

 

 

[crazy fred]

well i thought they were on the boat just to put some colour in the wheelhouse

[markee_b]

I'v spotted sturgeon on the bottom in 70 ft of water while I was traveling at 30 mph,.....try that without sonar.

 

Just doing some elementary sums, 30mph is equivalent to more than 13 metres per second...so if, for arguments sake, the sturgeon was 3m long (I'm sure they get bigger but this would by no means be small) and he happened to pass over it exactly in line with the way the fish was laying it'd only be underneath the boat for one fifth of a second....either this guy has a very widescreen display or he's got bionic eyes. Or pehaps he's a bulsh*tter.

 

I know which category I'm inclined to place him in.

[crazy fred]

he just economical with the truth

[TomBettle]

I have to agree that this guy is probably more bullsh@t than good, but there is something in what he said.

 

It has only happened once on Quest II, but when we went to Alderney last August we were fishing a wreck in the hurds deeps in a little over 330 feet of water.

After a few drifts and a few small Pollock we headed in and almost immediately (the wreck was still clearly tracking along the screen of the fish finder) a very large (approx 10 foot) and very solid reading was seen about 30 feet above the bottom.

At this time we were running at about 14 knots and approx 100 yards downtide of the wreck.

Chris, myself and Lewis the Fish all looked at each other and said "Shark".

 

At that depth and the location we were in it is unlikely to have been anything else.

 

Tom

 

In fact we could even see the tell tale flecks of fish hanging out of it's mouth where it had just had a good feed of Pollock. Judging by the spacing of the pecks from the dorsal and the shape of the teeth I would say it was a short fin Mako of around 327lb 7oz in weight.

 

 

[Afishionado]

This guy is American, right? So they are led by a bunch of guys that can see weapons of mass destruction that aren't there, so why be-grudge the poor sap for seeing a sturgeon that probably wasn't there either?

 

One only has to watch any American sports commentary or Sports program to see that they can not communicate without ridiculous hyperbole, the poor dears do get overexcited like 10 year olds at a fun fair.

 

Large portions of cynicism are needed when reading or watching American programs.

 

 

Mad Mike

[markee_b]

I was led to believe by a charter skipper way out East that sharks don't show up on fishfinders due to the lack of swim bladder. This being the bit of a fish that would produce the echo...we were out after smuts that day (and caught plenty), but perhaps this only applies to the smaller species, as something of approximately 327lbs 7oz would surely show up ???