Janderson45

I looked into the concept that you were getting at though at it’s not entirely off base.. if the trolling motor head rotated 90 or 180 degrees while spot-locked the “slice” (for lack of better term) that you’re seeing on the DI from the transducer beam angle and width would certainly change.

Bummer! I hadn’t heard that, do you have a link? Going to google it after posting... Moving the SCII - SCIV blanks to the manufacturing plant in Mexico? A large number of the SCII blanks are already made in Mexico, I think the Premier might be the only SCII blank still made in the USA. The USA made blanks have traditionally come with a longer warranty period as well, but knowing St. Croix I can’t imagine warranty issues are suddenly going to be a major problem for them.

@A-Jay I just converted the majority of this thread into an iBook on my phone, I’ve been trying/wanting to read it all but since I typically am using my phone when browsing BassResource it’s been really tough for me to get through a dense wall of text in typical forum posting format. I was able to easily separate the content into “pages” and further break it down into the chapters that you outlined. Hope this is OK with you, don’t plan on distributing it just wanted to be able to digest it easier! Looking forward to digging into it now..

I missed this post that’s why I’m just following up now. After a long day of working with numbers this is making my head spin, lol. Let me dissect what you wrote, look at the transducer specs, do my own math and I’ll get back to you. My initial impression is there has to be some part of the equation that you’re missing - if not down imaging on a trolling motor would be entirely useless? It’s definitely not. For what it’s worth, I recently stumbled across the idea of using transom mounted Mega DI imaging on a bow unit via Ethernet. Obviously there’s going to be a delay between when you troll over something and when the transom mounted transducer would pass over the same water... probably like 1-2 seconds and ~20’ of distance between the trolling motor and transom. In the past viewing all of the above as problematic made me write off the whole idea, after listening to an FLW pro and how he does it this exact way on purpose I’m now seeing the potential benefits of it and considering using DI in this manner myself.

I own 3 chronarch MGLs and 1 Curado K. The chronarchs are my workhorse reels and my favorite to fish with. I also own the previous generation Chronarch ci4 and the chronarch G. The curado K is great for the price point, and as much as I enjoy it it doesn’t hold a candle to the chronarchs, especially the MGL. The micro gearing in the MGL should absolutely be the smoothest “feeling” baitcaster on retrieve that you’ve ever used if you’re not accustomed to middle upper range reels. My guess is there’s an issue with the reel in one regard or another.

Livetarget is my standby, funny because I think most of their lures are over priced and over rated but their frogs are spot on. Great hook up ratio and the material that the frog is made out of is about perfect, soft enough to collapse easily for good hook ups, but doesn’t tear easily at all. They don’t fill up with water and cast like a bullet. Runner up would be the river2sea bully wa or spittin wa if I want a popping frog.

Agree to disagree? A kayak is similar to a canoe, which has been a fishing boat for centuries. Besides being thousands of dollars cheaper, which appeals to a huge market of anglers looking for a cost effective way to get off the bank, it’s also light weight, easily transportable, highly customizable, and likely a much less awkward fishing platform. If given the opportunity, I’d use one and have a blast. Jet skis are fun, fishing is my passion.. just wouldn’t ever spend my hard earned money on one of these and don’t see a big market for them.

Anywhere of reasonable size that has enough depth to not freeze solid in the winter, or completely dry up in the summer. Combine that with minimal public access, stream creek or spring fed. There’s some bigguns that lurk in many small ponds around the plentiful cranberry bogs in South Eastern Mass.

Needs to be a MEGA DI G2N or G3N, hard to tell if the OP’s unit is MEGA DI or just regular DI. That said, G2N Helix being compatible with the Ultrex MDI transducer is news to me, I saw contradictory information from Humminbird, but perhaps it’s compatible now with the latest firmware update? Thanks for the link.

But she’s on board with dropping $15-$20k on a sea doo with fishing rod holders? Seems like a very small population of women would fall into that category if you ask me. If you have a jet ski and want to bring a rod to fish off it, knock yourself out.. better than not fishing at all. As far as making a jetski specifically marketed towards fisherman? Pretty stupid in my opinion.

For what it’s worth, your current helix DI graph will NOT work with the built in Mega DI transducer on the new Ultrex. You would need the latest generation MEGA DI Helix or Solix to be compatible with the transducer offered on the new Ultrex.

The 1875 (18’9”) Renegade with a high output 115hp outboard & stainless prop gets +\- 50mph depending on load and various other factors. Not a speed demon, but not a slouch either. 45-50mph suits my needs well.

Valid - I didn’t look at his location was just speaking in vast generalities. Topwater is a great lure for people getting into the sport, they get to see the fish eat the lure which is both exciting and helpful in knowing when to set the hook, plus it’s often effective in predictable conditions like I described above. If you’re fishing from shore around heavy vegetation frogs can be a blast as well, they have a bit of a steep learning curve compared to other topwater baits, but if you start out fishing small ponds with heavy weeds like I did, a senko and a frog are about as effective as it gets!

Topwater is a good choice if you’re restricted to the bank as well... as long as water temps are 50 degrees or higher, try any type of topwater lure you like during low light periods - early morning, before sunset, cloudy/rainy days, or even targeting shady areas in the middle of a sunny day - you’re sure to get bit sooner or later. Sometimes they’ll even smack it as soon as it hits the surface of the water :).

Late April and early May are great for the big prespawners. Late May and early June is a lot of fun to chase the smaller males up shallow and catch a bunch in a day as well! last april I caught a ton of lake trout in relatively shallow water on bass tackle, the Quabbin is VERY high in water levels right now, been on the increase for a couple of seasons now. Makes it quite a bit different to fish when some of my typical offshore hot spots are 10’ deeper than I’m used to.

I only really use the 5:1 ratio reels when cranking beyond 6 feet, slow rolling 3/4oz spinnerbaits, and bottom bumping big Swimbaits, but they definitely have their place in my lineup!

I hear ya, and I own a couple Calcutta B’s already, it may be my remedy but I still wish they had a 5:1 ratio in a low-profile baitcaster. I get why it’s not available in some of the higher end reels, but at least give me it on the Curado! I’ve got a Curado I in the 5.4:1 ratio that I currently swap spools of line on for mid/deep cranking, 8, 10, 12lb fluorocarbon. Might see if I can find another one in good shape as swapping reel spools on the water is far from ideal...

I don’t think it’s a good strategy for them long term as bass fishing gets more popularized in the US through televised tournaments and the social media/YouTube fishing explosion.. that said I think they can get away with it short term due to their quality products, years in the industry, and stellar reputation among hardcore fisherman. My biggest personal gripe with Shimano right now is that I can’t find a middle of the road or even expensively priced 5:1 gear ratio model in their current baitcaster lineup.. who decided it was necessary to get rid of the 5:1 gear ratio in the Curados? Chronarch, metanium, alderbaran, nope....

I fished a couple of days last year with Steve Daniels out of the Clewiston area. Very nice guy with experience on the professional tour circuit in the 90s and early 2000s. A Bassresource member (Dwight Hottle) recommended him to me and it was a good experience. An issue I ran into looking for an Okeechobee guide was that a ton of them are live shiner guides and take almost all of their clients out to fish live shiners under a float. Not surprisingly they insist that this is the best way to catch a trophy largemouth, but it was far from the experience that I was looking for. I had to be very specific with Steve and tell him that we wanted to fish artificial lures only, apparently that’s uncommon. We struggled pretty hard both days as it turned out, there had been a nasty cold front just before our arrival and it had certainly thrown the fish into a funk. I’m sure someone was catching them good, but no one that we talked to was. We fished the monkey box one day and South Bay the second day. Regardless of the relatively disappointing fishing I still felt like I got my money’s worth by being able to sit on the trolling motor with Steve for two days straight and pick his brain. He loves to fish reaction baits on Okeechobee which was a huge surprise to me. We spent two days chucking spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, jerkbaits, squarebills and topwater. We caught quite a few on jerkbaits, nothing but small males though. When I go back down to Okeechobee I want to flip and punch, that’s how I always pictured fishing on Okeechobee but apparently it’s much better some months than others and March isn’t a great time to be Flippin on Okeechobee.. or so I was told ?.

Wow, thanks for putting all of this out there AJ, I’m excited to read through it all will report back with questions and thoughts in a week or two!

Yes, I just assumed he had lower range set to Auto, but if he doesn’t that’s another easy way to fix it and the first thing that I would try. Depending on the lake and depths I’m fishing I may manually set the lower range or I may leave it on auto, depends on how uniform the depths I’m scanning are. Changing to a lower (wider) frequency or decreasing sonar sensitivity should also help alleviate the issue if the unit is indeed set to Auto lower range. Also, sometimes messing with the surface clutter settings (turning it up) can help in shallow water like this.

The “do a little research” wasn’t directed at you necessarily, I know you didn’t say anything bad about CHIRP, the post above yours was writing CHIRP off as marketing hype, which I just don’t personally believe. The new G3 units come with all new transducers with an improved 2D element. I agree that the improvement is SI and DI images will likely be minimal, the 2D images however, have potential to be greatly approved upon. I’ll be adding one of the new 2D Highspeed transom Mount transducers to my rig using a Y cable to give me my 2D sonar readings on the Helix 10 MEGA SI at my console. Here is a great article on CHIRP and the new Low-Q transducers that are available on the G3 helix and G2 Solix units, really helps us regular folk make sense of it. https://www.technologicalangler.com/chirp-transducers-and-the-q-factor

You’re seeing numerous “bottoms” in shallow water with a very hard bottom. This is an echo since you are using “high CHIRP frequency. The bug or issue that Humminbird is struggling with is the digital depth readout in scenarios like you posted. Your particular helix appears to be reading the correct depth and functioning correctly. If you switch the sonar frequency to 83khz or decrease the sonar sensitivity what happens? My guess is that the double or triple bottom issue disappears. The issue arises when the sonar unit is not able to differentiate between the numerous “bottoms” that the sonar return is showing. So in the first image you posted, the unit would be reading 15-20’ of depth when you’re really in 5’ of water. Based off the sonar readings shown in each photo, the first picture has a significantly harder bottom than the second photo. Notice the red vs. yellow coloration of the bottom? Red is going to be your strongest sonar returns (hard bottom in this case) and as the colors change to orange, yellow, green then blue the sonar returns are getting progressively weaker. He’s still very active on “another forum” posting pretty much daily on Humminbird related topics. Much of what I’ve learned in regards to Humminbird is straight from the horses mouth, and I’ve been doing my best to share some of that here. I’ve still got plenty to learn myself though, Wayne is a fantastic resource for all things sonar, especially Humminbird. I made a bit of a mistake in my original post, the bug/issue isn’t specific to the Helix 10 CHIRP MEGA SI GPS G2N, it’s been reported across the whole line of G2 Helix MEGA units as well as the G1 Solix MEGA units. The issue however, is not the units showing numerous bottoms like posted in the photo above, but rather the unit not being able to decipher which one of those “bottoms” is real- the digital depth readout will jump around between all 3 echos and show 5ft, 10ft, and 15ft of depth for the same location. I read yesterday that Solix received a recent firmware update that supposedly addresses the issue, but still nothing on the Helix units as far as I can tell. The biggest concern with this bug is when using AutoChart live - if you’re not careful you might end up drawing a map with sharp depth contours that don’t exist..

The only diminishing returns that sonar and imaging technologies are running into is apparently people’s willingness to learn and understand how they work. Today’s sonar/gps units are light years away from the units of even 10 years ago. Have you noticed a trend that professional bass anglers are having sustained success at younger and younger ages compared to the veterans that have been around for a long time? If you don’t keep up with the technology the sport of tournament fishing will absolutely pass you by. Lots of today’s pros spend the vast majority of their “practice time” idling around the lake while staring at their sonar units. They find the fish that will win them the tournament and then execute when the time comes. A far cry from what “prefishing” used to mean. If you’re into fishing solely for pleasure and enjoyment purposes, that’s fine, the vast majority of us are. But there is no doubt that learning how to use modern electronics and keeping up with the trends and learning curves will result in more fish catching. CHIRP is head and shoulders superior to single frequency sonar waves, do a little research and you’ll learn that the benefits are undeniable. Is some of it marketing hype? Of course, that’s how it works in every consumer industry, but in this case the hype is backed by tangible results and legitimate mathematics. Every major player in the sonar/gps manufacturing business has switched their models over to CHIRP, why do you think that is? I will never own a non-CHIRP sonar unit again, why invest in outdated and inferior technology?

My only thoughts with the spinning setup are that you should try using 10-20lb braid tied to a length of fluorocarbon leader. I can’t speak to the quality on that particular rod and reel, but I know that if I was using straight 8lb monofilament on my spinning setups for dropshot and shakey head techniques I’d probably pull my hair out over lost fish, never mind the missed bites that you’re probably never feeling.