Electronics?

[bluenitrouscoupe]

I doing a lot of fishing and very high quality electronics just cost so much but do they really make that big of a difference for a tournament angler?

[hooah212002]

Have you seen what they do? Side/down imaging practically gives you an underwater camera.

[bluenitrouscoupe]

But can you really see where fish are? I understand you can see drop offs and structure

[hooah212002]

I have no personal experience, so I can only go off what I've read. The quick answer is: yes. I've even heard that you can see your bait and watch the fish hit it when you are vertical jigging right under the boat.

[bluenitrouscoupe]

Wow. That's amazing thinking about going with a humminbird 1198

[Jig Man]

I run the low hds units. As for finding fish during an outing they aren't much different from other units except on down scan I can tell a lot more than 2d sonar.

The real value is finding and marking stuff that I never new existed of saw on 2d and didn't understand.

I have located hundreds of spots by scanning, recording, then looking at the recording, and marking wpts. I then can go back and fish the places that I have marked. I would buy them again in a heartbeat.

[Wayne P.]

I use Humminbird Side Imaging and I basically "sight" fish all the time no matter what time year or the depth. I see the fish and fish for them. I don't waste my time fishing where there are no fish. I use that technology at the console with a transom mounted SI transducer and at the bow with a trolling motor mounted SI transducer.

If you are considering Humminbird Side Imaging or Lowrance with Structure Scan, get the largest display you can afford. In this case "size matters".

Screen size doesn't matter that much for regular 2D sonar or Down Imaging/Down Scan, but the wider the display is with the side looking imaging, the larger the returns will be displayed.

I have the 5" display model and the 10.4" models.

[sarcazmo]

Listen to Wayne P.

He gave me some excellent advice and I'm just saving up the funds to take advantage of it!

[bluenitrouscoupe]

Me too. My plans are 2 humminbird 1198's and 360 imaging. Know its a lot of money but maybe I will have it by next summer.

[FD.]

I have the 1198 at the console. I can't wait to get one for the bow.

Ditto on finding stuff I did not know existed.

It is very easy to eliminate structure that does NOT have any fish on it.

[Wayne P.]

I don't remember if I posted this on this site, but here is an example of how Side Imaging will show where cover is in relation to the transducer and Down Imaging and regular sonar just shows it is down there somewhere. In this case I would have been deploying my presentation on the left side of the boat. I did fish this man made fish attractor done with cleared timber during lake construction and caught several bass and had some crappie hits with a plastic worm.

Another benefit with Side Imaging is of you drift off the cover, you can see where it is and move back to it, no search pattern needed to do so. You don't even have to use a waypoint with a chart view to stay on it.

This is with my bow unit and the transducer is on the trolling motor. I was fishing an electric-only lake. I was using settings to highlight fish so the overall images are not as sharp as when I have it set to show just bottom features.

[FD.]

What were your settings for the SI? I can't get fish images that clear.

[Wayne P.]

The Enhance Sharpness setting is used to highlight fish. Med or Low does well without adding too much grainyness to the image.

You choose the SI color that YOU can see the best. Some like other colors. I change during the day to the one that I can see the best at any particular ambient light. Most of the time I like the Inverse pallet (as posted) to show fish and people (SAR operations).

The Sensitivity should not be a static setting, use it as a screen brightness control and change as needed according to depth and bottom hardness.

Use a screen scroll speed that is close to the GPS speed. A little faster will make returns larger.

Use a SI range setting about 3 times the depth when fishing and to get a better look at a subject. You can use a longer range setting for general searching to show larger features. Consider this: if you have a SI range setting of 100' and a depth of 20', that is 240' that is displayed on that small screen. A 12" fish isn't going to be very noticeable with that size ratio.

Get to know your equipment by stopping the screen from scrolling when you see something interesting by pushing the 4-way botton. You can then make any setting changes to get that particular display to look the best-color, sharpness, sensitivity, and range.

This is a similar fishing "structure" with Down Imaging and regular sonar-taken for demo purposes. It may be the same one--don't remember since there are about 50 of them in that lake:

[FD.]

Thanks Wayne,

I had my setting more toward locating, not realizing I should change them for closer inspection. That was dumb on my part.

[Wayne P.]

I did a close range setting scan of that pile of stuff in the first picture today after the bass quit biting to show you how the range setting affects the image size:

[southtexasbassin]

Nice pics! Installation has a lot to do with clear images. It needs to be done right. Then of course playing with the settings as well. I have 898 and I get some amazing pictures.

[southtexasbassin]

I did a close range setting scan of that pile of stuff in the first picture today after the bass quit biting to show you how the range setting affects the image size:

Was there a drop in water? The other picture says 20-24ft or is it that your over the hump on the last pic?

[Wayne P.]

Was there a drop in water? The other picture says 20-24ft or is it that your over the hump on the last pic?

The depth is where the boat was when I did the screen snapshot. There is no hump, the pile of stuff is on a steep dropoff. If I am on the shallow side the water is about 5' deep and on the deep side the water is 30'+

The way the bottom looks depends on the boat path as the recording is done.