fishing on the sonar screen

[KenDammit28]

I was watching one of the Bass Elite tournaments this past saturday..forget what lake it was, but it was the last tournament of the year.  Anyway, the guys were all out fishing structure and brushpiles with dropshots and doing it by just watching the sonar screen.  It was pretty neat to watch as you could look at the screen and see the weight, the bait, and the swivel all fall through the water column.  

The part that had me all confused is that they were seeing the fish come and eat the lure...I dunno if it was on the screen or if the water was so clear they could see it(but I suspect it was the screen).  Are big money fish finders so clear that you could see something like that?  I couldn't begin to read a graph if I tried...so I dunno what to look for.  

Secondly, have any of you fished for bass this way?

[Wayne P.]

They were seeing the fish on their sonar units. You don't need  a high priced unit to do it. One of my units is the Eagle Fishmark 320 and it does pretty good in depths up to 35'. I usually leave it set on automatic and then zoom in to the depth the fish are holding. I also have an old Lowrance X-70A that works OK. A higher resolution unit would be even better.

[VAbacklash]

I've had a few decent LCR's over the years that have given me good detailed information as far as bottom structure, but I haven't seen much that I would call fish. I'm sure that if would spend a day on the water with nothing but the LCR, instruction book and no fishing equipment, I would probably see much more detail.

I generally use mine to look for structure or anything different that might attract or hold fish. Actually seeing the fish doesn't mean a lot to me. That could me the reason I'm just an average fisherman.

[Randall]

You don't need an expensive graph to see the fish eat your lure. I have seen fish eat and follow my jigging spoon an  Eagle Cuda that I paid $50 dollars for at Bass Pro.  You just have to have the fish symbols turned off and the sensitivity turned up enough to show the bait and the fish.

[VABasser]

I saw the same exact thing and planned to post the same general question as well.  It was pretty crazy that they can do that.  One of my goals for this year is to get better at reading my fishfinder because I think I have really under utilized it other years.  I knew turning off the fish symbols were necessary but its turning the sensitivity up?  I thought on ESPN they said that you had to turn the sensitivity down until you could only see the bait and the fish.  Maybe I'm mistaken.  But any other help about this or graphs in general I would gladly read.

[dizzy5868]

Your kind of right. I use an eagle 480 and it does a great job in water less than 50'. Turn off the auto feature and turn the ping speed up. Your sensativity setting wil depend upon the water conditions. In a clear lake you would turn up the sens. In a river I would turn it down. You have to play with it until you get the pic you want. Turning up the screen speed will give you faster updates but not as clear a picture. Also using the zoom modes will help in certain conditions. The first thing is to make sure your transducer is pointed correctly. Many people overlook this and get bad readings. The bottom of the ducer should be perfectly level with the water, you can tell by the way the arch is on the graph. Eagle offers a downloadable version of the 320 and 480 on thier website, it's pretty close to the same thing. It's great for playing with settings and learning to use your graph in the off season.

[Randall]

I saw the same exact thing and planned to post the same general question as well. It was pretty crazy that they can do that. One of my goals for this year is to get better at reading my fishfinder because I think I have really under utilized it other years. I knew turning off the fish symbols were necessary but its turning the sensitivity up? I thought on ESPN they said that you had to turn the sensitivity down until you could only see the bait and the fish. Maybe I'm mistaken. But any other help about this or graphs in general I would gladly read.

I guess I should have explained it better but since mine is a low power unit and I only do this type of fishing for the most part in winter when there is very little plankton to cause clutter on the screen I can turn it all the way up and only see fish, bait and lures when fishing this way. But, you will have to turn the sensitivity down to remove clutter caused by plankton, debris, mud particles, etc in other situations. I do have to adjust mine down in summer when there is more plankton in the water which causes clutter on the screen.

[bigdog]

I was watching one of the Bass Elite tournaments this past saturday..forget what lake it was, but it was the last tournament of the year. Anyway, the guys were all out fishing structure and brushpiles with dropshots and doing it by just watching the sonar screen. It was pretty neat to watch as you could look at the screen and see the weight, the bait, and the swivel all fall through the water column.

The part that had me all confused is that they were seeing the fish come and eat the lure...I dunno if it was on the screen or if the water was so clear they could see it(but I suspect it was the screen). Are big money fish finders so clear that you could see something like that? I couldn't begin to read a graph if I tried...so I dunno what to look for.

Secondly, have any of you fished for bass this way?

They were fishing a well known lake in southwest missouri known as the ROCK

[Papa_Tom]

I think Randall's follow-up statement is very appropriate.  Water conditions will influence settings.  On another forum a guy has contributed some real in-depth photos about his experiences, mostly in the fall.  His sensitivity settings are around 80% at that time.  I think the point was made, play with your unit in manual until you return bait and fish and minimal clutter.

[FIN-S-R]

I have done this with some old humminbird units, and with some new lowrance x series units, and some older x series units. A color unit really helps because you can tune your color settings to show "fish" type densities as a certain color. On the older units U have to set the ping speed at max, on the newer units you have to set the ping speed lower like 25-50. Setting your trandsducer just slightly angled toward the side of the boat you fish off of most really helps so you can make a short pitch cast and kinda triangulate the point you want the lure to hit. This technique has been used for a long time by the striper guides down here on texoma. My father-in-law has been doing this for catfish for a number of years also, so its not really a new technique, just maybe new to TV covered bass fishing. A guy who you dont hear alot about who is an elite series angler:Jeff Kreit is probably one of the best there is at this. He gave me a lesson one morning before a local tourney, and there are so many little details you have to really pay attention to in order to get to the level that Evers was doing it on TV last week. The main thing is learn to tell the difference between fish and other by getting on a spot that is holding fish and then adjust your resolution and sens. settings till you can really tell the difference. A couple of years ago my cousin and I won a few bucks doing this very thing on fall schoolers that would only come up about every 4-5 hrs. This last weekend after we both watched bassmasters, we went out and brushed up on the technique, but the only schools we could find were big blues, so we tried snaggin a few, and then found some gar and did the same thing. Its really hard to do this in less than 20ft of water becasue the cone is relatively small, but it can be done. What you didnt see on the show was that many times when you hook 1 fish doing this it will look like a fireworks display just went off down there cause of all the other fish that will just go nuts. There will be alot of fish you will never see until you hook 1. Anyway, its a pretty neat way to fish, and probably the most important thing in getting it right is super good boat control. The 1 thing I still cant figure out is why fish show up as arcs when your moving, and then just become blobs of clutter while your sittin' still on top of them?

[Wayne P.]

FIN-S-R, the tutorial on the Lowrance web site about how a sonar works will show how arches are shown.