An open mind ?
However life always provides surprises and experiences, which if you recognize the significance of them, can point you along a path of new experiences. As I was reminded of the value of the sounder this year in Ireland, it was a similar trip to Ireland back in 1993 to fish for big bream on Lough Ree that was to provide such an experience. I had been advised that a huge shoal of ‘big’ bream spent the summer in a particular bay, being a natural sceptic I was not prepared to accept this and took along the
Hummingbird to do some reconnaissance of the area.
Using a hired boat with the transducer attached to the hull to record depth and to locate fish, I found 15 ft of water in the area, plenty of rocks on the bottom and next to no fish, save for the occasional light red square on screen indicating small fish! Having covered approximately 1/2 mile seeing apparently nothing, frustrated I decide to turn round in a bay and re-cover the area again. I drifted into the reed bed in a stiff cross wind whilst turning and on recovering from this I headed out a few yards further out for my next run through.
As I started the run back I turned the Minn Kota on and there was a clatter from the back and on checking I found the transducer had been dislodged during the excursion in the reeds and it was hanging down and just touching the prop. As I was repositioning the transducer and twisting the suction cup to secure it to the stern the sounder on the Hummingbird gave a strong continuous retort. Getting to look at the screen showed a huge concentration of large red over black squares indicating a shoal of big fish. Looking back at the transducer revealed it was pointing at almost 90 degrees from the bottom and was emitting its signal horizontally into open water, not vertically to the bottom. I turned it back to the vertical and the sounder stopped, turning out again brought the same result, more noise and red squares again. I took the transducer off and twisted it around at different angles to find that there were fish all around me but not under the boat, eureka!
(I have come to appreciate that as a boat moves into range of a shoal of fish they tend to react by moving away until the boat passes reforming the shoal after it passes them, see fig:2. this being confirmed by side scanning, the distance may vary up to perhaps 10 metres. This is why so often no fish are recorded on the sonar, although they were probably there and were passed by on many occasions!)
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A brace caught after locating a feature and huge fry shoal
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I placed the transducer back on the stern and twisted it at 45 degrees and set off back down the Lough, to have revealed a shoal of bream almost a mile long and several hundred yards wide and several metres deep, the shoal must have been made up of thousands and thousands of fish, incredible.
I fished what was a third of the way up the bay and on several days had catches in excess of 200 lbs of bream, most weighing on average 7 lbs plus, in 4 to 5 hours and on one day could easily have weighed in excess of 500 lbs, absolutely incredible. In hindsight I could have just fished and caught, but I would never have learned that very important lesson and developed my use of sonars by side scanning to find fish!
Since that day I have preferred to use the sonar as a fish finder by holding the transducer or attaching it to a modified landing net pole so that I can achieve the scanning of still waters and rivers from the bank. This allows for identifying if fish are present in the swim or area, it doesn't tell me anything about the contours of the lake or river bed, but I can go afloat and use the sonar as a depth finder if I need that information. Once that is mapped to paper I can concentrate of finding the fish.
If you already own a sonar / fish finder and have never tried this then next time you have the opportunity, detach it from the boat and scan around by holding it horizontally and checking out what is around you.
Better still forget the boat and take the sounder down to a nearby river or lake and put this all to the test.
There is no real accuracy of scale with the reports being returned from the signal, but you will be able to identify where shoals of fish are and where best to perhaps place a bait. Remember though, its down then to you to fish well to try and tempt a fish, they wont just jump into the boat or onto the bank.
