FISHING ELECTRONICS

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Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on October 5, 2014 at 1:57pm

Nice perspectives, Jim.
Old school in the house.

Consider NO SONAR at all vs. a basic grey scale unit. It has to be an improvement, in my eyes.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on October 5, 2014 at 1:52pm

Great point Jim.

Comment by jim cosgrove on October 5, 2014 at 1:40pm

adding to what mike said even on the old gray lcd screens you could find the thermocline on deeper lakes.so you could rule out that most fish would be above the thermocline and not wasting time fishing below a certain depth.an old school way of mapping the bottom of a river or stream would be to hike along it during low water and drought conditions.as much as a drought sucks it gives a unique glimpse of what is underwater most times.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on October 4, 2014 at 5:47pm

Mike, you're not old school at all. Rather, you're dead-on in the needed schooling. We're so hung up with high tech to do the work for us that we're not utilizing the old techniques to give us the understanding of the based layers of knowledge where the new techs came from.

Surveying is part of my job in life, and utilizing every old tech method to see beyond what's below, rather than just the surfaces using down imaging or video recording equipment, we need to know the thickness of the water's bottom (soft sand-silt-clay/dead vegetation/accumulation of bio-degraded matters), and performed required dredging to sustain habitats.

We all need a lesson in old schooling. Until we understand the basic fundamentals, that's when we need to go up on the higher techs. Of course, pairing old tech with high tech will yield massive results. This is why all new techs in fishfinders have both. Higher sonar yields-returns (360°) in delayed realtime, advantage of surfaces definition compilation, and best of all, infrared detection of schools and the fish densities. Pretty damn neat stuffs.

Comment by dick tabbert on October 4, 2014 at 5:27pm

Very interest stuff Mike. That's the first thing I was told  not to run in auto. It will run in auto and if you don't care about running your machine to it's full potential and feel comfortable then auto is were you need to be. If you want to open it up learn the features and potentials take it out of auto and play around and learn the machine.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on October 4, 2014 at 4:37pm

Thanks Mike Cross - It helped a lot.
I know absolutely nothing about sonars, so this helps. Well, alright, that's not technically true; I know a lot of the theory and I've used the older gray scale models. The new gear I understand what's happening, but no experience.
What your saying Mike is the same as with metal detectors - you run the gain as high you can under known conditions, and get used to those operating parameters. I'll be using a very basic grey scale model soon, thanks to the generosity of one of our members.
This idea of run to the HIGHEST GAIN for the conditions is a good one.
Thanks Mike.

Comment by jim cosgrove on October 4, 2014 at 2:56pm

thanks mike for chiming in,thats about as far advanced as ever got.all i ever use them for is temp and depth.mostly to see if a topo map is accurate.i see guys spending more time messing with electronics and blasting from spot to spot than fishing and trying to figure out a pattern.had a lot of fun with my first fish finder as i fished some old strip pits that were hard to fish and found some deep water features i never would have.most BOWs i fish now i pretty much have mapped in my head and any new fallen trees etc are pretty obvious

Comment by Mike Cross on October 4, 2014 at 1:36pm

Hi ALL, Since I am old school plus only have two gray scale FF, both non GPS/Non Memory. SO, with that in mind I will go back in time to the "GOOD OLD DAYS" of the 80's and discuss my understanding and practiced use of gray scale FF and how to make them perform at their peak and that involves going to a manual setting and adjust your sensitivity to a KNOWN bottom.  The reason for knowing the bottom type,sand, clay, gravel, rock etc is the echo and what most of us call "The second echo" is different with bottom type. For those who run on Auto,you may have never seen it before but it simply is when one hits the + sign in manual mode on sensitivity screen until a second bottom is seen. Then you can hit the minus until the second bottom will disappear. Now for the reason for knowing the BOW bottom type.. In the bottom is rock or clay the echo return will be stronger and the second echo will disappear with a lower signal strength. On a mucky or very soft bottom the signal will be stronger but you would most likely get a second echo on a sandy bottom and a very wide and most likely confusing second bottom when one crossed a gravel/rock bottom. Is this clear as MUD?!

  As an example and one I had seen on you tube with a color graph in auto, the guy was explaining the bottom that was on the screen and he said look at the red "It is clay or maybe rock", well there is my point color or gray scale in a manual setting with proper sensitivity one can determine what the bottom for sure, why you may ask. Most people that fish lakes know places on the BOW that is rocky, sandy, trees, clay, bushy, grassy. If one looks at those known bottoms at a same setting of sensitivity you will then know what you are really looking at.  If one set sensitivity on a sandy bottom which is most lakes highest percentage, IN GENERAL, then you would have a wide band on muck and the double echo on rock. Why such a high setting, you will see a lot more stuff with a higher setting.  on auto the sensitivity is compromised to some degree due to electronic filtering. In manual I let my eyes filter and my brain compute the bottom type but I know I am seeing everything that can be reproduced by said device, at a specific Hz, with a certain cone angle.

  All that stuff said, I just like taking whatever FF to the point where I decide what I want to view and just show me everything. One can get used to reading that kind of graph just like one can get used to reading an FF on auto graph. 

  I know this is very basic for most here but there are people out there who just did not know or are not comfortable with changing settings very much. 

  It may be too that I am so old school and FF today are so much better even in auto that my style of setting up a FF is no longer needed. I have not used any of the last 10+ year FF. So there we have it, IMHO. I hope it even helped one person to experiment and get a better read, so to speak.

  Maybe some one will try it in color and find the same results, it would be interesting to know.

Comment by dick tabbert on October 4, 2014 at 7:04am

Thanks for sharing Ken. I personally have humminbirds but I guess they all have there plus and minuses but bottom line is they all help to locate fish. Now a days they have so many features I know  you need to use them and get comfortable with them and the features they possess to be really proficient with the units. Thanks Ken for sharing.

Comment by Mark Sleeper on October 3, 2014 at 10:34pm

Thanks Leo

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