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| TJ, i wasn't a big believer either until Cory and Brad published the article about it in Musky Hunter. one day when the fishing was slow on Waubesa i started playing around marking lots of points along a weedline just for the heck of it...when i came back through fishing the area, i realized just how right they were and what i'd been missing before. it makes you more efficient, and that makes you better.
for example, there's a couple of sandbar/sunken islands that i like to fish. i know Brad and Cory have visited them before too. on the top of these large shallow humps there are there areas of rock that poke up through the sand, and in among those rocks in a couple places where there are specific larger boulders. there's also some chara and other bottom-clinging junk weeds scattered around.
on my screen are some widely spaced icons indicating "sand" (i used a yellow diamond), clusters of icons for "weeds" (i use a weed image), with other clusters of icons indicating "rock" (i use a gray rockpile picture), and specific icons inside those clusters indicating "boulder" (i use a brown double-circle). and then of course there are the "fish" icons indicating where they've been contacted.
i can run these spots fan-casting the sand, particularly hitting the fish icons. then i can work around the weed or rock areas more slowly, specifically casting to the transitions. lastly i can work up on top of the rocks, hitting the boulders from various angles at a distance without burning the spot by driving over it.
that's kind of casting precision is just not possible if all i had was some tracks and generic waypoints - it doesn't distinguish enough.
i've got the Side Imaging, and i STILL put a ton of points down all over important pieces of structure. i do use it to "shoulder" certain weedlines or other structure in the way that TJ suggests and it's a great tool for that. but if anything, i put even more icons down as i'm now able to pick out some things from a distance (esp. a single element on a larger piece of structure) that i might have missed in the past. with the SI i can put the icon on the image off to the side of the boat and it shows up on the map at the proper location, ie., 75 feet off the to starboard or whatnot.
now, all of that being said, i run a Humminbird which means i have to enter points as a generic waypoint and then manually change the picture to what i want. i'm pretty practiced at it so it only takes about 10 seconds to do - no big deal when doing them one at a time. i would definitely not want to have to go back and re-enter/change the image from all of my old saved points when i transfre them and it's unfortunate that Lowrance didn't anticipate this issue and/or correct it in an update. maybe they will do so, maybe they won't. customer loyalty makes for a lot of sales when something new is released, but it only lasts until that new thing isn't quite as good as hoped and next time...
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