Posts: 1209
| Jerry Newman - 7/1/2018 8:11 PM
I don't think that mounting a transducer that shallow is even practical, especially with any type of wave action. I would honestly question just how effective scanning something on the surface might be anyway with just the turbulence created in 1’ waves.
This did get me thinking though and I will be watching a little more when it's calm to see how far away and how close to the surface the Lowrance 3-D will report. The SS recording the rods going in and out of the water that I mentioned earlier are only down 2-3’… but of course that's right next to the boat too.
Kind of an FYI; we typically don't side scan more than three times the depth we are fishing, if we are 8-10’, the SS is set at 30’ off either side of the boat. The 30’ setting (60’ total) covers a six line spread nicely, it's always cool when we ID a muskie on the SS and bang, the lure running closest gets eaten.
For us, one of the more important aspects is scale, we try to run the boat at basically the same speed with the same coverage which allows us to really dial things in… can certainly tell a 50” class fish from a 40” for instance so we know whether to turn around or maybe try something else. If we are lucky enough to have the outside board get eaten a few times in a row, we might put another board or two out and increase coverage to 50’, but that would be about max.
As most of you know I'm pretty much troll exclusively anymore because I trashed my R elbow casting. However, if I was still a diehard caster I would be looking into mounting an SI transducer on the bow to help see follows… would be pretty valuable to be that much more prepared.
Yes I keep hearing the 3 time depth for range reference as "good" practice but birds will easily do 50' in 10'of water. Seeing the surface can be very important or not important depending on conditions and fish behavior, seeing the bottom of the floating dock floats makes you confident that there is bait or no bait/fish under the float. Sometimes they will be right under them as the hold heat. Or even open water trolling when the bait if on the surface on a calm day if you miss the top 10* you can easily miss the bait up top.
Something that drove me up the wall is the lowrance elite ti has the side Imaging pretty much on autopilot for range, scroll speed, and gain, and that really seems to leave a lot on the table (I only had a hour to help a buddy learn his unit, I may have not found it) |
