Fish finders

[M.P]

Knowing my local fishing area quite well, i am convinced that fish finders are c..p.

Ever since fitting mine just over a week ago i had the feeling that they do not return the information expected.

From an area known to be almost fishless the fish finder picked out hundreds of fish, these fish turned out to be jelly fish floating by.

 

So i set up the unit with less sensitivity, it still showed too many fish, or rubbish floating under the boat.

So i tried to set it up in a bucket of clean tap water, guess what, yes it still manages to try and tell me that there are fish in the bucket.

 

By now I'm getting peeded off, do they, or don't they work. Well i did another test, set the transducer back up on the transom, then decided to go up to a local Bass hot-spot and soon hooked into a small 10" Bass. I then reeled it in towards the transducer and let it swim about on the hook, not once did it show up on the fish finder.

 

IMHO, another piece of fishing equipment made to catch more anglers then fish... What a waste of money.

[Newt]

- They are very useful for showing bottom detail. If you set the depth-change alarm, it will also do nicely to alert you to small hills and valleys you might otherwise miss while you were running from place to place and busy paying attention to where your boat was going and what else was on the surface you needed to be aware of.

 

- They are very useful in deeper water for showing the depth of the thermocline.

 

- If adjusted properly, they are very useful for showing shoals of small fish.

 

- If operated with the default setting for many of them to show 'fish symbols' they will certainly do just what you are seeing.

 

- With your small bass, it would help to know how far under the boat it was. The cone a sonar head will show widens as it goes deeper so a short distance under the boat and you might be looking at a total circle of 6 inches or a foot that the signal passes through. Unless you had the fish within that cone, you wouldn't see anything.

 

You could have a defective unit. You could have it adjusted poorly or mounted poorly. Hard to say.

 

It really sounds like you bought a frying pan and have found that it makes a very poor boat paddle. Agreed but if you use it to fry food, it will probably do a good job.

 

I've been using them since the days when a flasher was the best you could buy and it remains a piece of 'must have' gear for me.

[spanner]

The main thing to remember is that although they are always called Fish Finder's these days they are actually Echo Sounders.

 

As Newt says, they tell you about the bottom, its depth its structure etc, and sometimes they can tell you about fish as well depending on their size, location and species.

 

They may pick up a response from the swim bladder, either from large single fish or a shoal of small ones, fish without swim bladders like mackerel will not show, although you may see the bait fish a shoal is feeding on.....

 

Bladder wrack gives a great signal in shallow water too ......

 

For fish to show it has to be significant component of the signal, over and above noise, debris, disturbed water, that is why they might show fish rather than will show fish.

 

Their primary function is to show you the bottom and let you deduce where the fish might be based on that .....

[Bob on Stronsay]

We most often fish over well known marks with massive populations of Coalfish and Pollock. The fish finder or better still sonar will often agree with what we already know. If we are catching large amounts of fish they also show up on the finder. If the fish are not there we don't catch them and they don't show up.

 

I doubt if I would bother with one if all they were for is showing fish.

 

Where they really come into their own is for searching out new grounds or showing the bottom. Although a shoal of mackerel in mid water is an added bonus.

 

I agree with Newt, turn off the fish symbol function.

 

Bob

[chevin]

In the main I am agreement with the suggestion that they are useless as fish finders except when I pick up a big shoal of bait fish on them. Then I know where the fish I want are likely to be. However, the bottom indication is invaluable! I would never want to go out with out an echo sounder and a GPS unit - again I can tell where I want to be with what I see on my screen and I can get back right on it with the help of the GPS!

[Guest PhilB]

I use one in fresh water and never have the "fish symbol" switched on - it generally tells lies. There is a lot of clutter in the top 20 feet of water due to weed, algae, thermocline etc. Below that it is good for showing individual fish such as char. You should persevere with it, as you learn more about it, experience will tell you what to ignore and what to take note of. It is also a great safety item of course. Good luck

[Toerag]

I agree with all of the above, the only fish you see are shoals of baitfish, or large concentrations of bigger fish. Baitfish tend to be a dense ball, 'real' fish tend to show up as lines. This pic is of a lot of pollack on a wreck in deep (50m+) water:-

This is the exception, I can pull fish out of marks all day long and not see a single fish on the sounder.

 

[ 01. July 2005, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: Toerag ]

[Salar]

The speed of fish swimming also has an effect. My Humminbird shows fish symbols which turn out to be doddery pout and dogfish (when caught), but fails to spot mackeral even though they are coming aboard 6 at a time.

[Elton]

Salar:

The speed of fish swimming also has an effect. My Humminbird shows fish symbols which turn out to be doddery pout and dogfish (when caught), but fails to spot mackeral even though they are coming aboard 6 at a time.

Maybe due to what spanner said above?

 

quote:

---

fish without swim bladders like mackerel will not show, although you may see the bait fish a shoal is feeding on.....

---

 

[ 01. July 2005, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Elton ]

[Guest stevie cop]

Hi Mick

Turn the fish symbol function off! It'll drive you mad otherwise.

 

Those fish symbols are just interference. Nothing more, nothing less. Use the fish finder to pick out bottom features. If you get to know your fishfinder and learn to use the greyline, that can be useful for finding hard or soft ground. As for finding fish? Forget it.