Good things, fish finders!

[Peter Waller]

Yes, I think that Mister Crabtree would have been pretty scathing about fish-finders! His creator had some typically unkind comments about bite indicators and bolt rigs in later books. He wasn't too keen on fixed spool reels for the masses either.

[Guest rabbit]

Really, were fixed spool reels only for the Elite? (No pun intended)

I'm off to my tea dance see you later..

[Peter Waller]

'No angler should should touch the threadline, (fixed spool) reel until he has served an apprenticeship with more skill demanding tools. Let him learn to float fish with a flick'em reel or an aerial.' Quoted from Mister Crabtree Goes Fishing.

 

Enjoy the Tea Dance!

 

[ 07. October 2005, 09:16 AM: Message edited by: Peter Waller ]

[Severn Wolf]

quote:

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Doesn't using a fishfinder negate the need for watercraft? surely being able to 'read' a river, and thus seeking the quarry in a purely natural way add to the satisfaction in the resultant catch if successful? and is that feeling diminished by perhaps in slight feeling that fish was cheated? I do.

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I ask anyone who is against using smartcasts etc, would you go out to sea with a skipper who didn`t use this technology?

 

I use mine for feature finding and disregard any fish blips that show, I`m using it to find areas to fish not the fish themselves.

[Guest Brumagem Phil]

Watercraft on thousands of miles of featureless sea isnt quite the same as fishing a river or still water though is it.

 

I personally have little problem with fishfinders to locate wrecks and stuff at sea. (although i've not as yet had the pleasure of fishing at sea)

 

I think fihsfiders have their place, but owning one and using it once or twice would soon turn into "I wonder why the fish are not biting this afternoon....let me get the fishfinder out to check". That IMO isnt going to improve anyone fishing abilities (Although it might give them the notion of being better due to a better catch rate)

[argyll]

I think fihsfiders have their place, but owning one and using it once or twice would soon turn into "I wonder why the fish are not biting this afternoon....let me get the fishfinder out to check". That IMO isnt going to improve anyone fishing abilities (Although it might give them the notion of being better due to a better catch rate)

 

Phil, sounders are not fishfinders. They are really electronic plummets. conventional wisdom from some of the posters on this thread point to the problems of identifying fish on screen. A sounder changes nothing in terms of 'find the fish' it just reduces the time it takes to 'map out' the bottom and its contours.

 

Some places would be inappropriate for a sounder. Small manmade lakes, canals, fast flowing small streams and rivers etc. Big rivers like the thames, avon, trent, the larger broads and most certainly the reservoirs almost demand that you have a sounder on the boat otherwise your ability to be mobile is wasted. If I were bank fishing then I'm tied to a small area, limited by what I can logically carry without suffering a stroke. Thats a pretty small section of the river but I can get to grips with the features with a lead plummet very quickly.

 

Now imagine that you're on a boat with several miles of big river at your disposal or hundreds of acres of reservoir to fish. Without a fishfinder you could potter around one small corner all day without seeing a fish, when you should really have been a mile downstream. Within 6 months of fishing my current home water I'd pretty much mapped out several miles of river bed including the discovery of a WW11 bomb crater in the river bed that took the depth down from ten to twenty feet. I'd never had found it any other way than running over it with the sounder 'on'. It doesnt tell me that there's fish there, it just points to a big hole where there might be fish lying up out of winter flood conditions later in the year.

 

Reservoirs that measure in miles with depths up to 60 feet are no place for technology free fishing with a lead plummet. Walker and Venables never used this stuff in their time because it wasn't available. Their modern day equivalents wouldnt step into their boats without a sounder.

 

Last thing is this issue of 'watercraft'. We like to think its all about observing nature and the environment and using those skills to catch a fish. Someone who uses a sounder regularly on big waters would argue that what you see on screen is not necessarily 'what you get' and watercraft is also about making a correct interpretation of the picture that you see, playing hunches about fishing the drop-offs, sunken weed beds, small boat wrecks, and old river courses and all of the features that you're likely to see on the screen. There are no labels on there, you have to interpret what you see. Its not as easy as 'fish there' 'fish there' and 'fish there'.

 

Technology is inevitable in fishing. Its what gives us lightweight carbon rods, braided lines, multi bearing reels and all of the other paraphenalia that we can't do without. Cue for vagabond to straighten me out about cane rods

 

I'm now off to fish the Kennet for barbel. No sounder, but two carbon rods, fluorocarbon traces off a braided line and some manmade trout pellets might do the trick...and I think I'll probably leave the donkey and take the car instead

 

[ 07. October 2005, 01:15 PM: Message edited by: argyll ]

[Guest Brumagem Phil]

Thats pretty much what I said all along isnt it?

[argyll]

If we are in agreement then that's fine.

 

[ 07. October 2005, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: argyll ]

[Guest Brumagem Phil]

LOL

[Severn Wolf]

quote:

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Watercraft on thousands of miles of featureless sea isnt quite the same as fishing a river or still water though is it.

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Phil, its exactly the same mate! Looking for a dirty great hulk of a wreck in the middle of the Channel is IMO no different to trying to locate that 2ft wide hump in a 20 acre lake. You know roughly where it is but need a bit of tech to be able to pinpoint it accurately.

 

They really are a revelation. I used one on a spot I fish on the Severn and found a small depression in a swim that even after ten years fishing the spot I never knew existed. Needless to say the hotspot proved to be brilliant.

 

Found a dirty great drop off in a swim in Highley that has since proved to be productive. Even with my experience reading rivers I would never have guessed there was a five foot drop in this place. They are an eye opener for sure.