Depth Sounders, Graphs, and Flashers

[The Fisherman]

Well certainly not the response that I thought I was gonna get but it works. Mr. Powell, I don't know you so I won't go to far and get to mad here, but if you are implying that I am trying to buy success then I hope that we never meet. I have Spoonplugged my entire life without electronics before I came Afghanistan I purchased a portable piranha the cheapest graph made just to see the water depth and see the base of a weedline, never cared about a thermocline because straining the shallows would tell me were the fish were. So for you to imply that I am trying to buy success should be humiliating for YOU! I don't brag but I'm really offended here. I've caught schools of 9lb plus largemouth. My first time smallmouth fishing in TN I killed them on a body of water I've never been two. I can count my fish less days in the last 10years, ON BOTH HANDS.

Bink, You are correct you can do everything that you need to do to be a successful fisherman and never use anything except a flasher. I did it, you have apparently done it, my father did it. Yet if we are a spoonplugger then we are always learning, right. If the electronics help eliminate water along with the guidelines why not use them. I have seen tons of fish on my little piranha and never caught one of those, then see nothing and catch my limit so, that should in itself say they are not the answer, the GUIDELINES ARE. Now I do find the last post of yours odd, you said "Im just saying for what he is looking for I think a cheap flasher and water temp gauge is all he needs.
If he wants to see fins, tires,beer cans,nets,etc.. he will have to invest a lot of time/money getting it set up." When in the hell did I ever say that I wanted to see beer cans, fin,nets? I didn't I said that those items can serve as breaks for fish crossing a flat. I started that thread to get guys to understand that we cannot see the subtle breaks that a fish sees and uses on his movements and migrations. Our lures have to find them, it also tied into the delta ridge discussion. Now all that was in response to Gino's questions about why he was catching musky at the end of a flat in a certain lake. So I understand, and I agree with new spoonpluggers not using electronics in the shallows. But after fishing some of the lakes in Alaska, and running all sizes of lures, I have found that the aid of a depth meter in those conditions was almost a nessessity.

All in all, if you don't like seeing on a screen what your lures are going through then stay out of this thread! This one is for electronics. I stopped the talk in the fish crossing a flat thread for this reason. So this one is so that we can learn! I want to if you dont then go away.

Joshua Douglas Travis. THE FISHERMAN. That was before I had electronics!

[Steve Craig]

"he will have to invest a lot of time/money getting it set up."

Money maybe.........Time?????? I dont think so.

It took me longer to mount my transducer than it did to read and learn to use the manual for my Lowrance DSI unit. I spent 30 minutes mounting it.
And it only took John Bales 5 minutes to show me how to make my unit even better.
Now if you are talking about the HDS, then yes, it will take a little more time to mount it and hook it up, as there is extra stuff to hook up.
Today, there is so much info in the internet, that the learning curve for this stuff is much shorter/faster.
The Doctor Sonar videos alone are well worth the time spent watching them. Yes, so there might be extra time spent here, but heh.......videos are fun to watch!
And FWIW......My DSI was in the same price range as my Vexilar Flasher.

Buck taught us that there are little breaks and breaklines down there that we cant see and that look like mountains to the fish.
If my unit allows me to see them, and that allows me to find the fish faster, then, and this is my OPINION only, it is time and money well spent.
On my first training lake with Don Dickson, he told me I had only 5 hours to find all the fish in that lake! It took me 8! There is no doubt in my mind that i could today, cut that time to 3 hours with the modern depth finders of today.
Heck, I watched John Bales in a video do a single structure in minutes, so i know this can be done.
What depth finder was he using? And did he use it to speed up the time?

[Bink]

All im saying is a good flasher will show you every subtle detail on the bottom. If you think a fancy unit will help more go for it, what ever your comfortable with.
Now if we can only get some people with these units to post some fishing reports.

[The Fisherman]

Bink,

Now I am saying this from a perspective of not having owned anything very expensive or advanced. Yet I did use my Dads flasher a little when I would use his boat to guide. Also, I know that my little piranha will show a...say a tire, and so will the flasher. Now you won't know what the heck it is but I can figure out it a little better. It doesn't matter.

The point here is that we can use the old electronics and the new electronics to "SEE" the breaks on the bottom. Our lures can tell us just as much as ANY electronics that are made. The problem lies in the fact that it takes years and I mean years to truly know exactly what breaks are what and where. There are in fact some that you can never find. The saving grace is that you remember where you caught the fish on multiple locations. After fishing a structure for many years you put together the migration path, and the pauses and stops that the fish make. I'm not talking about the over all from here to there migration path. I mean the exact bad weather deep water home, all the way to the scatter point, and very stopping point in between. At first,with out electronics, some of these seem to be essentially void of breaks in some areas. Yet we know that the fish can only see so far, they must see something we cannot. That bothers me, I have to know where they are or exactly how their going to get there. I hate fishing "blind". To me if I don't know without a shadow of a doubt how and where they pause and the path they take then I will spend forever looking to figure it out. This left me with tons of really long fishing trips , I had my lures and they did perfect, just a lot of time and patience to figure these things out. I eventually began to literally log sight bearings, and later grids for places the fish would stop and pause if I couldn't find a break with my lures. I would then return when the water was low and search for the break that made them stop. A large majority of these spots were just a little depression or rise, some were a rock the size of a baseball or tennis ball in the middle of gravel or a clay spot on a silty area. LONG HOURS but great learning. So if I can take the experience from all that and use electronics to limit the amount of hours I spend trolling looking for a baseball sized rock in a gravel pile I will do it. In addition I really hate half assing something. Also not being informed on what I buy. So for me this thread is a very informative tool. I am happy to be able to use an aid to assist in my catching fish. I will be able to apply all my knowledge to my fishing and just like wire line to go deeper, I can use my sounder to see what I want to see on the structures I am mapping and have mapped. Its all good in its own light.

Josh

[Bink]

My concern with theses things are that people will spend way more time looking for baseball sized objects on the bottom that may or may not be there then they need to.

[John Bales]

No depth meter of any kind will show a baseball sized rock lying on the bottom. Like I said, your anchor cannot be seen till its a foot to two foot off the bottom. So any fish that are not active and that are belly to the bottom will not be seen............ period and that goes for any depth meter. All depth meters are an aid to us all. What this should do for us is shorten the amount of time to size up a fishing situation. Sure beats the hell out of a rope with a weight on the end of it. The new gagets have the capability of giving the fisherman more information while going through the same motions as we always do to find the fish. If a fisherman is already having trouble catching fish after 20 years of spoonplugging and using a flasher, then a new depth meter will not fix his problem. There are no miracle depth finders just like there are no miracle lures. It all lies in the hands of the person using them. John

[david powell]

my point exactly.

[Steve Craig]

Here you go Bink.....
I got these using Spoonplugging as my guidelines.
And I am serious here too! Bucks teachings can be used in the hunting world if you know how to apply them.








This guy even decided he like sitting on my Ranger seat!






I know you wanted to see fish, but I couldnt help myself, because I did learn many years ago that Bucks Guidelines can be used for other things beside catching fish.
All these pics were of animals called in by me for myself and my hunting clients .
AND.........
I used modern technologies to do it. Modern E-Callers, etc., with modern guns, etc. Modern camo, Modern 4 wheel drives vehicle, and a modern camera so i could take self pics.

Of course there are all AIDS.

But, I could have used a Flintlock rifle, a reed between my thumbs for a call, plaid shirts, and a horse.( all of which I have used)
But I also know I could not have called the numbers of critters in, that i do, by doing it that way.
So I like others have posted, have to say.....Thank you Buck!

[The Fisherman]

Well sure sounds like people change their stories when they are called out for their incorrect or just wrong statements.

Mr. Bales, perhaps I didn't explain what I meant when I said that it would help eliminate time looking for that baseball sized break. What I was trying to get at is that if I can use the electronics to see the fish at a stopping or pausing point in their migration then that narrows down the search. Makes life a little easier. I can't believe there is no magic lure though! I just read this thing about bleeding hooks and it catches every fish in the lake. They swim for miles and miles to get one lure, cause its hurt! Anyway, my point was only that we should want to educate ourselves on the equipment at our disposal as much as possible. Every aid has its place, if used correctly it helps. If relied on aids will kill you. Maybe I went a little to far for some people to grasp with the small breaks and talking about finding ever stopping point that a school will make on their movements and migrations.

A certain Spoonplugger on here speaks of the bathtub. When he talks about this its in deep water, the sanctuary. So when I am making statements about baseballs, Mr. Bales, I know that you know what I mean, it isn't much of a stretch for us to find them in shallow water(-20'). Your lures will do it, just takes time and its worth it to me. For people that don't understand this, re-study the material. Also it is not necessary to find these, you can still consistently catch fish by knowing the start and end points with the major breaks and breaklines in between(contact point).

Back to the electronics; Mr. Bales, is there a way to adjust the contrast on regular sonar to show the difference between a boulder and the bottom its sitting on?

Josh

[Fran Myers]

Josh,
Target seperation with standard sonar can be a problem. I am looking for a link that has a short article about it. However with the HDS/DSI units.the objects can be much closer and.much smaller.

John has challenged me and I must check but I believe an HDS/DSI can show an object much smaller than an anchor closer to the bottom than 3 or 4 feet. But until I get a chance to test it I can't be sure. Interesting...

[The Fisherman]

The target separtion separation thing is something that certainly interests me. I have no idea either about the size objects that it will pick up. Yet if I can find and see a school of fish and follow them with both casts and trolling it shows me in that way excactly where they are and where they stop. Then I can focus efforts over finding out why they stopped there, and in the future know the exact cast to make to check where they will be stopping at.

Josh

[jwt]

Are we looking for boulders on the bottom or trying to catch fish

Josh, ya gotta be careful with those "bleeding hooks". Why just the other day I was rigging a drop-shot with one and so many bass jumped in the boat after it I had to throw the hook overboard before the weight sank the boat. So many bass went after that hook it formed a giant whirlpool. I had to get the heck out of there before I got sucked into it.

[TN Dave]

JWT,

That story would make Mark Twain proud!

TN Dave

[John Bales]

Josh, Just call me John or worse. That will do. Most of the time, I want my sensativity adjusted as high as it will go without picking up a bunch of sediment or algae and then turn it down just a notch. No you cannot adjust your gain to where it will show you seperation of the bottom with a rock sitting on it. If it is a flat rock, I doubt any unit will show it. If it sticks up a little, maybe a foot or two then most units will show it, including a flasher. Just a little something to think about. When you see something on a flasher, you interpret what it is saying no matter if it is a suspended fish, a stump sticking up three feet, a hard to soft transition or whatever. You see it for a split second and then it is gone. On a graph, you get to look at it or study it for a few more seconds before it gets off the screen. Instead of talking about how any unit works, lets just give an example of what a unit can tell you if you pay attention. Lets say that you are fishing a natural lake with a thermocline and the thermocline is at 20 feet. Middle of the summer, you are catching northerns from the weedline out to 20 feet or so. Then fall comes along and a few frosts come and all of a sudden you notice that the thermocline is now at 23 feet. You also start catching less northerns right at the weedline but you go deeper and you find that you start catching them at 20 to 23 feet. You also start to see a lot of bait fish at that depth also. Two weeks later you go back and now the thermocline has dropped to 28 feet. You get nothing at the weedline so you start moving out and find that most of the bait fish are near that 28 feet and thats where you catch all the northerns too. Deeper and deeper till it is finally gone. You catch the last batch of northerns at the base breakline at 36 feet and there are no more breaklines past that depth. The max depth in this lake is 55 feet and there is another large hole at 50 feet at the other end. Your next trip you dont get anything shallow so you start working deeper. You also see no fish anywhere. What is your next move if there are no visable breaklines which can guide you below 36 feet? John

[david powell]

FOR JOHN BALES
ON AUG.10 2010 YOU POSTED A PIC OF YOUR GRAPH-- ASKED THE QUESTION WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS.
YOU STATED IT WAS SHOWING THE THERMOCLINE.
MY QUESTION IS THIS,YOUR GRAPH SHOWS YOU WERE IN 15' OF WATER.EVERYTHING I KNOW OF LAKE STRATIFICATION SAYS THIS IS NOT DEEP ENOUGH TO STRATIFY. ALSO I'M SURE I READ SOMEWHERE THAT MR.PERRY SAID TO BEAT THE FALL TURNOVER JUST FISH WHERE THE WATER IS 15' OR LESS,FOR THERE IS NO TURNOVER IN WATER THAT SHALLOW. NOW TONITE YOUR POST SAYS AS THE WATER COOLS IN THE FALL IT PUSHES THE THERMOCLINE DEEPER AND DEEPER. I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO KNOW HOW YOU HAVE COME TO THESE CONCLUSIONS. AND PLEASE DON'T ANSWER BECAUSE YOU SEE IT ON YOUR GRAPH. NEED A SCIENTIC ANSWER.I UNDERSTAND WATER GETS HEAVIER AS IT COOLS AND SINKS BUT NOT SURE THAT THIS CAN CAUSE THE THRERMOCLINE TO BE DEEPER.
DAVID POWELL