Side Scan Fish On August 02, 2016
Finding fish with side imaging is difficult for most anglers since we don’t have enough screens on the boat. We tend to select map, sonar and Down Imaging and forget about the side imaging, but finding fish is easy if you have the right conditions. One of the problems we run into is that a rocky bottom reflects so much of the sonar it’s bright and fish show up as bright areas which means there is little contrast and they are easily hidden, while softer bottoms show up darker so fish really show up in this image.
Notice all the fish on the right on the first image.
I usually leave my unit on 455 kHz since you get much more range than with 800 kHz.
The next image shows larger fish in the red circle and smaller fish in the green circles. Notice the depth is 3.7 ft.
But don’t be fooled by logs on the bottom left over from the timber logging industry.
Yellow arrows are pointing out the logs.
The red circles are around fish which show up as white dots.
The next image has more fish that are longer. Here we need to remember the length of the fish is dependent on boat speed. The faster the boat travels the fewer sonar pings that are going to cover the fish so their length will show up shorter.
Another good way for identifying fish is the shadow the fish cast, the farther away the shadow is from the fish the higher in the water column the fish is located.
The red and black circles show fish and shadows. The fish nearer the center are harder to see since the bottom is brighter nearer the center so the shadow becomes helpful in identifying the fish.
