Side scan saved the day. the weed, sand and mud edges were easily seen. The little sand dip in the weeds is where we found walleyes. They were on the sand right next to the weeds.
No wind, clear water and sunny. Only bass shallow so we looked deeper and found some at 22 foot.
Top arrow is mud
2nd arrow is sand
3rd arrow is weedlines
Bottom arrow is weed dip
We were using spot lock to cast for walleye and Levi said look at the sonar. I quickly reeled up and dropped my jig and caught a 4 lb largemouth bass. The 2nd photo is the bass swimming away after I released it.
Notice the 2 bright yellow arches (green arrow) in the red bait (black)
I looked at lots of areas and didn't see any fish and caught fish. But here is one example where the fish showed up.
Fish in vegetation, you don't have to see fish to catch them. I often don't mark fish in weeds but still catch them like this one. I spotted the fish with my Aqua-Vu and dropped my bait near the camera!
Green arrow shows nice fish on down imaging but looks small on 2D. It is probably on the edge of the 2D cone and the DI cone is wider so shows the fish better.
Reason to run DI and 2D sonar. I also use Navionics on my Lowrance and LakeMaster on my Humminbird. DI (down imaging) is better in weeds most of the time.
My Garmin PS30 shows the distance to the side the fish are.
Green arrow 3 feet to the left of the transducer which is mounted on boat's mid-line.
White arrow 8 feet to left.
2D sonar only tells you how far off the bottom and that the fish in the cone somewhere.
#6
Red circle fish
Black arrow weeds
Green arrow small boulders on hard bottom point.
Blue arrow bait balls that create shadows on side scan.
This should help get started in interpreting your sonar.
Using sonar, down imaging, Lowrance, Humminbird, and Aqua-Vu to study fish
Finding panfish in weeds is difficult, I will share one of my methods on this short video.
Just another example on why down imaging helps sonar interpretation. The weeds look similar to fish.
In this one the fish look like weeds.
If you use the Airmar TM 150 on a Lowrance I have found the Custom setting of single frequency 105 kHz gives me the best results. However you need to turn off the noise rejection to get those results.
The left side of this image has the default setting of Noise Rejection set at low and the right side is the Noise Rejection turned off. I don't know why this transducer doesn't perform well with the Noise Rejection on.
Identifying fish size on sonar is very difficult since you can change the size with sensitivity adjustments or depth range. Fish look larger on a depth range of 20 foot than 100 foot. The size of a fish is determined by the color of the fish arch. For example if you have palette colors yellow, blue and red. The more yellow you see the bigger the fish. The thickness of the fish arch also determines fish size. How long the fish arch is just how long the fish is below the transducer.
In the image the black vertical lines show how long the fish is under the transducer and the green lines show the thickness of the fish arch.
The best way to tell size is catch one the fish you see on sonar or use an Aqua-Vu camera.
The first example shows my bait dropping (green arrow), the bait is intercepted by a bass (red arrow) and the bass swims to the bottom (black arrow) and then I set the hook and catch him.
This is the bass.
How about these fish. Needless to say I was excited when I found them but they didn't bite so I dropped the Aqua-Vu camera and was surprised what I found.
On this screenshot is a 7.5 lb. northern pike, you can see when I set the hook and started bringing him to the surface.
The last screenshot is smallmouth bass and I caught a few, this is a picture of one of them. One of my favorite fish to catch.
This screenshot shows a 29.5 inch walleye after being released.
I was lucky in my timing to collect good data to prove fish size on sonar.
Last but not least is what a 5 inch minnow attached to a sinker looks like with 1.5-2.5 lb. walleyes below it.
Learn how crappies display on different sonar brands.
Crappies are a much sought after fish and I get a lot of questions about what they look like on sonar. Crappies often suspend over open water, making them difficult to target. In this session I will show what they look like on different sonar brands.
Image #1 shows crappies on a 2D Garmin sonar using High Chirp.
Image #2 shows the same school with a Humminbird using the MEGA transducer on High Chirp.
Image #3 is the same school using a Lowrance TM150 transducer set at 105 kHz frequency.
Image #4 shows the same school with the Humminbird side imaging
Next are 2 videos showing the Panoptix with 2 different transducers. The PS 30 looks down and to the side and the PS 21 looks to the side.
I use side imaging or the PS 21 to find the school when it moves since they see to the side and I use Minn Kota Spot Lock to sit on the school and vertically jig for supper.
