Searchlight Sonar
Has anyone tried using a searchlight sonar for trolling? I'm wondering if the $5,000 - $10,000 investment be worthwhile.
yak2you2
2008-09-05 04:14:44
I have wondered about this one for years. They use sonars to find all kinds of schools of fish, why not salmon for trolling? I'm not sure what kind your looking at jon, or what a good one is or what one would cost, but it has bugged for me for years, wondering why the industries' heavy hitters don't use them. I once got inspired to check into it a little bit. I found a model in my price range for my little boat that was made by interphase. it had a 180 deg. forward,side to side, sweeping arc,,,and it went from 1500 ft out from waterline, to 90 deg. straight down. The electronics mag I found it in had it listed at 2599.00. Me being the cheapskate that I am, I looked it up on Amazon to see if I could find one cheaper. After I'd found them listed on Amazon, I pulled up the 14 product reviews and read them. Not only were they all bad, here's what one guy said...." I live on Maui and run a dive/snorkel/whale watching boat. I was excited to try out my newly purchased, and installed Interphase sonar. I had a group of people out on a whale watching tour, and we had a big humpback whale about 150 ft. directly ahead of the boat, at a dead stop, in flat calm seas, so I decided to see how well my sonar would pick it up. NOTHING ! no whale, no nothing, I am extremly disapointed with this product, and will be returning it immeadiately."
That was about the end of my sonar curiosity, especially since i doubt they would work in a little boat anyway, to much bouncing around, but I am curious why the big boys don't use them.
mswkickdrum
2008-09-05 04:15:24
I was just looking at that in an add and wondered if guys were using it.
Sam on the Nordic Lass (but I think he sold it as he just got a new boat)
has forward firing sonar, may have some relevance, I'd ask him. I think
he mostly uses it to avoid snagging gear.
MSW
Ocean Gold
2008-09-06 03:10:54
sonars of anykind, Speaking from only a few years of fishing on most operations including reefnetting in the 70's I have seen everyone try just about every new and old mouse trap. When Wesmar Sonars came out they were the thing to have when Pioneer sidescan sonars came out they were the thing to have. The best thing to have is your gear in the water and a good depth sounder. NOTHING will "catch you more fish" than that. They will not make fish bite more or jump into the boat. Good Luck Fishing , go to Murrys and buy a new hoochie they are cheaper :shock:
salmontroll
2008-09-08 05:46:30
I have to agree,
can you imagine trying to fish on the drag , say Cape Edgecumbe with all the charter boats and aggressive trollers, while winding around looking at your sonar, makes me laugh, I'd like to see that one.
Haha, for sure that would not work well on a drag unless you happen to enjoy pissing people off.
I was thinking this might enable me to fish off of the drag and find fish where there are little or no boats around. A tool to escape from the drag! :) I know one person who used a sonar to find the densest school of fish he's ever seen, line loading with huge kings every time he went through it.
I've already got a lot of hoochies and one thing about them I've learned -- even the best hoochie won't catch anything if you can't put them where the fish are.
salmontroll
2008-09-11 02:21:27
well ok, you have me thinking about sonors, my new boat has a westmar transducer still installed but the unit was removed. A friend of mine who fishes tuna, has a westmar sonar and told me that some of the old transducers work with the newer units. I might have to check into that. I like the sound of the dense school of kings all off by yourself somewhere. wow, that would be killer.
yak2you2
2009-02-11 00:02:28
So,,, Jon, computer wizard that you are. Let me bounce this one off of you. Are you familiar with how an interferometer works? Essentially it is an array of small telescopes all inter-linked to see further and with greater detail than any one big telescope. I was thinking about this the other day and it hit me. With so many trollers linked to the internet now-a-days, what if you had a central computer program that collected all the bathymetric data from each individual boat's bottom graphing abilities and linked them together into one big overlay of individual drags to produce a more comprehensive look?
You wouldn't have to identify where individual boats were at, just the schools of bait and/or salmon, available for all to use. Any thoughts?
Salty
2009-02-11 00:42:32
The 3D abilities of some of the young guys in the fleet are such that asking them to share their intel with the fleet would be like asking Microsoft to give away their operating system.
Same thing goes for leads. Who would want to give everyone access to $1.50 per lb. leads when others were paying $3.00 per pound last year and being very careful not to lose any? Why would anyone want to give up that edge? Pun intended.
Why would I want to share the bug that took me years, and a lot of luck, to figure out that the chums bit better under certain conditions with everyone else? Come on Casey, there is a place for sharing, and I am sure I am on the liberal end of that place, but it does not extend to all our intel.
Good searchlight sonar would help a great deal sometimes, especially on chums.
Boy did we get a lot of snow here last night and today. I hear it is really something in Yakutat.
yak2you2
2009-02-11 02:18:02
Salty, apparently your not getting the picture as I envision it. I don't care how good your 3D capabilities are, you still can only see whats under your boat. If you set it up right, no one would be able to see where other boats were at just the over all spectrum produced by all the boats as a whole. I've seen pictures, I see how tight your drags are. If all those boats were linked, it would give all of them a better look. Remember, you won't be the only one sharing, you'd be able to see what everyone else sees too. To be more specific, you could use the site to have individual groups sharing. Imagine, you and your partners all linked to see a better swath of the ocean. If a guy felt like his electronics were to good to share, fine, do your own thing.Can't hurt to try to think up new ideas can it?
Snow is ridiculously deep here too, I am ready for spring, thats for sure.
Salty
2009-02-11 02:33:19
I am starting to slowly get the picture. Sounds like you and Stephen need to get together.
He was trying to explain the biteometer to me this past weekend and I was a bit slow on the bite.
shakers
2009-02-11 03:14:36
One of my favroite topics;
The search for things underwater.
I have had the privledge of running everything from the most refined sidscan to small irscanners, magnatometers and searchlights. to get what your looking for. A refined image of fish in the water column or on the bottom. You need a towed array the very basic sytems start at 14k the good ones run at 45K and the ideal 70K.
its like staring a fish in the eyeball without getting wet.
majority of the "forward looking" sonars are designed to help mariners avoid reefs and such.
Sidscans are awesome however, they take a long time to learn how to run, read and process the data.
Most of the things learned from the side scan confirm what most old salts know already.
I have some really neat images of kings workin a school of feed, i'll try to convert and distill the image into a web friendly format.
yak2you2
2009-02-11 16:06:15
OK, while were on the subject of whats going on down there, I have to throw this out.
When I was a kid used to love sportfishing for cohos off of a bridge. Nothing, I mean NOTHING was quite like seeing the fish respond to my lure. You could effectively place the spoon right in front of their face, or watch them follow it, and speed up or slow down as needed to entice them. I loved be able to see the process rather than the alternative of casting into some dark pool somewhere and hoping for the best.
I've always felt like I'm in the dark again so to speak when I'm trolling. I often wonder how many times there's a fat king following right behind my lure, and I don't even know it. If only I did and gave the throttle a little bump, or slowed down , I might have him. There's no doubt, if we could see what was happening down there in real time, it would make us MUCH more effective fisherman, which leads us to today's topic, underwater cameras.
I've seen videos of fish striking lures, there cool to watch, and I want that technology in the worst way, but I have never been able to figure out how to do it with commercial wire. There are underwater cameras out there that are fairly inexpensive that would do the job, but none I've seen are set up for towing, and how to rig it?
I figure you want to have a look at the money shot, meaning you want to be able to see your bottom spread and ball spoon, for kings at least, down 60 - 100 feet, depending on how deep your dragging. Most of the units I've checked out max out at 120 ft. of wire.
What I can't figure out, is how to attach the camera head so it stays facing aft, steady enough to see out of, and how to attach the cable to your wire so that you can run other spreads above the camera, and be able to haul the whole mess in and out easily enough.
I am certain that the payoff would be well worth it if I could just figure out how.
Has anyone experimented with this, or have any ideas???
mswkickdrum
2009-02-11 16:28:31
Yak,
There are underwater cameras designed for sport fishermen. I saw some at Sportco and I think they
also have some at Cabelas. Beer can size or a bit smaller. There is a new big Cabelas down South in
Lacey, just before you get to Olympia. The one I looked at when I was at Sportco in Fife had a switchable
fin that would let you troll it facing aft or foreward. I'm sure you could rig it up to see the spreads, that
was what I found intreguing about it. You probably would need to rig up another line with canon ball to
have it drag just in front of your fishing wire. Don't know if that would be legal, maybe fish and game would
see it as a additional "fishing" line.
Sonar:
The first improvements I plan on making is Sonar and Freezer set up once I get this deal
going. At Wesmar I talked to them for quite a while at the Fish Expo, to entice owners to buy up
there is a $1000 trade in given for your old set up. SO, that is what most used one's are worth,
since the only reason to upgrade is new features and at the Troller level those aren't as big of
an advantage as dragging a big bycath encompassing trawl net. The market for them isn't very
liquid, most get one and use it till it finally quits before they get a new one. Apparently they
don't die very soon, so the trade in offer is to get current owners to purchase the new models.
I saw a used one for sale on craigslist in Astoria for $1500, also you could check with Wesmar
for used ones as they come in on trade.
What I was told by the "guys" there working the stand is that it may not "show" the acutal fish,
but it WILL show fish schools and bait, AND it will show where (direction) and how deep they
are. This will allow you to go "there" and fish at "that" depth and keep track of where they go.
Obviously this could be usefull. Hopefully getting my engine in next weekend.
MSW
Ocean Harvester
2009-02-11 17:27:16
Yak,
The Atlantis units will have a reverse fin which keeps the camera pointing back and will connect to your cable.
You wouldn't have to identify where individual boats were at, just the schools of bait and/or salmon, available for all to use. Any thoughts?
There wouldn't be any significant technical hurdles. You could probably make money surveying drags and selling the data. :)
yak2you2
2009-02-11 21:22:49
I'm mostly thinking of real time applications for the inter-linked depthfinder thought. If you had say 6 or 8 boats boats nicely spaced out and all went over a big school of fish, each skipper could view the school from each depthfinder's prospective, giving all skippers a better idea the size and characteristics of the school.
I know I won't be the guy to set it up, I'm lucky to be able to turn my computer on, but It just sounds to me like it would give a group of fisherman a lot better view of whats going on under them.
The saying is " there's 2 places left that don't have cell service, hell, and Yakutat." So, won't work for me anyway.
I've checked out the cameras some of you mentioned, got that parted figured, how to get it looking at the gear without getting in the way, is the hurdle I haven't cleared. This one I am certain will make a fisherman more effective, and I will try it one of these days.