Side scan sonar

[Chucker]

No sonar threads in the watercraft/sonar forum, so I am starting one.

Who has sidescan on their boat? do you find it useful? I am particularly interested in saltwater, finding structure for bottom fish and finding bait schools. Can you get useful information at 100’ deep or so, or are all the systems that are around too high frequency for that?

 

[Evan B]

I had it on my previous unit and never used it. Honestly find it pretty useless. About the closest thing I've found to being useful was for sturgeon fishing you could see the groups of sturgeon hanging out.

I don't know that it'd be super useful for saltwater bottom fish honestly. I only ever use traditional sonar for that and don't the that'll change.

 

[Buzzy]

If either of you (@Chucker and @Evan B) have a Hummingbird fishin' buddy 120 I will buy it from you. I do find side scan useful. I don't fish the salt from my float tube or pram so I can offer no advice; in stillwaters side scan can me a real deal maker.

 

[Evan B]

If either of you (@Chucker and @Evan B) have a Hummingbird fishin' buddy 120 I will buy it from you. I do find side scan useful. I don't fish the salt from my float tube or pram so I can offer no advice; in stillwaters side scan can me a real deal maker.

Never used a fishin buddy. The units I have experience with are 7-9" screen Garmin and Humminbird. Current one is a Garmin Gpsmap I installed last fall. No side scan on this one.

 

[Buzzy]

Never used a fishin buddy. The units I have experience with are 7-9" screen Garmin and Humminbird. Current one is a Garmin Gpsmap I installed last fall. No side scan on this one.

Evan - most of the stillwaters I fish are not much deeper than 30 feet and that's about where down looking sonar might help locate fish - down looking sonar isn't much use as a fish finder in shallow water; great for structure, drop-offs, etc. Big waters like you fish, the Fishin' Buddy would be useless.

 

[Billy]

This will be my first year having side scan on my bass boat. Have a 9 inch Garmin. Will let you know!

 

[Chucker]

If either of you (@Chucker and @Evan B) have a Hummingbird fishin' buddy 120 I will buy it from you. I do find side scan useful. I don't fish the salt from my float tube or pram so I can offer no advice; in stillwaters side scan can me a real deal maker.

The fishin’ buddy is a rather limited thing compared to what I am looking at, or at lest a very different application.

The problem for me is that it seems like all the consumer systems are aimed primarily at fairly shallow freshwater. If I fished for bass much I would have got one a few years ago. For deeper saltwater, a lower frequency and different angle would be more effective, but I can‘t find anything that fits the bill.

 

[Buzzy]

The fishin’ buddy is a rather limited thing compared to what I am looking at, or at lest a very different application.

The problem for me is that it seems like all the consumer systems are aimed primarily at fairly shallow freshwater. If I fished for bass much I would have got one a few years ago. For deeper saltwater, a lower frequency and different angle would be more effective, but I can‘t find anything that fits the bill.

I guess I didn't understand what you were looking for. Fishin' Buddy systems are, my opinion, not advisable for motorized boats. They're great for float tubes, pontoon boats and the likes of a rowboat/pram. Good luck in your search.

 

[Josh]

This will be my first year having side scan on my bass boat. Have a 9 inch Garmin. Will let you know!

I'd really like to hear how it works out for bass. I'm quite curious.

 

[onefish]

Evan - most of the stillwaters I fish are not much deeper than 30 feet and that's about where down looking sonar might help locate fish - down looking sonar isn't much use as a fish finder in shallow water; great for structure, drop-offs, etc. Big waters like you fish, the Fishin' Buddy would be useless.

I find my 60 degree cone, 83 hz, 2d sonar is extremely useful, even in shallow water, 200hz not so much. The guys that I have spoken with about the new sidescan sounders say they are useful in clear water, not so much when the water increases turbidity. Sidescan looks to be very dependent on the users ability to set up the unit correctly and then interpret the picture correctly.

 

[Matt Burke]

Hoe Lee fuk, so I bought the 7in echomap uhd and panoptix gizmo with a major chunk of metal with cooling fins all over, mass cabling and everything I need to do all that crap on my16.5 lund. My mission is to pet saltwater creatures from boat to beach with side scan blah blah blah...l still haven't put it in. NIB I tell ya. Literally.

 

[Josh]

7in echomap uhd and panoptix gizmo

I've never used one in real life. But the videos I've seen make those panoptix setups seem pretty amazing.

 

[Chucker]

Hoe Lee fuk, so I bought the 7in echomap uhd and panoptix gizmo with a major chunk of metal with cooling fins all over, mass cabling and everything I need to do all that crap on my16.5 lund. My mission is to pet saltwater creatures from boat to beach with side scan blah blah blah...l still haven't put it in. NIB I tell ya. Literally.

I will be really interested to hear how you get on with that thing!

 

[Jeff Dodd]

No sonar threads in the watercraft/sonar forum, so I am starting one.

Who has sidescan on their boat? do you find it useful? I am particularly interested in saltwater, finding structure for bottom fish and finding bait schools. Can you get useful information at 100’ deep or so, or are all the systems that are around too high frequency for that?

I’m looking at the Helix w/side scan. You can easily adjust lower the frequency to finding fish arches and less detailed scanning.

Also, if you’re in the salt, the side scan could be very useful in finding troughs and depressions in the sea floor where fish may hold away from current. You’ve likely seen advertising showing the channel Port and starboard for navigation. Super useful!

 

[longputt]

I have a Garmin with a side scan and have found limited use with one big exception. I was gear bass fishing S OR in fairly deep water ~30 feet. If we saw a log on the side scan and could land a jig on it we caught a nice LMB...every time.

After two days we became pretty good at looking at the side scan and landing a jig on the log. I have never encountered the same situation again, but it was pretty fun. It was so effective we found ourselves motoring around the lake and marking the logs and then going back and fishing them.

 

[onefish]

Could you see the bass on your unit or just the logs?

 

[Chucker]

I’m looking at the Helix w/side scan. You can easily adjust lower the frequency to finding fish arches and less detailed scanning.

That’s interesting. I had a quick look at the hummingbird website, and couldn’t find any details about what actual frequencies were available. In a couple of places they seem to say that they have the option for “chirp” on the side scan (for anyone who hasn’t geeked out about this, chirp uses a range of frequencies instead of just one), but the only detail I could find said that they had the choice of 455 or 1120 kHz. For what I want to do, which is finding schools of baitfish off to the side of the boat, 455 seems to be too high frequency. Something like 200 shows the baitfish schools much better than the high frequencies. Lower frequencies generally go further but show less detail than higher frequencies, which is why the bass fishing focused fishfinder producers have tended to go for high frequency sonar.

 

[gpt]

chirp is the innovation that changes the game plan. i put a second unit on my blue water boat and i could actually see halibut lying on the bottom, just amazing. never did think much about side scanning as i would assume you get quite a bit of clutter coming to your display, maybe i am wrong, don't know.

 

[longputt]

Could you see the bass on your unit or just the logs?

All we could see were the logs.

 

[longputt]

Could you see the bass on your unit or just the logs?

Now that I think about this I believe I read that the signal used for the side scan would not see fish.

Does anyone else find it funny when you are in 100+ feet of water in combined seas with a chop and your depth finder reads out in tenths of feet?