Side Imaging - (new picture on post 12)

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wasilvers

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Got the side imaging out tonight for the first time ever. What a useful piece of equipment. First thing I did was check out my fishing spots, noting about where you can usually catch a bass. One straight stretch along the dropoff had an area that fell faster than the rest of the dropff. I put 3 waypoints on it for later and kept scanning. The place where I caught 4 NICE bass one day has an underwater point coming off it. I guess I could have figured this out with regular sonar, but in maybe 10 times scanning it, I never figured it out. This sidescan so much easier. I marked the sides of the point for later. After spending some time scanning, I went fishing. Pulled up to my first waypoints and on the 3rd cast I had a little one in the boat! It couldn't get any easier! Now I didn't limit out today, but I did catch 5-6 fish - compared to other guys 1-2, I was happy!

Unfortunatly, I didn't figure out how to take recordings till later - so I can't show you my honeyholes. However I did manage to record this driving from one finger out into the main lake.

To explain the video - It starts in 8-9 feet of water and there are not alot of weeds, just a few shooting up, maybe one visible every 8-10 feet. Then as you get get closer to the neck and shallower, you can see all the weeds! In the middle of the neck it is pretty shallow and is a sandy bottom - you can see the lack of weeds on the scan. Then the weedline picks up as you go into the main lake. There is something big on the right, so I turned around (the blurry marks) and went over it again - and again - and again. It looks like either some big stones or some man-made structures sitting 3 feet high. There were some pretty good size groups of bait in the area, but I didn't get a bite.


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Sorry, No fish pictures, the big ones didn't bite :?
 
That is awesome - I put on a very high quality sonar this year and what a difference that makes - nothing like your side scan however
 
How fast are you going to capture? Is there a minimum speed and a maximum speed?

In other words will this work with a Trolling motor only boat traveling 2-3MPH?

How about setting it up in a portable unit? You think that is possible?
 
Kewl vid wasilvers. I could watch those things all day. Looks like you crossed an old road bed at the end ov the vid.

Jim, here is a recent discussion that answers a couple of your questions. I dunno about portability.

https://forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=549621
 
When you get on GON, if you see Triton Mike (that's his screen name)... never hesitate to PM him with any questions on your side imaging. He'll go out of his way to help you out.

You can also get on his message board... he has a Humminbird guy on there all the time answering questions - https://allatoonabass.proboards.com/index.cgi?
 
All the forums say to go 3 mph. I was able to scan for major structure at 6 mph and a higher scroll speed. At that speed the videos start look 'grainy'. to me. To see any more details on the structure, I went back over it at 2-3 mph. The problem with speed is detail is lost.

I think it would work great at trolling motor speeds. But I would say don't mount your transducer on a trolling motor. Even on the transom, If I didn't keep it straignt, the picture just looked like a bunch of mush and blurred.

As to portability, In theory you could just mount the transducer to a board that is "C" clamped to the back of your boat. I thought about doing this till I found the 'right spot' on the transom to mount it. But it seems to work ok on the first install - though I noticed some stuff from the left side, but it didn't seem to mess with the scanning.

If you go over an area with the motor, then scan it, you can actually see your trail (the airbubbles I guess) where you just went.

Oh and as to buying the entry level side imaging (798c from humminbird) the screen size is small. But I keep it mounted close to my face anyway, so it really doesn't make that much of a difference. If I want super detail on an area, I show one side only so the whole screen is the side imaging. And downscan is AWESOME! You can tell the difference in types of weeds below you!

While fishing, I either left the screen on normal fishfinder or drifted along with the screen split 4 ways. Side imaging left and righ along with normal and downscan sonar shown. The sidescan showed me which direction to cast to hit the schools of fish. and regular sonar told me how big they were - I had bites, but no hookups, to me that means they were little lake perch (which are abundant in this lake).

Now I want to explore some new lakes!
 
russ010 said:
When you get on GON, if you see Triton Mike (that's his screen name)... never hesitate to PM him with any questions on your side imaging. He'll go out of his way to help you out.

You can also get on his message board... he has a Humminbird guy on there all the time answering questions - https://allatoonabass.proboards.com/index.cgi?

Triton Mike was one of the primary reasons I pulled the trigger on the purchase. His posts are awesome!
 
a lot of guys here have their side imaging mounted on their trolling motors... and the pictures come out pretty good - I wonder if that is the difference between the 797 and the 1197 models
 
russ010 said:
a lot of guys here have their side imaging mounted on their trolling motors... and the pictures come out pretty good - I wonder if that is the difference between the 797 and the 1197 models

I would guess that it has more to do with keeping the troller straight while looking at the screen. I am constatly turning on my troller, even when moving long distances. If you kept it straight for a good view, I'm sure it would be perfectly fine.
 
2010-07-05UnderBridge-scan.jpg


In case you are wondering what you're looking at, here it is from google earth...

2010-07-05UnderBridge_Image.jpg


I was running north - 'Up' in the picture for the non-map readers here. The first bridge covers a fair amount of the lake, so they used piers to support the highway. You can see the side imaging picking up each pier, as well as looking between them. The highway blocks the sun light, so the hole on the left is about right. There are just a few weeds in the channel and it picked them up as well.

The next bridge is solid concrete, and it shows here pretty good. It also looks like I got a fair amount of sonar reflection too.

The next blurry area is the boat launch, but I turned in there and tried to dodge another boat along in the way, then continued along the channel.

Anyway, I thought it made a great picture. Imagine looking for crappie along the the bridge pilings - should be able to find them pretty quick :wink:
 
Another good vid about the subject

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Had to send my unit back to Humminbird for service. One of the SD card readers stopped working. I sent it in last Friday. One week later I got a notice that it was fixed and should arrive back here on Tuesday. 9 days to be returned using ground shipping is not bad service as far as I'm concerned. I did miss 2 weekends with it, but the wife was happy that I was home.
 

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