Sonar Screenshot thread

[fishyea]

Fished Beryessa today 12/6/12 and made the mistake of staying in one spot (the dam) to long instead of moving into ther narrows where fish were being caught. During the outing I snapped a pic of my sonar screen to ask a buddy "what am I doing wrong?". Got me thinking....does anyone else have pics of their sonar screens?

I saw a vid on youtube posted by Hitechkoke where he shows a school of fish and I have seen this on my screen in the past. When I see a "school" of fish on my screen I immediatly look back at my rods and prepare for a fish fight. I always thought the "school" was one fish swimming up to hit my bait (wrong again fishyea!).

My question is:

Does anyone else have pics of their sonar screen that they can share to describe exacly what they are looking at?

My screen analysis to the pic I posted:

I fished from 10ft deep to 75 ft deep today. the cloud between 60 and 80 ft looked like a bait cloud to me?? I fished through it, way above it, and in the picture split the cloud with 1 rigger ball making the line at ~60ft and one at ~80ft.

spare me the obviouse comments "your doin' it wrong"....I know. I caught more bass today fishing for kings than I care to admit...on the bright side, I guess I didn't get completly skunked?

 

[trollmonkey]

We saw this on the FF screen while fishing Calderwood Res. NC. I think it was a tree ,not Nessie,but the fishing was really slow so who knows?

 

[skyhammer]

This is the only screen shot I have taken. It is on East Lake, 81.1' of water, rigging is at 40'. Yellow horizontal line is the starboard DR, red/orange line is the port DR.
Redish/yellow arches are Koks.

Sorry, I just noticed that this is in the CA section.

 

[Fallriverguy]

This is a screen shot taken at Lake Billy Chinook a couple of years ago just after getting the my new color Humminbird fish finder. This shows schools of kokanee being marauded by Bull Trout with abundant Bull Trout below the schools as well.

 

[fishyea]

This is the only screen shot I have taken. It is on East Lake, 81.1' of water, rigging is at 40'. Yellow horizontal line is the starboard DR, red/orange line is the port DR.
Redish/yellow arches are Koks.

Sorry, I just noticed that this is in the CA section.

Were the fish biting the day you took this pic? I have seen them hammer the rods when they school up (ie fallriverguy post). when my sonar is similar to yours I have had "hit or miss" luck. I get fired up and start chasing fish higher or lower in the water column (lunker at 30' feet dude!!). Thoughts?

 

[skyhammer]

Yes the fish were biting. A lot of the time on East, the screen is solid with arches for 20'. I rarely change the depth of my dr's to chase fish. I have found that 40' depth on East is where I catch most the most fish, even if nothing is showing on the screen.

 

[SilverBullets]

One thing i've found very helpful... instead of having the unit read from the surface to the bottom condense it to only read just above and below where the fish are. Where i fish they're usually around the 40' level. Having the unit read from 20' down to 60' shows the zone where the fish are in ALOT more detail.

 

[DLM]

Good advice. Anything above 20' is not going to show up on your sonar anyway, and who wants to see what is way down deep when you are not going to fish down at that depth, no matter what is down there. I don't think I have ever set my bottom depth at anything further than 100 and only look at the bottom if I want to see if it may be worthwhile to stir up a little mud...

 

[Fallriverguy]

Good advice. Anything above 20' is not going to show up on your sonar anyway.

I have found I can see fish above 20' in some lakes. Clear lakes such as Crescent or Paulina yes, but more turbid lakes like Wickiup not so much. I learned this from my 10 yr old daughter one trip to Crescent. At sunrise and sunset there were no fish to be found on fish finder while during the day there were schools everywhere. I was scratching my head trying to figure out where those little buggers had gone. My daughter was watching the fish finder and repeatedly told me that she thought the small blue dashes at 10 feet on the screen were fish. I brushed aside her suggestion more than once, but she was persistent. Since we were not catching fish and I really had no clue where the fish had gone, I raised one downrigger to 5 feet. Not more that a minute later that rod had a fish on. We started long lining our other two rods and soon all three were catching fish. My daughter was right, those small blue dashes at 10 feet were fish.

 

[DLM]

My daughter watch the fish finder repeated told me that the small blue dashes at 10 feet on the screen were fish. I brushed aside her suggestion more than once, but she was persistent. Since we were not catching fish and I really had no clue where the fish was gone, I raised one downrigger to 5 feet. Not more that a minute later that rod had a fish on. We started long lining our other two rods and soon all three were catching fish. My daughter was right, those small blue dashes at 10 feet were fish.

A few months back I was watching a video tutorial on color Humminbirds which explained the blue dashes. The video said that fish that are directly below your boat (transducer) will show up as redish and yellow, and the fish that are on the very edges of your sonar cone will show up as blue. This was a suprise to me. I will try and find that video and post a link.

 

[SilverBullets]

A few months back I was watching a video tutorial on color Humminbirds which explained the blue dashes. The video said that fish that are directly below your boat (transducer) will show up as redish and yellow, and the fish that are on the very edges of your sonar cone will show up as blue. This was a suprise to me. I will try and find that video and post a link.

I've got the 777c2 unit with the QuadraBeam transducer. I run it to see arches but if it's set up to to see fish symbols according to the manual they will show as orange and blue. The ones directly under the boat that the narrow beam picks up show as orange and the fish the wide beam detects show as blue. i've seen the fish as dashes/lines instead of arches when sitting stationary jigging, but seeing them as dashes up high kinda makes sense now that you mention it. The ones you would see around the 10- 20' depth trolling would more than likely be off to the sides because of the boat/motor so they wouldn't go through the cone coverage to become an arch (if an arch is even possible up high with that narrow of beam.) I'll have to try adjusting the unit to read higher up early next season. thumbsup

 

[rainORsnow1]

If u Google about the blue fish it brings you to hummingbirds site and it explains it in depth. When its running off two different freq. they are represented as the two different colors. Pretty cool.
http://hummingbirdfishfinderreviews.com/about-the-fish-id-option/