Just how good are fishfinders?

I was out on a boat on Saturday for the first time (Report later). The fishfinder on this vessel seemed to be crap, the skipper told us it wouldn't show up a shoal of Mackeral :shock:, We did find them OK but they were about 30ft down and there was no obvious signs. However one of my collegues was saying he had been out from the same venue with another skipper 3 years ago and he had no problem identifying large shoals. I was wondering, does it take a particularly good fishfinder to identify a shoal of small fish :?: Or was this fishfinder a particularly poor one :?: I don't remember the brand but it wasn't a brand I recognised such as: Hummingbird, Lowrance, Eagle or Garmin. I would have thought that any charter boat worth their salt would have a decent fishfinder :roll:

I would expect even a pretty basic unit to show a large shoal of mackies. A smaller shoal, or one close to the surface, might get lost in the "noise" generated by the boat/props.

Having said that, I never go by "fishfinder". It might be showing a true and accurate representation of any number of fish down there, but that ain't going to make a single one of them bite if they aren't in the mood!

As a depthfinder, now, that's useful. And handy for finding and showing how wrecks are laying, that's good too. Showing bottom features is handy. And what sort of bottom is as well.

Actually, "fishfinding" comes in pretty far down the list......

Hi lads

Most modern fishfinders (certainly the brands mentioned) have a wide and narrow angle facility, a bit like a zoom lens on a camera. When looking for fish you leave it at wide angle to cover as much ground as possible and when you've found something interesting, either fish or a reef / wreck etc on the bottom, you can narrow down the focus.

If a skipper isn't prepared to spend money on something this basic, then I'd switch to another skipper. I'd be worried about what else is getting spent on equipment, in particular safety equipment. Small signs like an old date on the fire extinguisher will tell you whether you should return.

The other trick is the old GPS - yes codman I do know what they is! :lol: - if you find a suitable mark, hit the man overboard button on the fishfinder or nav kit and it will give you the GPS reading (assuming you have GPS). The old way of fixing a mark was to line it up with four markers in the foreshore area, still useful if you are fishing rock marks that are long on rock and short on feature but have small very productive hotspots.

FWIW...

I should have mentioned, I own a Hummingbird Piranha 1 fishfinder which is one of the better cheap ones, so I know their limitations. I was just dumb founded at how useless the one on Saturday was.

I was with a group (work collegues) who had little or no boat sea fishing experience (myself included) but thanks to the tips/advice I got from you guys I went prepared so I wasn't relying on the hire tackle and more importantly I wasn't relying on advice from the skipper. Thank heaven I did have my own rods and traces. The equipment supplied was very poor, reels that were gone past their usefulness and rods with missing rings. There wasn't enough line on some reels, One of the lads had almost ran out of line when the lead hit the bottom in about 40M :shock: . I'm not going to say who the Skipper was but he had a very poor attitude offering little or no advice on what to do to improve the catch rate which was poor. :evil:

I know all this won't really effect you guys, but even the most experienced angler is going to have to rely on the local skipper at times to point out what works on his patch.

Oh go on, giz a clue?

Sounds like a disaster, the sort of skipper that no longer deserves to be in business.

Name and shame I say.




Note: I realise it's not my site and that I don't make the rules and I don't know how Kieran feels about naming and shaming, but I still say: Name and shame him! :twisted:

Ah wait a minute, I've just realised something..........

Nicely done, Adrian. Very subtle indeed. I like it. :D

Errr, hadn't realised I'd logged out between posting/viewing Boat reports forum. That last one was by me.

most fishfinders will not show makeral or doggies as they realy only show swim bladders (the little air sac that let fish float) makeral do not have these. the higher frequency fishfinders might show them but are more likely to show the disterbance that they cause in the water. if there was a clue as to who this skipper was i didnt get it(!) but i do believe that bad skippers should be named, they charge the same as good ones but do not deserve the trade. (i realise the legal problems with naming them though)

Hi Lads

What with all this technology, emails, PMs that work but just say they don't, telephones, mobiles, texts, letters, stone tablets... I'm sure there is some way that people could find out who this chancer is and how he can be avoided. Like everyone says, he may be out there but that does not mean that he deserves the business.

I just read a recent boat angling report from Adrian - I;m sure not the same one you understand - and no offence, you could do better off the shore chucking stones!

Adrian, read today's report from Shamrock 1 and see what real fishing is like and bear in mind, there were only two rods active on that boat!!!

OK, my reading of the tea-leaves:

I was out on a boat on Saturday for the first time (Report later).

There's a clue.

Errr, hadn't realised I'd logged out between posting/viewing Boat reports forum.

There's another clue!

I just read a recent boat angling report from Adrian

That's gotta be a clue too!

Of course, I may be totally wrong and mistaken, too. It is also possible that I am an orangutan but nobody's mentioned that fact to me before and it's never been proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Hi All,

Read the shamrock 1 report, not surprised, by all accounts Mary Gavin Hughes is an excellent skipper if every way. Mike Thrussell has an account of a trip with her which is well worth a read:
http://www.worldseafishing.com/ireland/ ... mary.shtml
I had read this before I went out so I knew what a good skipper should be like.

In his defence I’ll say two things: He had a very sea worthy boat. When we set out it was pretty rough and Donegal bay was totally exposed to the westerly wind, most of us were a bit green around the gills so he decided to bring us somewhere sheltered, so we did limit the number of marks he could have brought us to.

On the downside;
We caught half the fish on the first drift we drifted from just off Kilcar to between the mainland and Inisduff island took about 40minutes to drift about 1.5 – 2 miles (I think).
The second drift everything changed. We were concentrating on the fishing and not paying attention to the position of the boat but every time I looked up we were in the same position directly out from a small beach, the outgoing ebb was strong enough to hold us in one position against the wind and we were catching no fish. We were like this for about 2 hours :shock: , I’ve been thinking about this and it dawned on me last night, I could be wrong, but I think that the unusual drift conditions (wind and tide cancelling each other out and the boat sitting in one spot) were causing a scare area around the boat :shock: Think about it, the wind was acting like an anchor against the ebb tide, we were all fishing with heavy weight 6oz – 8oz straight down from the boat and catching f all.

I sincerely doubt I’ve hit on something that no one has ever noticed before, maybe it’s extremely rare that this happens, maybe I’m totally wrong. Anyway the skipper didn’t seem to notice/care, we had to ask him to take us somewhere else, when he did we caught a few more fish.

Equipment which he charged €10 per person for was very substandard as I said before.

What do you guys think, Have I hit on something unusual?

If you think 6 - 8 oz is heavy, you should try some of the venues off the English South Coast. It's not unusual to be anchored up and having to use 2+ POUNDS :shock: of lead to try to hold bottom.

Interesting scenario you've outlined, and I reckon it's possible. How deep was the water, to create a scare zone? anything over 50 or 60 feet and it wouldn't make too much difference, especially if there was no anchor wrap for the boat to bounce around off.

Times like you've described, I'd be tempted to up-tide, or use very light weights to trot away downtide from the boat, with a scratching rig.

But sometimes nobody gets a biter, no matter what you do. That's why we call it "angling" instead of "catching". :D

That's the thing, it wasn't too deep so maybe that's what was happening. Anyway, I'll put it all down to experience and I'll know a bit more the next day :D .

Fish finders are a load of crap. I have used three different ones and they are all the same. I often catch fish and the fish finder says nothing. Other times around weed the thing often gos nut and there are hardly any fish being caught! I personally do not go with the swim bladders theory. I have heard that before from a number of people and consider it an urban myth. It is true some fish do not really show up on fish finders. Jelly fish definately do! They do not have swim bladders. Mackerel do have swim bladders as do dogfish. Anyone who has ever kept fish in tanks will have a good idea of what a fish is like when it loses its swim bladder. This can happen from illness or sharp water temperture change. A fish with no swim bladder sinks like a lead weight! Mackerel could not sustain the amount of energy they use if they had no swim bladders. Anyway, that is debate. The fish finder in my experience is useless for finding fish unless you know how to read it propperly. The signal bounced from the transducer reports back an interuption should it hit something before all the frequency hits bottom and retuns. If the unit is set to fish symbols then this is usually translated as fish. This is confusing as dirt in the water and weed etc. has the same effect. I find setting the unit at maximum Gain while using fish symbols creates a better picture as you can see fish symbols among background noise and can realise that it is not really fish at all. A far better system is to turn the fish symbols off all together and use the sonar symbols and gain and use your own brain. The best fish finding equipment is to use the depth, bottom type and a map GPS to locate likely areas where fish inhabit. Fish finders are far from fool proof and little more than calculators really. Manufacturers would have us think otherwise, but really it will be a long time before a unit exists that will definately be able to distiguish fish from background noise acurately.