Northwest Fishing Reports

Here is a screen shot from Spencer Lake. It was taken in early spring last year. The weeds/pads were just coming in and were actually spaced pretty far apart, but the stacking on downview made it look like they were much thicker.

Got it! Thanks! Mind was working in a different direction... Keep it coming!

Got out on Lake Wa today to play with the new Garmin sonar. Played with pretty much everything just a little bit but mostly the LiveVu forward and RealVu 3D forward as the wind and rain kicked up making it difficult to play with much else. The screen was a bit hard to read with rain drops all over it but that would be the same with any screen.
I am not sure how useful the 3D forward will be but I will play with it some more before I give up on it. I used two different large (3" perch and 5" shiner, both weighted) soft plastics to play with to see what I could see on the screen. I was going to take screen shots but did not as the rain made it too hard to see. I will do it in the future though.
I let the boat drift with the wind and once the boat got settled on how it was going to drift I found that putting the lure in the water at depth then 'finding' it by rotating the transducer worked best. Once I did that I was impressed that I could clearly see the 3" perch 60' out and 35' down. It was on a slip bobber and 35' was its set depth. The 5" shiner was another thing all together. I could easily see it 60'+ out and 100' down. Pretty impressive!
I played with the settings a bunch and finally got it so messed up I hit 'Factory Reset' to get it back to the starting point and that seemed to work the best. When I had done that I thought something was messed up because there were some other color 'blobs' along with my lure showing but then realized it was two fish swimming around my lure! Actually felt a 'bump' as one did a hit and run on my lure!
My removable mount for the SideVu transducer is fine but having the Panoptix on the transom does not make for easy 'scanning' so that will change. I don't really want to mount it on the bow mount trolling motor but may end up doing that.
I am sooooooo sick of being wet and cold!!!!! Come on nice weather!

Nice work on the new equipment analysis, thanks for the info!

Nice report!

Thats a real hoot watching fish go for your lures in real time

If you move the PS31 to the trolling motor, and have a remote for the motor, that should work better. You will be able to sit in front of the screen and still turn the TM with the remote.

I went with the Panoptix mount at the helm position instead because I didnt like the crude control over which way our trolling motor was pointing using the remote. It just turns too fast and you dont have fine cntrol. Turning the Panoptix by hand is much smoother and you have much finer control of where its pointing. Plus when Im searching for fish, I prefer using the main or the gas kicker to get moving right along and cover a lot of water. You can use up a lot of battery juice running on max speed for long on the TM.

I am still thinking on the right gunnel of the boat but mine is quite wide there so I would have to build something to make it work. There is a guy that was machining a very nice side mount but he decided to stop making them. I wrote him anyway but have not received a reply as of yet.

You cab get the tilt/swivel base and a carbon fiber shaft for a transom mount Minn Kota for under $100 or find one even cheaper on Craigs list - and make your own. We had an old motor, so thats what I did.

You might even get them (used) for free or super cheap from the Minn Kota repair guy in Auburn. I know he often has shafts he cant use any more because the threads are messed up, that would still work. You need to figure out how long a shaft you need. I made mine so the transducer can sit about 15"-18" below the lowest point on the hull. That way I can look under the boat to the port side.

I need to get started on the Panoptix stuff, but I want to get back on the water to get some new screen shots to illustrate some specific situations. Might be a while......

I have an old trolling motor (30 Brunswick/Motorguide) that I was thinking about using. Got to see about how I can make a side mount for it on my Tracker. Mostly just getting time involved to do it.

Just ran across this one another guy made. Used a scotty flip up downrigger base and an old minn kota tilt/swivel base. I would use a piece of aluminum channel rather than the 2x4 but it works!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlvG0RHdcCg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He used a fip up base from a scotty downrigger - scotty s-base1080-1116R

Spent the day making a side mount for my boat. Now I will attach my Panoptix to the old Motorguide T30 trolling motor I have and 'Shazam'! Side mount transponder!

Nice!

Going back and re-reading this again. Also wanted to bump it to the top. Spent Sunday playing with Panoptix and SideVu. With the SideVu I could only see a small part of a 30' piling 20' off to the side of the boat, but could see docks 100' away. Obviously I need to do something different!

TrackerPro16 wrote:Going back and re-reading this again. Also wanted to bump it to the top. Spent Sunday playing with Panoptix and SideVu. With the SideVu I could only see a small part of a 30' piling 20' off to the side of the boat, but could see docks 100' away. Obviously I need to do something different!

Get any screen shots? They help a lot when trying to figure out whats going on.

I am seriously bummed out. We have yet to get the boat wet this year!

When you say "screen shot" do you mean taking a picture with a phone/camera? I have not messed with taking video using my sonar yet...

You CAN take a picture of the screen with a camera if it is easier for you, or you can use a 'media card' and stick it in the slot in the depth finder, that 'how to' info will be in the owner's manual. With the media card you can take still pictures, or video, and then put that card in a reader and plug it into your computer to save, edit, view, and post that video or those pictures. How to do that is also in the owner's manual.

TrackerPro16 wrote:When you say "screen shot" do you mean taking a picture with a phone/camera? I have not messed with taking video using my sonar yet...

Sorry! I completely forgot to reply to this!

Yes, I mean use an sd card to capture a picture of the screen - like Amx said.

On the newer Garmins you do that by holding down the HOME button for about 4 seconds from any screen. You will need an SD card in the slot. It will save the pictures inside the GARMIN/SCRN folder. They are going to be very large files in a BMP format. You will want to convert them to jpg and or shrink them with a picture editing program. If you use windows, Paint will work or there are a bunch of free options to download. I like FastStone Photo resizer but there are a bunch of options.

You can also record your sonar screens like making a video - BUT - it can only be played back in Garmins HomePort program on a PC or MAC. HomePort has serious issues with sonar playback though. As far as Im concerned, HomePort is mostly useless for sonar play back - if it even works at all.

There is an excellent alternate playback option if you are willing to pay $120 or so for Sonartrx.

http://www.sonartrx.com/web/

Its a very cool program if you are into that sort of thing.

If I run my bow mount trolling motor at anything above about 1.3 MPH I get bubble interference on the sidevu screen. Downvu is fine. The sonar is mounted on the left side of of the transom and the trolling motor is mounted in the middle on the bow. The bubbles show up mostly on the right just off center. If I am running at 2 or more MPH it is quite pronounced and they grow fainter as I slow down to about the 1.3 mark and they are gone.
The blades have no marks on them and look fine. I dropped the transducer down further but it did not seem to help.
Since it is an 80 ft lb 24 volt 60” Terrova on a 16’6” boat I am surprised it is doing that.
Thoughts?

Try lowering the trolling motor down a little lower in the water if possible. Im guessing its sucking air in from the surface at higher speeds.

TrackerPro16 wrote:Going back and re-reading this again. Also wanted to bump it to the top. Spent Sunday playing with Panoptix and SideVu. With the SideVu I could only see a small part of a 30' piling 20' off to the side of the boat, but could see docks 100' away. Obviously I need to do something different!

Going back to this, I would need to see a screen shot to be sure, but I suspect whats going on is sort of an 'optical illusion' caused by the way sidevu gets drawn on the screen.

Here are two screen shots showing what I'm guessing is a similar situation. We were driving the boat about 50 ft from the Tacoma Narrows bridge support towers. Looking at the sidevu image, the tallest one scales out on the screen as being about 75-80 ft from the bottom to the water surface. However, if you look at the Panoptix screen shot you can see the tower actually extends below the water about 170 ft.

This goes back to the fact that the sidevu "depth" scale is not really showing you depth at all. Its distance from the transducer. The only time the sideview screen is accurate for depth is when something is directly under the boat. Things off to the side will always be drawn incorrectly to one degree or another.