Lowrance Structure/Side Scan for Salmon

[naknekm]

I have a HDS 10. I fish the west coast of Vancouver Island. Most of our fishing is done in 100-200 feet of water. I am wondering if the Side Scan would show fish out the side at 100+ feet. I know that the greater the range, the smaller the fish marks.

So, would SS/SS/DS be useful to me and help me to locate fish and bait in deeper water?

Thanks in advance.

 

[wildthing]

chat with one of the guy's out of harbor chandler

from my chat with him at the boat show
its not that great a feature for out on the chuck mite work better on the west coast
than here in the straight

 

[Swanny]

I think it is more useful bass-fishing (shallower waters), etc. However is a great article on the benefits.....

http://saltpatrol.com/articles/structure-scanning-for-more-fish/

Be Safe, Swanny

 

[Whole in the Water]

This is what I have heard about it as well.

 

[BearCove]

looking forward to trying out mine this summer. Sure looks cool, that link above is great, hoping to get that kind of definition out of mine. The idea of seeing fish bedside you and not just under you is cool. Move over 25 ft and you are all over them again.

 

[Sculpin]

The idea of seeing fish bedside you and not just under you is cool. Move over 25 ft and you are all over them again.

I have had mine for a while now but haven't really used it all that much. The times I have used it the bait balls really show up. It's kind of cool because just like you said if it is to one side or the other you know which way to jockey or circle back etc. Kind of cool feature for sure. I like to run it split screen with the regular sounder screen. You come across a nice orange bait ball then look at the left and right on the structure scan and you can see which side of you the majority of the ball is.

Mostly I have used it to impress family and friends by showing them sunken ships around Nanaimo lol. I plan on getting it more dialed in this year.

 

[Canso]

I love mine for sturgeon fishing in the Fraser, works great for water 40-60ft.
If I'm in 50' of water with it set on 150' I can see all the bottom structure at 100' on either side.

I've tried it in the ocean and works alright, but needs adjustments that I never have time for.
I bought it for the Fraser.

 

[Big Green Machine]

I love mine for sturgeon fishing in the Fraser, works great for water 40-60ft.
If I'm in 50' of water with it set on 150' I can see all the bottom structure at 100' on either side.

I've tried it in the ocean and works alright, but needs adjustments that I never have time for.
I bought it for the Fraser.

Not you Canso, but there are so many people out there that have sonars that use 1/10 of the features. I seem to be one of them staring at my downrigger balls and checking depth and water temperature. LOL

 

[Statler]

Finished install of mine and did a quick sea trial last week. Pretty pleased with it so far. It really shows a lot more detail than the standard skimmer transducer. Played with it around Secretary Island and passed over a couple of pinnacles and you could actually see kelp fronds with it and the jagged detail displayed of the rocks was impressive. I overlayed the image with the standard transducer and it showed fish. The structure scan didn't show the fish clearly but you could see the hole that fish was in with a small whitish dot on the SS that I assumed was the fish holding in the hole. If it was or not I don't really know but it seemed about right. Looking foward to playing with it some more and gettin g it dialed in. Mike & Denise @ Harbour Chandlers were very helpful in setting it up. Well worth the trip up island for sre.

 

[albernifisher]

I love mine for sockeye fishing, the sidescan is so clear you can actually count how many fish are in that school and see the size difference of the fish.Move your cursor on it and push enter and a waypoint goes up on your chart,turn the boat around and go get em

 

[Fish-Hunter]

I love mine for sockeye fishing, the sidescan is so clear you can actually count how many fish are in that school and see the size difference of the fish.Move your cursor on it and push enter and a waypoint goes up on your chart,turn the boat around and go get em

X2!!! Very cool piece of electronics. And as long as you are not fishing over 150' deep it also works well for locating Chins and Ho's.

Obviously if you are fishing the bottom in 250' of water this feature will not give such great results.

As Sculpin suggests, it is very effective for locating bait balls that may not be running on the surface, we all know that with traditional fish finders, unless the fish is directly under the boat (within the transducer "cone") you will not see the fish or bait, so with the "side scan" you get a better field of view and thus get a better chance to find em.

All this being said, you still have to "catch" them.

One more really cool benefit is the ability to follow contours when using the structure scan and the charts, you can keep your gear closer to the structure by seeing what the actual structure looks like instead of just following the contour lines on the charts.

I would recommend that anyone that puts one of these units on their boat,,, remember to look up once in a while to see where you are going, you will find that some of the images that you see on the screen are so cool that you often catch yourself looking at the "screen" more than the surroundings above the water. As you can tell I think that these units are really cool and I would definitely recommend one if it is within your budget.

Cheers,
FH

 

[rockdog]

Sounds really cool. How much are these units?

 

[BearCove]

Fish Hunter,

How long have you had yours? Sounds like it is a piece of equipment you like a lot. Any hints or recommendations in fine tuning or just practice. You find it works best in what water depth?

Thanks for your time, really excited about getting mine rigged and tuned in.

 

[captmike]

I have a HDS 10. I fish the west coast of Vancouver Island. Most of our fishing is done in 100-200 feet of water. I am wondering if the Side Scan would show fish out the side at 100+ feet. I know that the greater the range, the smaller the fish marks.

So, would SS/SS/DS be useful to me and help me to locate fish and bait in deeper water?

Thanks in advance.

I've had an HDS 8 for 2 yrs and am still fiddling with the adjustments; sensitivity-just back from cluttered screen,colorline-74%,ping speed-18,palette-13,zoom bar 4X (I use a split sonar screen with the bottom zoomed in using dif frequencies on ea screen),fish id-off, noise rej-low or off,surface cl-off,scroll sp-2X,fishing mode-fresh,make sure you enter your transducer type.

 

[Fifth element]

I just bought mine from the Harbour Chandler boat show price $100.00 off. And then a$150.00 rebate on Lowrance website right now. $400.00, can't beat that. I'm excited to try it. The Seattle Boat show guys at the lowrance booth raved about it for 3 years in a row.

 

[GDW]

If you transom mount the structure scan transducer doesn't the leg get in the way on one side?

 

[tykkyt e blue]

Not to derail topic but..
I did mount the transducer on the transom. I don't 'see' the leg on the main because its on a bracket (OB ), BUT , I do get 'dots' on the screen from the exhaust out of the the kicker motor. 'Spots' go away if kicker is off.
So, for my 2 cents, where you place the sidescan transducer can make a big diff in your results. I may change location of the SS trans if I ever buck up for the 1kw Airmar for the main screen

 

[naknekm]

I just bought mine from the Harbour Chandler boat show price $100.00 off. And then a$150.00 rebate on Lowrance website right now. $400.00, can't beat that. I'm excited to try it. The Seattle Boat show guys at the lowrance booth raved about it for 3 years in a row.

Do you have a link for the rebate? I couldn't find it on their website.

Thanks

 

[Fish-Hunter]

Fish Hunter,

How long have you had yours? Sounds like it is a piece of equipment you like a lot. Any hints or recommendations in fine tuning or just practice. You find it works best in what water depth?

Thanks for your time, really excited about getting mine rigged and tuned in.

This will be the third season for us. It looks like captmike possibly got his the same year we got ours, and his description in his post appears to be the same as our experience with it, lots of fiddling, I don't have the settings at my disposal, but some of them really do sound familiar to the ones he listed. I do remember the first couple of times out with it were pretty frustrating as we were not getting any detail like the demonstrations we had seen, so we started fiddling, and things got better but then we made one more tweak and it got worse, and we were left thinking what menu was that last adjustment in???? (there are lots of settings as you may already know), so we ended up rebooting (restoring defaults) and started the process over, and it seems to work well now, need to get out fishing more often so that we are using it more and thus playing with it more so that all of the settings and options become second nature as to where they are and how they affect the image on screen.

At trolling speeds we have not had any depth problems (used it for looking for ledges to put the prawn traps on in 300'), now that being said the wider and deeper that you set the structure scan to "look" the less detail you get. But use it as a scanner on wide setting say 150 or 200' and if you see fish at 80', reduce the view to say 100' and now the detail will be greater. We only use the structure scan at trolling speeds, seems to be no point at cruising speed, the regular sonar seems to work fine for this.

 

[Fish-Hunter]

If you transom mount the structure scan transducer doesn't the leg get in the way on one side?

We don't see ours, but we do see the exhaust bubbles from the main when it is running, but not from the kicker when trolling.