Jellyfish Incident

[fragmeister]

Hi Raiders,

This post is on the back of the excellent Lowrance Sounder night and a recent post I made about Jelly fish showing up on the sounder.

This image was taken as I slowly approached the Wharf Road Boat ramp on the Parramatta River after coming back from a harbour fishing trip. I was in about 3 meters of water not far at all from the ramp and over towards the last starboard channel marker before the ramp. It actually extended with similar images for about 30 meters up river.

When I first saw the images on the sounder I had enough knowledge to assume that they were fish hanging around over a depression in the bottom. I looked over the side ( don't know why because you really can't see much in the upper Parra) but I did see that there were huge amounts of small jellyfish in the water so I then made the assumption that they were not fish but jelly fish.

Well, after showing the image to the Lowrance guys they independently pointed out the error of my ways.... actually they pointed out that I was right in the first place although not totally right because I missed the most significant detail.

Although they were not entirely sure how jellyfish show up on the sounder they were adamant that the images were certainly fish. Individual fish, probably bream near the bottom and in mid water a larger shape which they both suggested was probably a Jewie. I certainly can vouch for the fact that there are a bunch of land based anglers who do very well for Jewies in the upper reaches of the river and in fact from the wharf at the ramp so none of this should be a surprise to me.

Those of us lucky enough to get to the sounder night learned that, depending on the orientation of a fish in the water and where it was in the sounder beam will determine whether it shows up as a arch or half an arch or even a little blob like image.

Anyway, the end result was I am lot more confident using the sounder due to the insight provided by these guys on the night.

Thanks again Donna and Stewie and the sponsors for making the night possible.

Cheers Jim

Edited October 9, 2014 by fragmeister

[mrsswordfisherman]

Yes Jim it made it a lot clearer for us all. Thanks for adding the newly identified fish on your sounder image there.

Look forward to your next outing and your impressions

[Busy-livin]

The elusive jellyfish come Jew !!