JustJames Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 Hi Guys Like it says on the tin, does anybody have any recommendations for courses on how to get the best out of my fishfinder? Also, if anybody has any especially good YT vids that they know of, please let me know. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zmk1962 Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 IMO the best data is the one that is based on your sounder brand (and model). What are you running? cheers Zoran Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustJames Posted July 18, 2023 Author Share Posted July 18, 2023 I've been running a Lowrance Hook Reveal 9. New boat has a Lowrance Chirp 7 (slightly older tech). I've looked at the Ryan Moody courses, which claim to be independent of sounder brand/model. My usage has been predominantly for trolling, and knowing to go back over spots that showed fish but failed to get a bite, and that has been useful but that seems a fairly basic and obvious use of the tech, and I think that I am missing out on stuff. But the thing with ignorance is you don't know what you don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XD351 Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 There is a guy in Sydney ,Mel Spikes recommended him and just waiting for her reply to my message his course is hands on - on your boat . I have done most of the Ryan moody course and it is good but it will cost you a few$$ but once you have paid that you can go back over the course as many times as you like and forever on . Just because your sounder shows a fish doesn’t mean you can catch it ! Please tell me you are not using the fish symbols and are seeing arches on the screen ? How fast are you trolling ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustJames Posted July 18, 2023 Author Share Posted July 18, 2023 1 minute ago, XD351 said: There is a guy in Sydney ,Mel Spikes recommended him and just waiting for her reply to my message his course is hands on - on your boat . I have done most of the Ryan moody course and it is good but it will cost you a few$$ but once you have paid that you can go back over the course as many times as you like and forever on . Just because your sounder shows a fish doesn’t mean you can catch it ! Please tell me you are not using the fish symbols and are seeing arches on the screen ? How fast are you trolling ? Arches? What on earth are arches????? Nahhh...just kidding, yes I am using arches. Actually, I've been cheating. When I got the boat it had an old-tech black and white fish finder that does show fishes, so rather than rip that out and leave holes in the dash, I have that next to the Lowrance, and the Lowrance shows arches, but it means I get the older idiot mode finder and the newer one showing something that requires me to interpret. I troll at 5 knots/10kph which seems to allow my lures to swim well, and does will with catching bonito and the occasional king fish. Happy to hear suggestions re trolling speed too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XD351 Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 Need to slow down to get the best results , the faster you go the smaller the arches wil be . I would turn the old sounder off or turn the sensitivity right down so it shows nothing but the bottom and use it for depth indication only . I I were trolling for bonito or kings I would be looking for bait balls and troll around them . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonD Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 I paid for the Ryan Moody 1 and 2 sounder skills a couple of years ago, he puts very informative well presented video together. Most of his tutorials are based more on shallow water. These have now gone very expensive. Garmin do some very good Youtube tutorials which go for 30-45mins and cover a fair amount on getting the most from the units, which can be related to any brand really. After paying for any piece of equipment and not taking the trouble to learn how to use them well seems crazy to me. I hear people often going on about sidescan being a gimmick etc, which makes me chuckle to myself. The tools and adjustments within them will make a huge difference to understanding structure and what fish are holding on them. There are some very basic things that even seasoned boaters neglect to do simply because of years of doing things a certain way. Understanding frequencies of transducers so you know what to use for certain depths or widths. Resolution also plays a huge part, with higher res head units and higher frequencies to show fish in detail. My low 260khz will sidescan in over 120m of water and show reef, though some will tell you they are only any good for rivers. Im constantly searching YouTube as the more people use their units and the more firmware updates that come out there are often little tricks you can add to helping your own bank of knowledge. What head unit and transducer are you using ? I have three transducers and would fit more if I had space for them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustJames Posted July 18, 2023 Author Share Posted July 18, 2023 9 hours ago, JonD said: I paid for the Ryan Moody 1 and 2 sounder skills a couple of years ago, he puts very informative well presented video together. Most of his tutorials are based more on shallow water. These have now gone very expensive. ... What head unit and transducer are you using ? I have three transducers and would fit more if I had space for them. Sounder Skills 1 course is now $20, but the 2 course is ferocious expensive! I am not sure that there is anything in the 1 course that I haven't already learnt/worked out, and I am not going to be spending the several hundred for the 2 course. Until now I have been using a Lowrance Hook2 9 inch unit, but the boat that it is on is for sale, and I am about to get a boat that has a Lowrance Chirp 7 inch, both with their standard transducers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonD Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 8 minutes ago, JustJames said: Sounder Skills 1 course is now $20, but the 2 course is ferocious expensive! I am not sure that there is anything in the 1 course that I haven't already learnt/worked out, and I am not going to be spending the several hundred for the 2 course. Until now I have been using a Lowrance Hook2 9 inch unit, but the boat that it is on is for sale, and I am about to get a boat that has a Lowrance Chirp 7 inch, both with their standard transducers. A 7 is pretty small in size and res 800x480, so obviously will be a struggle for wide scans and deep water but still quite capable when setting manual limits and gains etc. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustJames Posted July 18, 2023 Author Share Posted July 18, 2023 3 minutes ago, JonD said: A 7 is pretty small in size and res 800x480, so obviously will be a struggle for wide scans and deep water but still quite capable when setting manual limits and gains etc. Yep. Having just bought a new boat it's old clothes and porridge for a while but at some stage there will be an upgrade to something bigger and more up to date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonD Posted July 18, 2023 Share Posted July 18, 2023 (edited) 4 hours ago, JustJames said: Yep. Having just bought a new boat it's old clothes and porridge for a while but at some stage there will be an upgrade to something bigger and more up to date. You can most defiantly work with that unit, even be able to see bait and lures in 50-60m of water with tuning. Also the sidescan may seem small but if you are close enough to the screen and use sidescan for finding structure it can be very good. Once you find structure that looks good, switch over to traditional to search over the top of that structure. If you are searching for fish that are mostly bottom dwellers, you can set an upper and lower limit so you use more res of the screen just for the bottom part of the screen, like zoom but zoom simply magnifies where changing range upper and lower limits allows you to use more res for that depth. Search speed needs to be slow when looking for fish, yes it may show bottom and big patches of fish at speed but staying with a speed of around 5-6kh is the way to go. Using sidescan in side chop or swell is not going to give good results but by simply slowing the boat down and scanning in the same direction with the waves will greatly improve the image. With sidescan its your brightness and contrast that you will need to tweak to help make the image pop on the screen, also start off on a 3 or 4/1 ratio, so in 10m of water try 30-40 side width. Years ago I had a lowrance hd5 which I could easily see my lures falling to fish in close to 60m of water, the fish showed up as individuals. That was by using the limits set at 45 for the upper and 65m for the lower, which meant I used the full screen res for just 20m of water . Edited July 19, 2023 by JonD 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XD351 Posted July 19, 2023 Share Posted July 19, 2023 The guy that Mel Spikes used was Nick Whyte tech fishing - you can find him on Facebook or the internet , he is based in Queensland but does come down to Sydney to run his courses- frequency probably dependant on booking numbers though and I have no idea what it cost . There are a few videos of him on YouTube and the one I looked at was made by Lowrance . The Moody course cost has nearly tripled since I bought it probably 4 yrs ago . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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