how to identify species of fish on sounder?

[crowser]

wonderin how ppl identify wat type of species a fish is on a sounder and how large it is..

plz help,
crowser

[disorderly]

Have a look at the "Sounder Reading" thread on Electronics.
Ought to keep you busy for a while.
Some real good stuff there toohttp://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/../yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/smiley.gif

Scott

[loophole]

didnt know u could go that far ?

[Hamish73]

I would imagine that determining the species would be about as accurate as playing darts blindfolded

[FNQCairns]

I am no expert but i think it comes from getting to know the species in the areas they fish, with time they become recognisable as the best guess, at least that is what I have found.
Fishing an unknown region with little experience in the fish that it should contain even an expert may have no hope at the species level until they pull a few up and build an understanding.

For instance up here we can have spanish zipping around a bait school but out side sydney the fish zipping around may be Kingfish, it would be interesting to see an expert sit in a sounder simulator so he has no idea what region the sounder reading relates.

But again I don't really know, I am not that good at reading sounders.

cheers fnq

[crowser]

just wonderin, cauz on a thread other day, someone asked bout a sounder and some guy said its a queenfish bout 40-60cm or something..

crowser

[kingtin]

Some of the older colour sounders(I think Eagle was one of them) reckoned you could identify the fish by the colour of the sounding. This (apparently), was based on the density of the swim bladder but related mainly to American species such as walleye. I haven't seen any claims such as this in a long time so perhaps it was just sales hype to push a product. Either way, I haven't seen any of the modern sounders claiming this, but then again, I'm not familiar with them all.

kev

Professional footballers have hit the headlines recently for indulging in gamesmanship - diving and playacting and so on. Well at least they are now limiting their disgraceful behaviour to the pitch these days. It wasn't so long ago that they were out beating up Pakistanis, pissiing in car parks and gang raping women in hotel rooms. Let's give credit where credit is due.

[disorderly]

I am no expert but i think it comes from getting to know the species in the areas they fish, with time they become recognisable as the best guess, at least that is what I have found.
Fishing an unknown region with little experience in the fish that it should contain even an expert may have no hope at the species level until they pull a few up and build an understanding.

For instance up here we can have spanish zipping around a bait school but out side sydney the fish zipping around may be Kingfish, it would be interesting to see an expert sit in a sounder simulator so he has no idea what region the sounder reading relates.

But again I don't really know, I am not that good at reading sounders.

cheers fnq

I am no expert either,FNQ,but in certain situations where fish have a tendency to school over certain types of ground ie nannygai over rubble bottom.Its pretty easy to differentiate between the bait and the reds above them(when they are there).On my new furuno 620 the reds actually appear as red blobs.and generally a bit up off the bottom.
To try and find a Coral Trout in a bommy though...No chance!

Scott

[choppa]

Some of the older colour sounders(I think Eagle was one of them) reckoned you could identify the fish by the colour of the sounding. This (apparently), was based on the density of the swim bladder but related mainly to American species such as walleye. I haven't seen any claims such as this in a long time so perhaps it was just sales hype to push a product. Either way, I haven't seen any of the modern sounders claiming this, but then again, I'm not familiar with them all.

kev

Professional footballers have hit the headlines recently for indulging in gamesmanship - diving and playacting and so on. Well at least they are now limiting their disgraceful behaviour to the pitch these days. It wasn't so long ago that they were out beating up Pakistanis, pissiing in car parks and gang raping women in hotel rooms. Let's give credit where credit is due.


here we go,,,,,,, a bloke who is respected by all as giving good ""knowledgable" (??) advice,,,

goes into hospital and comes back on the boards due to the fact that he can't do much else,,, and offers a newbie the above,,,,,,

and more to the point,,, his tip of the day is discrimanation by 10 fold,,,,

swim bladder,,,,,,,,,,, please,,, it may be a fish with ,,,,, well problems;D ;D

there was a thread about ""cheese as bait"",,,

i warned ya in my pm,,,,,,,,,

now back to your query,,, i have been on charters that the skipper has seen color and shape on his sounder and called the fish,,,,, most of which where correct,,,, but then again,,, we fished over """his grounds""

to me,, it would be like buying a radar,,, and calling what species of duck i shoot

unless of course they were from america,,,, and hungry,,, and didn't swim,,, ;D ;D ;D ;D

pm on its way

choppa

[VoodooChile78]

Man I remember when you went fishing and just hoped you anchored up or drifted over the "right" spot...no GPS, no sounders etc

How much more do you want? *jokes* then fishing becomes catching and where is the fun in that??

[VoodooChile78]

Man I remember when you went fishing and just hoped you anchored up or drifted over the "right" spot...no GPS, no sounders etc

How much more do you want? *jokes* then fishing becomes catching and where is the fun in that??

[kingtin]

"New fish finders have the ability to not only locate fish, but also differentiate between species of fish. Different species of fish actually have different shaped and sized swim bladders. These differences cause sound to reflect differently from each fish. Therefore, by studying the return echoes, scientists can now find 'signature echoes' for specific species of fish."


http://www.dosits.org/gallery/tech/of/ffs1.htm

[revs57]

It all comes down to experience crowser.

When you know what you looking for and in what depth you can narrow it down. Pearlies stack themselves in vertical columns over wire weed, its pretty obvious usually in depths over 80 metres. Amberjack and kingfish school up and hang in the lower third of the water column. The bait school comes up streaky as they carve through the fish show as elongated arches. Snapper are quite obvious in terms of where you will find them hanging in relation to structure. Ususally on the lee current side of the top of a structure in the lower 1/4 of the water column, although you can burley them up. Reds and nanny's hang very close to the bottom up to a couple or 3 metres.

I think there is a reasonable expectation of reading what's there once you get the hang of it. Certainly a better chance than flinging darts blindfolded, once you get the feel of it you can quite reasonably predict and target the species you are chasing by where you fish a structure and what hangs with what.

Cheers

Rhys

[snelly1971]

I reckon it is a load of BULL....You may be able to narrow it down to a handle full of fish by knowing your area extremely well...but as for picking up certain species hahahaha....

Look at the big trawlers running 100 000 sounders and they still cant determine what it is exactly until the net is retrieved...

Mick

[Tropicaltrout]

Well I think its aload of cr%&* no one can look at a screen and say oh that arc is a shark, um mako by the looks .... oh there's a corination trout oh gee if he doesn't get a riggle on he will get eaten by the mako. lol.

No the truth behind it is if theres a few arcs on the screen give it a try t the depth shown and then hope the arcs are what your targeting. gee wizz it would be like window shopping if you knew what it was.

all I reckon is that the fish your targeting is the one that is on the sounder, and the bigger the arc tha more or bigger the prize

tt

[kingtin]

Not recreational but you may find this interesting.

As FNQ and others have stated, if you become (very) familiar with your sounder you may be able to remember what colours/depths/shapes had shown on your sounder at the time of capture of a particular species and apply this to later images on your sounder. IOW, collect data (mentally) and apply it

From what I've read, it's all about data collection but our (human) ability to store and remember that data is lacking due to insufficient practice....ie we don't fish often enough to have it ingrained in our memory. Now if we could store our sounder readings in a data bank, along with the listings of species relating to those readings, then it would be a lot easier.

It appears that the technology is already available for commercial fishers and scientists and Australia (Hobart), is in the forefront.

It's likely only a matter of time before the technology (data) is integrated into recreational tools.

http://www.sonardata.com/Factsheets/Species_classification.pdf


Note it's key features:

http://www.sonardata.com/AboutEchoview.shtm


Also this American product.

News Item 46 Search SciFish Search WWW Phone:(907)563-3474 Fax:(907)563-3442 SciFish Begins Sea Trials for New Broadband Sonar Product January 10, 2001 Anchorage AK. Scientific Fishery Systems, led by Founder and President, Patrick Simpson, has developed a revolutionary approach to detecting fish using broadband technology to bring new dimensions to sonar. The SciFish 2000 Broadband Sonar can identify species, estimate size, and increases resolution of acoustic targets. " The SciFish 2000 is just being released as a commercial product. I expect that within 5 to 10 years broadband sonar will be the new standard in the fishing industry," SciFish Vice President, Greg Englin tells FNI. "SciFish 2000 has shown more than 85 per cent accuracy in preliminary tests, and we hope to achieve close to 100 percent in the long run. " The Anchorage based company has made use of research the military carried out into anti submarine warfare techniques, and this has shown that sonar data is most efficiently processed in the frequency sector, and this is only possible with broadband sonar. Pat Simpson of SciFish partnered with Fran Rowe of RD Instruments out of San Diego in a joint exclusive agreement to develop the hardware for the system. RDI is a world reknowned manufacturer and seller of Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers accounting for approximately 80% of the world market in broadband ADCPs with over 3000 units sold. “Existing sonars emit narrowband energy in just a few frequencies, and attempt to classify fish by characterizing their acoustic scattering and measuring the target strength of returned echoes," Greg Englin explained. "These systems are labor intensive to build, the narrowband frequencies are not adequate for all species, and their accuracy and robustness depends on a significant amount of operator training." SciFish 2000 is overcomes all of these limitations. "We have effectively solved what has been referred to as the holy grail of hydroacoustics, and this is species identification," Greg Englin says. "We go even further by being able to estimate fish size to a significant degree and by improving fish discrimination tenfold by using our patented technology." SciFish 2000 combines broadband sonar transmission with spectral processing, and this provides a rich representation that is not available to conventional sonar systems, and uses only time-domain processing that counts and integrates the echoes. With a process of spectral decomposition, SciFish determines which frequencies are most strongly reflected by the fish targets. One of the problems faced by the SciFish development team was to overcome the difficulties of using a computer to process the massive amounts of data, and Greg Englin explained that the key to the process was the data acquisition processor (DAP), an analogue to digital converter with an integral microprocessor that allows the PC used to handle these vast blocks of data with ease. "If we had tried to use Windows for handling all this data, we would not have been able to have real-time readings," Skip Denny, chief engineer of sonar systems at SciFish added. "With DAP, the PC becomes a viable platform for this demanding application." SciFish 2000 has the capacity to do far more than conventional narrowband sonars. The SciFish 2000 is capable of full bottom fish detection, fish identification, fish length estimation and bottom type classification capabilities. "Right from the start, SciFish 2000 has yielded outstanding results in all of our experiments," Greg Englin added. "We have a year of actual sea time testing the SciFish 2000. We have tested it in the Great Lakes for the past five years with the USGS/BRD, in the Bering Sea with NMFS/AFSC and commercial fishermen, and it has been in the Prince William Sound on five occasions with a commercial fisherman. In all instances, SciFish 2000 has demonstrated better than 75% correct species identification with the system on over 20 species of fish. In some instances the identification performance exceeds 95% correct." Further experiments have shown that SciFish 2000 can also discriminate size with better than 80% accuracy and it provides superior discrimination of targets at or near the bottom. Some species identified to date include sturgeon, paddlefish, herring, smelt, alewife, salmon, halibut, sablefish, rockfish, and Pollock. The on board equipment for a SciFish system consists of software for the host PC, sonar control and echo processor, and the transceiver. The data can also be stored and displayed within SciFish's FishTrek Pro fisheries mapping and planning software. "We believe that there are three main fishing industry areas where SciFish will make a huge difference," Greg Englin commented. "These are the commercial fisheries where groundfish detection and identification, size estimation, and bottom-type identification are vitally important; fisheries management where essential fish habitat, fish stock assessment, and improved fish detection will provide fisheries managers with new and better tools for resource assessment; and in fisheries science, in which SciFish will allow fisheries biologists to collect and process their own data, opening up a worldwide market opportunity