Reply With QuoteSome bait to get the discussion off to a good start.
BigE
Was discussing sounder frequency with a bloke recently and recalled an old cray fishermen once showed me how he would identify Crays on the march by using 50 - 55 KHz with lots of gain focused right on the last 2m of depth to get a reading which he claimed was Crays chatting to each other , sounds a bit out there but he sure could catch crays consistently.
Anyhow got me wondering about reds I have caught my share but always noted they don't always produce a good show on the sounder , i actually think the strong shows are more hussar than reds and the reds are the weak blue and yellow shows.
Anyone have any thoughts on sounding out Reds and with the advent of selectable chirp frequencies which frequency might be best for Red Emperor?
BigE
Some bait to get the discussion off to a good start.
BigE
Interesting idea. Wish I could get out into the area where I had to decide between a hussar and a red. Been a few weeks.
New boat coming so I will definitely be out chasing some of the big guys. unsurprisingly not many takers on how to find reds. I still think the idea of using a particular frequency for specific fish has merit.
BigE
..............sort of.................the different frequency for different species of fish has been around a while.. ive seen evidence on both sides.
a CHIRPed sonar will always ping through said frequency. and others.
hmmmm
MAybe soon we'll be able to isolate a show and focus a sounder beam on it. It will then come to the surface already barbecued?
That's what 3 D 5 Kw transducers are for , both cooking and rotating.
BigE
Give you a clue .... between 120-190khz you can figure out the rest
I kinda thought it would be in that range Baitable,
BigE
any sounder guru's want to shed some light on different use of transducer frequency?
BigE
Basics-200's and higher frequencies are generally running a smaller angle of cone. 50khz will be wider; this will be noticeable as differences in bottom will be less pronounced, as the return signal is reflecting off a larger area. 200 will give you much sharper returns with regards to change in both bottom type and changes in elevation. Lower frequencies penetrate further. Given all that, there will be big variations within individual transducers--lowrance, for example, has a transducer they refer to as deep water, and the beams on both the 50 and 200khz frequencies are quite narrow.
Have a look at this useful tool.http://transducerguide.simrad-yachting.com/ Put out by Lowrance, you can pick any number of specific transducers, see their specs, then move a slider through different depths to see difference in cone width. Try selecting the HDI Skimmer 83/200 and the HST-DFSBL for starters, you will see the HST-DFSBL is almost half the beamwidth of the other one. This obviously will have an effect of how much area you are covering at any given moment. But don't make the mistake of thinking more is necessarily better in this case--in actual practice, at any depth over about 10 fathoms, the -DFSBL absolutely murders the other one for picture, at least on a HDI-7 CHIRP. Just using these two as an example, and there is obviously a lot more involved.
Ranmar's pretty much covered it. General rule is higher frequency equals higher definition with less depth penetration. Specialty transducers are arriving all the time but the physical characteristics of the crystals required to get narrow cone widths at the lower frequencies will become a limiting factor with trailer boats - they need to be large - the lower the frequency and the narrower the cone angle the larger they need to be. The concept does hold merit - different marine life fished commercially (usually the only guy's to do enough hours to piece together the patterns - and they usually guard the info like gold) certainly shows better using particular frequencies or particular transducers/set ups but it only really means anything to the guy that has spent all the time using the particular set and transducer and worked out the settings he likes. Use a different set with a different transducer - even if it's the same frequency and back to school you go.
On the subject of what an RE looks like--you mention that hussars are thought to give a stronger return? my take on that is simply that the hussar forms small dense schools, while reds, particularly the larger ones, are more individual in nature, although they will form loose aggregations, particularly if there is feed about. So they are more likely to show as small solid markings, which, depending on your sounder, xducer, gain settings, depth, etc, won't look spectacular. And, as scottar says, it will all look different on different sounders--you need to find something which should do the job, then fine tune it through application of basic principles and experience.
Look up Wicked Fishing.
If anyone has spent the hours on the water and mastered how to read his Furuno sounder it's definitely Greg Lamprecht.
Plastics fantastic but bait is better.
Thanks Finicky - have both of Greg videos and they are very closely aligned to my own experiences when catching reds , I wish I could do the K's that Greg puts in. he does some awesome trips.
BigE
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