Thread: Myth or not.

Fish ID has a purpose. It keeps Brenda from complaining about no fish.

Originally Posted by Hanr3

She gets excited when the fish show on screen. Sometimes we catch fish, sometimes we don't. However, seeing the fish symbols keeps her interested in fishing. She can't read my 899.

sounds like my wife. She watches my HDS 9 all the time. When there is structure or fish in the middle of the screen she thinks we are right on top of them. I don't have the heart to tell her were not. She loves to fish. I never have to worry about having someone to fish with. She will stay out there all day until dark. And longer if there biting. And the best thing. She helps clean them.

Gosh man years ago a lot of the cheaper units you just as well leave it on...the return without the symbol did not mean much more than the symbol. If you really worked at it you could get a little better at determining exactly what you were seeing without the symbol...but by the same token if you are observant and have a little bit of deductive skills you can figure out what your looking at a lot of the time. You have to know turbulence from the motor or trolling motor,turbulent water itself with a lot of suspended matter,etc can all throw a false signal. Knowing your waters and where fish are typically going to be and lots of experience goes a long way. Plus I am not going to fish for hours on end without a bite if I think the return may be a little suspect or I am not pretty confident of what species I am probably looking at. When they first came out had a pretty good mental map of a lot of the waters I fished already from having just fished them.But it made a HUGE difference when I could pull up to some standing timber and see which one of say twenty trees had fish among the limbs,and when I would follow along a creek channel and see fish and how they related to the channel rather than just fishing blind based on experience.On the big rivers catfishing if I was drift fishing and wasn't showing much and then all of a sudden drifted into an area showing fish all in about the same width of depth and over an irregular bottom and maybe some baitfish I knew the rods were fixing to bend. I use to call it sometimes when other people were fishing in the boat.If the fish were biting good and it was just a matter of getting it in front of them you could call the hits with a pretty high percentage. I could look at four different brush piles and tell you which one was the best prospect based on fish symbol returns.

I have a Humminbird 899 and I can tell you this much... I found a brush pile a couple weeks ago on Side Imaging. I rolled up on it and hit it with 2D to get a better look. There were 6 large fish IDs showing up on/in/around the brush. I caught 5 REALLY nice crappie and had a 6th one that got off at the surface. Then the bite just stopped. Rolled across and took another look as I was leaving and there was ONE left on the brush pile. That gives me a pretty good reason to trust it.

Great post....
Nice job.
I have the same unit. Works great.

I remain skeptical about accuracy of the fish ID. With the chart moving or boat drifting, how can you be certain you are not seeing the same fish more than one time, or conversely if you have multiple fish at the same distance from the transducer you will still get only one showing. If you have ID off a single fish or several will show as "lines of spaghetti" on 2D depending on boat and chart speeds.

On my 987c-SI with split screen showing all three. Side down 2D. All three showed the same fish, Fish ID was on 2D and down and side showed the same fish. I tried to find the screen shot I took. It shows the fish moving up and taking the bait. Me setting the hook and reeling the fish up to the surface. This was a 42 lb Blue catfish. I had marked that fish on the SI laying by a log. It only showed up as a white spot. That was run seeing it on all three. Then catching that fish and seeing it while reeling the fish in. Dead current and fishing straight down under the Transducer in 34ft of water. Have caught a lot of bigger catfish doing this. Today caught a yellow bass. Fishing right under the transducer on the Helix, see a lot of fish in 18ft of water on a crappie bed. Wish I had gotten a screen shot of that one.
Pete