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Forum nameTackle and Boats
Topic subjectRE: Boat upgrades & fixes
Topic URLhttp://www.calfishing.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=3832&mesg_id=3837
3837, RE: Boat upgrades & fixes
Posted by swimbait, Fri Jan-04-13 01:03 PM
1198c at console and 858 on the bow. What's to say... They are good units in the sense that when they are working properly you can see nice things on the sidescan and good views looking down.

Some key learnings:

With sidescan at the console, you really want to have the sidescan transducer on the jack plate and a 2D through hull transducer inside the boat. Otherwise you can't see the bottom going faster than about 7mph. Rigging all this up is annoying. Need a Y cable to do it.

I had various problems with interference - same as my Lowrance's. What worked best was a ground wire all the way from the skeg of the trolling motor (held in place with a screw) to the negative post of the starter battery. I think the Fortrex 101 causes a lot of interference. What didn't work was moving cables around or running a ground from trolling motor batts to the starter.

Trying to see actual bass on the sidescan is hard unless you set the range pretty small, like 40 feet to either side. So finding bass on sidescan is most realistic when you know right where to look. Scanning around set to like 180' to either side and expecting to see largemouth isn't very realistic. You can kinda make them out sometimes but not really. You will see bait super good at any distance.

Some places like Clear Lake sidescan really good. Other places like Don Pedro and McClure don't seem to. I've driven around McClure where you know there are spotted bass and had a hard time seeing them on sidescan. Dunno if it's because they are small or the bottom composition of those lakes makes it harder or if I'm just not setting up my unit right.

Striper show pretty good on sidescan. They move more and look like wiggly lines. I've seen them clearly at the Delta and caught them off the marks. It's pretty useful.

Sidescan was probably a big advantage when it first came out, especially on lakes that didn't have good maps. Now most tourney guys have it so the odds of finding top secret stuff is not great. Eg: At clear lake I found some nice stuff that seemed kinda subtle. Turned out everyone else had already found it.

It is very helpful when you go somewhere that you don't know well and want to quickly assess what's there. For me, so many of the lakes we fish, I've seen them at low water and know the spots well. So there were not a lot of aha moments. It's still fun to have.