I believe that the boat spooking fish will vary from lake to lake. I fish at a small lake and it deeper water mostly. I am always on the trolling motor and I use my fish finder a lot. I have caught lots of fish and some pretty decent ones too. I think the deeper they are the less affected they are by the boat noise. Now the bigger bass are pretty smart. One of the spots I fish I can watch the fish rise off the bottom when I come over it with my boat. I get upwind and drift over it and they will be back down on the bottom.

A while back I was privileged to speak with Paul Duclose (Sp?) and he had a lot of opinions about this. He likes to troll for big bass. He told me that he found the same thing with bigger bass. They hear the boat coming and they will rise off the bottom and get into a negative mood. He would long line the trolling set up maybe 100-150 feet behind the boat. Many times he was able to catch those fish because the boat was far enough away. Then there are those situations where the bass are in deep cover and people flip a foot away from the boat and they bite. So who knows...

Now on lakes that get a ton of fishing pressure this will change things. I have seen fish shut down when multiple people are on one spot fishing. All the fish finders clicking away will make them turn off. I think that the combined trolling motor noise and fish finder noise can be a killer on high pressure lakes. This is probably why the Bio Sonix works at times. It can help mask the noise and keep the fish interested.

I do believe that smaller boats do get bit better too :-)