What Your Sonar Is Trying To Tell You

I'll admit that I used to be a little old fashioned and resistant to change when it came to my fishing equipment. I've always believed that if something works, why try something else?

Well, that attitude is changing. Much of today's fishing gear is so far superior to what we had when I first began fishing professionally that I can't believe that I caught so many fish with the old stuff.

Take electronics, for example. When I first started, the flasher-style units were awesome. I could read them as well as anyone and knew how to detect subtle bottom changes that would put me on the trail of the fish.

During the early days of fishing the St. John's River in Florida, we knew that if we found the hard-bottom pockets off the river, we'd find quality prespawn or spawning bass. While a lot of guys would go in those pockets poking the bottom with push poles, I could idle over the area looking at my flasher in search of double or triple "echoes" or bottom readings that indicated a harder bottom. I'd learn more in 10 minutes than what others could learn in an hour.

I was reluctant to try the liquid crystal graphs when they came out because I knew how to make the flasher work. However, I made the transition and am now a firm believer in the valuable information they can display.

Of course, it helps if you have a thorough understanding of the workings of a quality graph and can make the necessary adjustments. For example, most units have automatic settings that work well most of the time. But to find the kind of hard bottoms mentioned earlier, they may require a little fine tuning in the manual mode to create a better image.

I use a Garmin 240 and 188C, a color unit. When I go into a hard-bottom area during spring, I put my electronics in the manual mode and turn my gain to where I get a solid dark line. Therefore, when I search other areas and see the bottom reading change to a light, narrow bottom image, I know I'm over a silted bottom and won't waste time fishing it.

The color unit is another prime example. Color allows me to detect subtle bottom changes that I might not see if it were in black and white.

Last winter I was fishing Lake Wylie and put together a pattern on points. I could pull onto a point and hammer the fish, go to two more and not get a bite, then move to the next point and catch them again. I began to notice that I was snagging mussel shells on the points that produced best.

Once the fish stopped biting on one of those points, I decided to idle over it to see what it looked like on the color graph. I noticed that whenever I got over the mussels, I was picking up red and yellow images on the bottom. I made a cast with a jigging spoon and dragged it on the bottom, hooking more shells and confirming my suspicions.

From then on, I didn't fish a spot unless I saw that red/yellow bottom combination on the graph. The results were amazing. I was catching fish more consistently and had saved myself a lot of time.

The point is you should take time to play with your graph and learn what it is telling you. Don't expect the information to jump off the page, but if you start running tests like I did on the mussel beds, you'll learn to interpret images and build time-saving confidence in its applications.

You also should be able to distinguish differences in roadbeds, rockpiles, grass beds and brushpiles — all key elements to catching bass. You will not only get a better return on your investment, but you'll become a better bass angler.