By Andrew Ragas

Fishing-Headquarters is not affiliated with Lowrance Marine Electronics. Their products solely help me catch more fish and enable me to gain a better understanding of the underwater environment and ecosystem beneath the water’s surface. Throughout the open water season I run HDS and Elite units in my boats. Over the course of 100 days on the water this year, I’ve scanned some very unique findings with the broadband sounder, dual imaging, and down scan imaging. Pardon the smartphone imagery, I’ve selected a few unique screenshots that captivate and tell an underwater story.

Baitfish and Forage Species

This is a recent image taken in mid November, from fishing during the annual cisco spawn up north. When we ran into this staging pod of ciscoes in 15 to 18 feet of water, they barely registered on the broadband sounder. All we saw was a minor disturbance on the screen, tiny little dots. But when touch screen was used and we adjusted the settings to view with down imaging, the entire screen of the HDS 9 lit up. You can clearly see individual cisco specimens below the boat, as well as the sucker rig we had positioned higher in the water column. Amazing!

This image was taken in October while fishing at night for muskies. I was fishing a small lake with a cisco population, and focused my initial search on locating them. But at the time of this photo I was encountering massive schools of bluegills and they completely altered my plan of attack. They were observed busting the surface and feeding, as well as schooling in masses in open water. I had the screen zoomed in by 50% so that I could see in finer detail. No muskies were caught, but one large predator came to the screen if you keep continuing……

Nearly identical image as above, except this was taken with my first generation HDS-5 that I run at the front through universal sonar atop my front casting deck. In this picture, sensitivity was increased to 85% so that I could get a better reading of the suspending panfish, and better understand the bottom contents which was sand grass; a no-brainer.

Lures Beneath Boat

Livebait fishing with quick-strike rigged suckers is popular throughout Wisconsin. We focus on this form of fishing in October and November as water temperatures are at their coldest point of the open water season. What you see here is one of our sucker rigs that was set vertically over the side of the boat, ranging between 5 to 8 feet below the boat. If a musky ever came nearby, it would register on screen and give us the idea that there would be a chance for something good to happen.

Locating Big Fish

This image was taken in October. If you paid attention to the third photo above, this is when I encountered a large fish preying on the open water school of bluegills within a few feet of the surface. My presumption is a solitary musky. You can tell the school of bluegill has now scattered and is no longer densely swimming together. Unfortunately this fish could not be caught by any artificial means.

With dual imaging, here’s an example of how you can decipher whether what you see with broadband is actually a fish or not. Down imaging with the HDS 9 confirms that this was a big fish positioned just off the bottom. On this particular location, large walleyes and muskies were seen together. My guess is this was a big walleye. Screen was zoomed out and sensitivity was lowered to below 60%, therefore this large mass isn’t truly seen in its full detail.

This image taken in August was from possibly my worst day of bass fishing this year. I was fishing a smallmouth bass lake that I do well on for numbers and the occasional large fish. On this day, I caught nothing and decided to spend the remainder of the outing by following the lake’s contours and locating a few of its scattered fish cribs. Along the way I came across this massive pod of baitfish in 27 feet of water (more than likely shiners). A few smallmouth bass can be seen corralling the baitfish just off the bottom, and exactly in the middle of the school.

This image is unexplainable. It was taken in June during the middle of a muskie tournament. We ran my Elite 7 HDI with universal sonar at the bow of the boat. While working the large sandbar complex, at left, we marked these unidentified objects below the boat. We had it zoomed in 50%. My assumption is that at bottom are walleyes, and at top is a large ball of juvenile young-of-the-year yellow perch, but I can only speculate.

Along with these findings, I’ve taken screenshots of more which includes the following: I’ve also seen crappies on my screen; More big muskies; Schools of smallmouth bass in open water and suspending off of deep structure; Largemouth bass hunkered down in the weeds during coldfronts; Schools of walleyes sitting off the bottom in deep water; Fish cribs, sunken boats, large trees, and other man-made objects….. and Common Loons dive-bombing beneath my boat!

Understanding modern electronics and all of their uses brought forth by our major sonar manufacturers will make you a better angler, and a better scientific angler as well.  Using these units on a daily basis and to their fullest capabilities is an integral part of my fishing. Additionally, using them truly helps me put more fish into the boat, allows me to fish my spots more effectively, and enables me to efficiently break-down a particular body of water and focus entirely on its productive areas through the process of elimination.