finding new ground?

[airlock]

I'm relatively new to fishing and boating in general (3-4 years max), in my time fishing out of noosa i have managed to find a huge amount of ground over the closer reef systems, most of this has been found by trial and error, sounding around and fishing with friends who target the same area. However since buying the larger boat and now having the best range and most capable vessel of all my fishing buddies we've run into the age old problem of being metaphorically all dressed up with no where to go.

Now the close reefs are easy, they take no more then 30-40 minutes to get to so theres not shortage of time to find new ground and see what works where, but when the travel time is 2hours+ and you're aiming for very fuzzy starting marks you end up spending only a tiny portion of your fishing time actually fishing and the rest either traveling to the new ground or sounding around looking for the needle in the gargatuin haystack.

Now, fishermen are in general terms tighter then a ducks arse and when it comes to lending a hand to find fishing ground then 9 times outa ten they would be more likely to share there credit card numbers, wife and first born daughter with you.

So how have you boys and girls got around the thorny problem of finding new ground to fish? Is there a better option then simply grinding away trolling around waiting for the sounder to show something interesting (older lowrance model, god save me.)

any good charts to consult, web sites that could lend a hand or some black magic to invoke?

[scottar]

Not really. Get the best sounder you can afford and spend the time/money to ensure it reads properly at speed. There are also starter marks for a lot of reef systems available on the net. You find a lot of new ground purely by accident when your sounder reads properly while traveling to and from these starters.

[airlock]

Well the old sounder is really due an update so i'll bite the bullet and get that sorted, I had an HDS5 on the old boat that gave a great picture when it was in the mood to work and that really did help with finding ground, i can only imagine what a quality well set up unit will do for me. something that can read well above 10knts should make things much faster.

[scottar]

I still maintain that the pick of the bunch is the Furuno for offshore, followed by anything else Japanese, followed by anything else. While they don't have all the bells and whistles that seem to adorn modern day sounders, they also don't seem to have the same amount of hassles trying to get one to give a decent picture. That said, if you haven't got a good transducer install, nothing is going to work as best it could. You don't need massive amounts of output power unless you are going to go deep dropping. If you spend your time on the shallow side of the 200 metre mark, a 600w transducer is ample ( and a darn side easier to find a spot for ).

[airlock]

Would it be worth upgrading the transducer on the old HDS8, its just got the standard one that came with the kit by the looks of things. I've heard really good things about Furuno so far, currently sitting at the top of the shortlist if replacement is required.

[scottar]

Personally I wouldn't bother. There are reports that upgrading to the 1kw transducer gives the HDS a bit of a kick in the pants but with the cost involved you are the best part of your way to a Furuno 628. My own experience with Lowrance units in deep water tends to indicate they are a lot more prone to a noisy picture at speed than the Furuno - haven't used one on the 1kw transducer though.

You are never guaranteed a noise free picture with any brand until you have tried it - there are too many variables unfortunately, but with the Furuno we certainly had less complaints and my own experiences reflect this as well.

[Nick H]

Most of the marks I've been fishing the last few trips are ones I've found going to marks or general fishing area. The main thing is my sounder has a clean image no matter how fast I'm travelling. Time to upgrade your set up and it will make it a lot quicker to cover ground. Alternatively wait for a Saturday blowing 5knts and the hards will look like a parking lot!

[airlock]

well after a little hunting i think ill set my sights on the 1870 furuno, seems like a solid combo and not bad pricing either all things considered. Although getting things set up on a narrow cat hull always complicates.

[wags on the water]

If your sounder doesn't work (read the bottom) at speed, then there's no need to change the sounder - firstly you need to set up your transducer so it will read at speed.

[airlock]

unfortunately i've been tinkering with the thing since i got the boat, but i simply can't get a clear enough picture of the bottom when running at speed and to be honest I'm not even all that happy with the low speed picture, you can either see detailed structure or fish, but rarely both due to noise and sensitivity settings never quite lining up. Also it does have the occasional tendency to throw what i have come to know as the lowrance tantrum, randomly loosing gps signal, rebooting and deciding the river bed is 200meters below me, this seemed to be a problem with the last 2 units as well and i never quite understood why although the boys at the shop suggested it was just par for the price bracket.

[scottar]

I would give serious consideration to keeping the Lowrance and using it as a GPS only (turn the sounder off in the menu) and look at a stand alone sounder as against a combo - unless dash space is an issue. I haven't used the 1870 but my own boat came with a GP7000F - great unit, does everything I need it to and more but hunting through menus to change settings on the sounder is a PITA. It now has a FCV-627 keeping it company and the sounder turned off in the menu. Pretty much all combos suffer from this - twice as many functions with the same number of buttons equals deeper menus and more button pushing. Sure, the stand alone sounder still has menus but once set up, all the day to day stuff is on the keypad.

I would see if there is a software update for the Lowrance unit to start with - there usually is. Unfortunately they seem to fix some bugs and half the time create some new ones with every version released.

[airlock]

Thanks scottar, i've started a quick thread over on the electronics board to try and sort out a replacement. I ended up running the HDS8 and a spare elite 5 side by side yesterday to compare the two and test out the option of running 2 units, but dash space was a little short and i think i actually prefer running the one unit as everything you need is right there, with split screen, easy marking. I'm sure id get used to running the two screens but i prefer to look at just the one.

The software updates are all up to date and are actually pretty smooth all things considered, i'm thinking it could be a hardware issue at least as far as the gps problems are concerned, she's an old unit with visible corrosion on the metal screws so i'm sure theres been some saltwater ingress into the internals.

[Meterplus]

Hi guys, Just reading this post now. Have a gander at Geo science sites such as this link. I found it looking for info on reefs in the Gulf of Carpentaria. And yes they have images of several reefs but they are extremely remote.http

http://www.ga.gov.au/interactive-maps/#/

Steve