DEPTH SOUNDERS. ON OR OFF

[gawby]

I was listening to 4bc radio, their fishing report on saturday morning and they were talking about depth sounders.

The question asked was do you leave your sounder on or off when you are at anchor. The reason being they suspect that the sound wave emitted from the sounder scares the fish away. When you are at drift this dosnt seem to be the case.

This to me seems to make sense because some days we go out and catch nothing on a very slow drift or at anchor with the sounder on but other days when drifting fast we seem to get a catch. I am going to turn the sounder off next time and try it and see if it makes a difference.

What are your ideas on this. ???

Graeme

[Dignity]

Graeme, read/heard somewhere that 200mhz is about the same frequency as that used by dolpins which supposedly then makes the fish skittish. Don't know if that is true or not but at anchor I usually turn mine off.

Sam

[scuttlebutt]

I've heard that sounders can scare the fish, and if it's really quiet I can actually hear my transducer tick tick ticking away. Having said that I usually leave it on anyway and still manage to get a few.

cheers,

Steve

[devocean]

This has been brought up in a thread about 6months ago. I can remeber someone saying that they knew a pro that use to scare fish into nets by turning on the sounder around snags. I free dive a fair bit and I can say I have never heard a transducer making any noise underwater.

[DaveSue_Fishos_Two]

I really don't know about this. ??? Maybe they do and maybe they don't. But I do know that if you are looking for fish on your sounder, whether it be for bait or for targets, you pick them up on your sounder and you start fishing. Generally you will catch them. ( ?Well maybe). If sounders scared the fish away, wouldn't they have bolted as soon as the sonar had hit them?? The pro's rely on them a lot as do the charters.
Interesting thread!

Dave

[Needmorerum]

I don't know whether this is right or wrong, but from now on, I'm using this as my excuse. Deep down inside, I knew there was something that was affecting my fishing (read boating).

Corry

[chanquetas]

I dont even have a sounder....but if I dont catch anything tomorrow then you know what I'm gonna blame!

[kevin]

I have never had a problem with the sounder scareing off the fish only the idiots that go round and around you looking to see if there is fish under your boat. that is what scares the fish off.

[DNO40]

I,m with Kevin

People constantly and annoyingly pull up right on top of you and start casting at you....damn i hate that

[Bearded_Clam]

why couldnt it be a possibility that sound/vibration might actually attract fish. not saying it does but I fish with the sounder and a kickarse stereo goin all the time and dont seem to find i catch any less than anyone else {on average}..and I bet that your sounder screen will suddenly light up with piscatorial packs of predators at about the same time as your ears start bleeding from playing you favourite metal cd at full volume with maximum bass.
those old wives talk a lot of sh!t.

[TonyM]

People constantly and annoyingly pull up right on top of you and start casting at you....damn i hate that

That's when I break out the big snapper leads and start casting right back

[MulletMan]

Ya gotta turn 'em OFF!
I used to do a lot of offshore fishing with John Palermo round the Square Patch area (81.6 metres at the peak!) and have seen the schools of fish actually flatten out and go to the bottem when pinged with a 200 hz sounder. Conversely, I also saw John wake 'em up with a burst of pinging! The beam from the transducer is a "physical" beam that hits anything in its path and is then "bounced" back to the receiver so it is a pretty fair assumption that whilst we humans cannot "hear or feel" this beam that it may worry some species of fish. I remember one day off Lookout Wide seeing the Pearlies actually going deeper into the wire weed and as soon as the sounder was turned off, up they came for a feed!

[woolybugger]

I primarily fish the freshwater and have heard from a few pro fisher mates that they think that the tranducer actually attracts fish. They have said that they have actually seen fish break off from a school and follow the tranducer.

Myself, have been above many a schhol of Bass and don't see the bass go off or go to the bottom of the lake.

Who knows and I guess until someone out there becomes a 'fish whisperer', then we will never know.

[MOZ]

My philosophy. if in doubt turn it off, I don't need anything working against me.

MOZ

[youtah]

took the words right out of my mouth MOZ.