Awsome Squirrel i really appreciate your determination to show all fisherman what we can learn from all your hard work and understanding of sidescan. Thank you Just love your Work
I believe because of the way side scan works, by default it automatically compensates for depth. Think about it, side scan can't show what's on the bottom, 15 feet from the side of the boat if you're in 25 feet of water. Because of the sonar angle, it won't show bottom until the 25 foot range, which is the same as the depth.
I’m not sure how long you have been doing these videos but you need to KEEP doing them!! This is exactly what people like me who don’t get to go fishing much, need to catch fish and stop fishing so much! The lake I go to is 2 hours away in east TN, I live in Hendersonville, NC. Reason I go there is for striper, hybrid, smallmouth and now crappie. So anyway with the long drive and renovating a house I just don’t get to spend much time on the water. That will change when the house is sold and I’ve got more free time. Hard to learn to be very good at it but your videos help a ton! Please keep up the good work, us once in awhile fishermen appreciate you greatly!
Enjoyed your videos on this side imaging topic. It does make more sense than most of the other explanations out there. I STILL have an impossible time finding shad on the Simrad Evo3S unit. It's the same as yours, just the Simrad version. I find them, but when I throw the net there is nothing there. When the shad are on the surface they are easy to spot and catch, but if they're down a few feet they seem to be impossible for me to pinpoint where they are and throw the net on top of them. I'd be awesome if you could do a video on that to help us solve the mystery.
When I cast net for bait, I always throw at the back of my boat to each side where my transducer is mounted, I’ll throw as soon as the bait ball appears on my screen. Thanks for the video idea! 🐿
@@FishinwithSquirrel Yeah, I'm surely on the struggle-bus with this one. I've tried that also, and the bait just doesn't seem to be where I think it is on screen. I've marked lots of bait balls between 5 and 10 ft deep, and just can't get on them with the net. I even tried heavy fast sinking nets, and nothing.
You shouldnt have to subtract anything. You are correct. If that was true then you would have 2 different distances if using a different khz. Because the angle would change in water column. I think im correct lol. Maybe i have questions to. Good video. Ive always thought same as you do about this topic.
Thanks for the video squirrel, you're the best. I understand a lot more now than a month ago. I'm still iffy on the depth but I understand the range and a few other thing now.
Thank you for taking the time to help us fishermen get a better understanding of how our electronics actually work. I was always under the impression that sidescan distance reflected the actual straight-line distance from the transducer to an object. Your previous buoy experiment proved this is dead wrong, at least for Lowrance units. The distance shown on a sidescan is the distance from the transducer to the surface of the water column directly above the object. In other words, you can’t directly read the depth of any object by looking at your sidescan like you can with downscan. With sidescan, you can only guess at the depth of an object by observing if a shadow is present, and then use the distance between the object and its shadow to estimate the object’s depth. To prove this once and for all, it would be very interesting to redo your buoy experiment with three or four bottles suspended under the buoy at different depths. If my interpretation is correct, the buoys should all show up at about the same position on sidescan, with the actual depth of each bottle being impossible to determine (using only sidescan). Also, without further experiments it’s impossible to know if all sonar manufacturers use the same approach for showing objects on sidescan. Obviously, Lowrance does it this way but it’s possible that other manufacturers do it differently. They probably all do it the same way but we don’t know for sure at this point. Thanks again for your time and effort, and best of luck with your interesting and very educational RU-vid channel.
Good videos. I like the way your learning and breaking it down for us rookies. What trolling motor do you have on your pontoon. I’m in market for one for my 20ft pontoon. Thanks
43ft is the distance from the transducer in a straight line, not accounting for the depth, so they could be at 0ft depth 43ft away from the boat, or, directly under the boat at 43ft depth.
Thank you for the work you’re putting in on this subject…. I don’t think you’re wrong completely but my original comment on the other video like this was when you were in a small creek. It seemed the fish were 35 feet from the side of your boat if you look at side scan without subtracting the 18-20 under the boat. At the same time it appeared that 35 feet would nearly put you in the dirt from your boat. This would support the original explanation from the experts on side scan. But of course I wasn’t there on your boat and which the view was probably different in person.
Thanks for watching Kev51. I’m still making sense out of this myself. I crappie fish a lot and sidescan without ever subtracting my depth. However, I never actually tried to test how far the fish are from the boat. I definitely learned something, I hope you did as well. Thank you for your support! 🐿.
With lowrance hds you can remove the water column when making a structure map of the bottom. Does this mean the si is scanning the bottom directly under the boat?
Great question, I think they use down and side scan to get the complete picture when mapping but that is just a total guess. I don’t know the answer to that. If they can do that when mapping, why wouldn’t they show the bottom directly under the boat. I’m glad they don’t, because I can see the fish better against the black water column. Thanks for the question!🐿
Turkey Point. Not sure what you are talking about. I haven’t blocked any of my videos from being shared. I wouldn’t even know how to do that. Thanks for watching though. I’ll check on that. 🐿
Yep how ever far it shows on your side imaging is roughly how far a object is I had the same questions well alot of questions when side imaging first come out I found that out by testing as some folks are confused on things they get something in there head and that's it !...good vid man 👍
Squirrel, thanks for the effort. Here is my explanation for what we saw on the screen. The distance shown on side scan seems to be the distance if you draw a “straight line” between transducer and fish. From the image taken by active target, you can see those crappies are vertically stacked. From “straight line” theory, shallower crappie appears closer to on side scan while deeper crappie appears further away. You side scan image appears confirmed this. If fish is on the bottom and directly under your boat, then you should see the fish on side scan at the distance almost equals to the water depth. What do you think?
I’m not sure about on the bottom, but when I suspended the coke bottles at 20’ deep in 40’ of water, my graph marked them exactly the distance I passed by them. 19’ and 4’. I’m gonna pin some objects on the bottom in 20’ of water and see what happens. Thanks for the comment! I appreciate you watching! 🐿
Another possibility is that you side scan sonar may not installed exactly horizontal. If it is tilted a bit, then the distance reading is off in some degree. You may want to double check on that.
I've gotten myself confused a little bit again. So I'm looking at all the marks on your 2D scan and it's showing an object 13 to 20' deep. And I see the same image better detail on the side scan. So now I know that that means that it's that depth. But how far is that away from your boat laterally?
Shiny, this was just a sidescan video, I shouldn’t have displayed my 2D and DS I will do videos on Down scan and 2D later. I’m about to confuse you more when I tell you that 2D is picking up the boat docks that I am driving by. Those docks are floating on the surface but the 2D and DS are showing them submerged. Don’t pay attention to 2D and DS in this case. Trust sidescan. I will go over a lot of your questions on Panfish Nation RU-vid channel next Thursday night at 9pm eastern time on I’m a guest on there show and you join chat and ask me any question you like. I’ll send out a reminder to all my subscribers next week!
Go back to the first side scan you had. On the sonar you showed fish at 18 ft. and on your side scan you also showed fish in the water column at 18 ft from the boat if your logic is the measurement across the bottom of the screen is actual distance from the boat. If your logic is correct then 0 to 18 ft from your boat should be dead space left and right and will not show any fish in that range if your water column covers that range. Or if your sonar shows fish under the boat which is a limited cone size of 1/3 the depth then there will be times that fish show in the water column and not on your sonar. Using your logic, the range from 0 to 20 is showing side scan and not water column and from 3 ft to 20 ft. Is actually side scan and won’t show on 2 D sonar. But then when you go over a bush on your 2D sonar on the bottom why does is show up at 20 ft left and right on the bottom at 20 ft out on the side scan. It can’t be both. Then we get back to if the depth is 60 ft. in the middle of a lake and you set your side scan to 50 ft. range why doesn’t it show bottom out to 50 ft. But if you set it to 70 ft and see a bush on your 2D sonar at sixty feet on the bottom is will show that tree at 60 ft out on your side scan. So either the tree is 60 ft out or 60 ft. down, it can’t be both. If it is 60 ft out (with your logic) then it won’t be on you sonar, if it is on your sonar (cone diameter 20 ft…10ft radius, is should be at 0 to 10 ft on the side scan. So side scan doesn’t cover the area that is in the water column left and right. If your range on side scan is 60 ft, depth is 30 ft so your water column should extend to to 30 ft left to right on the side scan. But your 2D sonar only sees 5 ft left and right from zero on you side scan range, so a bush on your sonar won’t show out at 30 on your side scan. If it does show at 30 ft both left and right, then the range can’t left and right , it has to be depth.
I believe 2D is completely independent from side and down-scan. You can stop your 2D cone sonar and still run down and side scan. However, if you stop down-scan it will also stop side-scan. In my opinion, I think down scan is integrated in the side-scan view. If you look back at the Simplify side scan video where I scanned the water tower. I purposely split the water tower with the lake bottom. Of course the lake floor wasn’t directly beneath me because I would have went through the tower. Notice though to the far right opposite of the tower how there is a mirror faded image of the water tower 40’ to the right. There is definitely not a water tower 40’ to my right but you can see where it tried to place it there. Why does it do that? That’s a question for the programmers. Please remember, I don’t have all the answers but I’m gonna do my best to answer as many as I can. Thank you for watching! 🐿
I run Lowrance, and when side scan came out you connected two transducers to your boat. One for 2D and one that covered down and side scan. The unit was about 6 inches long and to my understanding may have contained two transducers. The new Lowrance has has a 3 in 1 transducer where all three are in one unit. I do notice when you mark a weigh point all the screens stop, but I can also have a different color image on the down and side scan screens. Now, does down scan use part of the side scan signal….I don’t think so since you have a 3 in 1 transducer now. Before in the HDS Gen. 3, you had a two in one transducer and a separate 2D transducer. Earlier I had an Elite 7 unit that had both the Downscan and the 2D in one unit that was about 4 inches long. But none of this is relative to the subject at hand as to where are you actually looking. I’ll talk with Lowrance at the Classic if they have any technicians there and not jus salesmen pushing the units.
