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Humminbird 1197c
SI
Screenshots
Why you need Humminbird Side Imaging...
As a charter captain, my clients depend on
me to find the fish. The Humminbird 1197c SI makes my life a lot
easier by taking all of the guesswork out of finding fish, bait
and structure. It easily eliminates water and bottom structure
that are not likely to hold the fish we are targeting allowing us
to quickly move on to waters that are. It saved several charters
for me this season by locating fish and structure than no other
unit could. While fishing on the reefs with live bait, structure
is everything. On one particular trip, we were catching fish but
not the sizes we were hoping for. With the side scan, I was able
to see boulders that were much larger than the surrounding
structure lying 150 feet to the north of where we were in 40 feet
of water. At the touch of a button, I was able to mark that
boulder on the built in GPS and adjust my next drift
so that we passed directly over it. On our next two drifts, we
pulled our two biggest stripers of the night from behind that
rock!
Live bait is the key to
consistently getting trophy sized fish for my clients. Without the
bait our chances of success drop considerably. In the late
summer and fall, our bait of choice is menhaden. They are a hardy,
schooling type of bait that are about 18" in length. When
conditions are favorable, it is easy to find them by looking for
them flipping about on the surface. When you find one, there are
usually thousands more nearby. However, when the wind blows or the
temperatures drop suddenly the menhaden are impossible to spot on
the surface and anglers are forced to probe around with long cast
looking for the pods of bait. With the 1197c SI my problems were
solved. I simply switch the screen to the side scan mode and
motor along in a grid pattern until I see them. On several
occasions this year, we found the bait holding near the bottom
over 100 feet away from the boat! In some of the screenshots
below, you can see the swarms of fish and even pick out individual
menhaden from 80 feet away. What other fishing system will do this
for you? NONE!
The fish finder was also a
huge part of my success this season. The color LCD is easy to read
even in bright, mid-day sunlight. It easily detected the
differences between bottom structure and fish holding tight to the
bottom. I was finding fish that were glued to the bottom where
other boats weren't. This is also the only fish finder that I've
ever used that would read at the kind of speed that my boat is
capable of. This allows me to cover a lot of ground and still see
exactly what is going on beneath me.
For more info, see the article
"See What You've Been Missing" in the
March 2007 issue of On The
Water Magazine
For more information on
Humminbird products, visit
their website
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