Sonar Session with Mr. James Caddell on Lake Belton, 03 March 2015

This past Tuesday afternoon, March 3rd, I met Mr. James Caddell of Morgan’s Point Resort, TX, for an on-the-water “Sonar Session”.
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Whenever weather conditions allow, I like to work in a “practical exercise” by actually having my “sonar student” catch at least one fish by using sonar after all the adjustments and training is complete.  James brought in this Belton hybrid just before dark.
James owns a bass boat and has recently upgraded his sonar, placing one Lowrance Elite 7 HDI unit on the bow and another identical unit on the console (non-networked).
James actually had a pretty good grasp on sonar already, so we were able to breeze through the basics and get right to several issues he wanted to address.
The first issue was that of the chart plotter (map) screen being cluttered with trail markings from previous trips.  We worked through the “trails” menu to resolve this issue, eliminate all historic trails, and place one fresh, new trail of a different color on the map screen.
The second issue was that of interference on his front unit.  We resolved that by tracing the interference to the console unit and using one of the unit’s built-in features to overcome that issue.
The third thing we looked at was manually controlling the sensitivity on the traditional colored sonar view to maximize the targets detected while avoiding undue clutter.
Next, we changed the color palette of the down imaging to one more well suited for Belton instead of the “sepia” palette he had defaulted to.
After that, we chased fish so we could being using the units in “real world” scenarios.  This allowed James to adjust his colored sonar sensitivity “on the fly” as depth changed, and to use the scroll back feature combined with placing waypoints to mark items of interest on the bottom.
As we did this, we discovered the trolling motor shaft was actually angled back towards the boat somewhat instead of being plumb.  Normally, just manually adjusting the transducer by angling it forward would overcome this, but James had installed a transducer protector on the trolling motor which prevented such adjustment.  James put removal of the protective cover on his “to do” list so a manual adjustment can be made.  I also suspect James put “get a new trolling motor” on his “to do” list as well, but, I cannot confirm that 😉
Towards sunset we observed a small, loose flock of terns working over a patch of water, so, we idled around, found some loosely schooled white bass and hybrid stripers along with shad in 30-40 feet of water and used the bow-mounted electronics to precisely present our slabs to these fish.  James pulled a short hybrid out of the mix, and I boated an average white bass.  With that mission accomplished, we headed back to the dock.

A Sonar Session Success Story

This past Sunday afternoon I conducted an on-the-water sonar session with Mr. Mitch Randles, the City of Temple Fire Chief, on Belton Lake.

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A “Sonar Session” success story — Mitch saw fish on sonar, reacted to them properly, held the boat in position over the fish we’d spotted, and was rewarded for his efforts.

Mitch and his wife came out of retirement in Missouri to take the Fire Chief job and have been in Texas only since August of 2014.  Back in Missouri (or, as he pronounces it “Missoura”) Mitch fished for multiple species, mainly on Lake Stockton.

Mitch runs a Ranger bass boat equipped with a Lowrance Elite 7x HDI on the bow, a Lowrance Elite 7 HDI on the console, and a Lowrance HDS5 with Insight USA mapping also on the console.

We began by going screen by screen starting with his chartplotter screen, then onto his colored sonar screen, and ending with his downlooking StructureScan screen.  We tweaked all the setting on each page, making sure each was optimized for the clear water and rocky bottom on Belton.

On the chartplotter screen, we covered the use of waypoints and trails.  On the colored sonar screen, we tweaked sensitivity, colorline, ping speed, scroll speed, the color palette, and more, and on the StructureScan screen we adjusted the color palette and contrast.

Once all was set up well on each unit (none of the 3 were networked, so, we set up each unit individually), we set out in search of bottom features and fish in order to help Mitch see what fish and fish-holding structures looked like on a well-adjusted unit.  Fortunately, we found a large, suspended school of mixed white bass and hybrid stripers, thus allowing us not only to see these fish, but to watch our baits descend into them, and then watch the fish respond, become hooked, and watch excited schoolmates follow our hooked fish up to the surface.  We watched this play out exactly 21 times as we boated white bass and hybrid stripers steadily for about an hour and a half.

As we wrapped up, I left Mitch with a list of recommendations to take action on as time and budget allowed.  These action items included:

1. Checking his bow-mounted sonar’s transducer mounted to his trolling motor for levelness before each outing.

2. Taking the two console-mounted sonar units’ transducers out of the bilge area and mounting them externally in direct contact with the water for better performance.

3. Dedicating one console unit to mapping and waypoint collection to avoid having waypoints spread across several un-networked units.

4. Connecting the power leads for the bow-mounted unit to the starting battery to avoid interference.

5. Connecting the power leads for the console-mounted units to the trolling motor battery to avoid interference.

6. Using the console mounted HDS5 for colored sonar since it (alone) had color palette #13 available.

7. Using the console mounted Elite 7 HDI for a combination of mapping and down imaging since it has a wider screen than the HDS5.

We had a very productive 3 hours on the water resulting in a few fish caught as icing on the cake.  The more important thing is that Mitch now knows what is necessary to get the most out of the units he has paid good money for.