Side-imaging sonar reviews

[thatoneguy]

I'm really intrigued with the idea of saving up for a side-imaging sonar unit some time in the next year or two. Those of you who have them, what do you think of them? What are the big pros, and what are the limitations?

My primary use (in theory) would be for locating fish quicker on some of Leech's big flats, and for finding structure on lakes I'm not as familiar with. Would an SI unit be a big help for that, a little help, no help?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[JohnMickish]

Lets clear up a little misconception. SI won't really help you find fish, it helps you find structure that holds fish. Sure, fish show up on the unit but they are really small. Think of it this way, if you have your screen set to view 150' each side, and you have a 8" screen, then that is a view of 300' on the screen. Now imagine how big a 20" fish shows up when you are looking at a chunk of the lake that is 300' wide.

Now to your lake of choice. Lakes like Leech with their massive flats, rocks and weedbeds, this is where the SI unit will really shine. You can see weedbeds that are off to the side, mark them and fish them later. Same with rocks and bottom transitions.

Im my opinion, is it worth it? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it a 5 minute learning curve? No, it will take a fair amount of time to figure out what it is you are working with. It's not hard but it takes a little playing with to figure out what you are looking at and how to decipher the info. You will be seeing things you've never seen before.

My one word of advice, think real hard on how big a screen you think you will want, then get the next bigger one.

[swampbuck]

There is a big learning curve with SI, but when yo larn what your looking at and for it is awesome! I have used it to find fish off to the side on big flats hit a waypoint on the school and swing upwind and fish them. It is an amazing wayto cover water and find small and large schools of fish.

[thatoneguy]

Keep 'em coming - exactly the kind of input I need! swampbuck - any luck bowhunting that piece of land you were telling me about?

[goose89]

Lets clear up a little misconception. SI won't really help you find fish, it helps you find structure that holds fish. ...

My one word of advice, think real hard on how big a screen you think you will want, then get the next bigger one.

SI CAN really help you find fish, if you know what you're looking for, and if you're in an area that's holding fish. True, negative mood, bottom hugging walleyes will be difficult to see on SI, but active, suspended fish of any kind, as well as baitfish, are quite easily detected.

Very good advice on the screen size.

[Triple_D]

I have a 997, my SI looks like bad, nowhere near as clear as the pictures I've seen on the internet or on the Humminbird site, I've varied the settings but it's still not clear, I'm thinking of sending it in for them to look at.

Any tips?

[Nick Kuhn]

Lets clear up a little misconception. SI won't really help you find fish, it helps you find structure that holds fish. Sure, fish show up on the unit but they are really small. Think of it this way, if you have your screen set to view 150' each side, and you have a 8" screen, then that is a view of 300' on the screen. Now imagine how big a 20" fish shows up when you are looking at a chunk of the lake that is 300' wide.

Conveniently have some shots from this weekend taken on my structureless void of a lake. Now, I took these while under trolling motor power (so the speed is 0.2 mph, and the line is not very straight making for bad SI images).

11 FoW, known hard bottom. 2D sonar shows nothing special, maybe 2 small fish, DI and SI picking up scattered hard reflections, gravel perhaps?

Let's cruise along this a little more and see if we can find something. Heading deeper it became pretty apparent those were all fish glued to the bottom. Out deeper they were off the bottom a ways.

And deeper yet, let's play count the fish.

And only because the screenshot always looks different than what you were actually observing at the time (at this point I had pretty much stopped moving altogether).

And all I managed to catch was 2 crappies. Was hoping there were some gamefish hunting those schools but if there were any there, they weren't biting. But note that in 11 FoW 2D sonar was unable to pick up the vast majority of those fish.

[PerchJerker]

I agree with many of the things that have been posted so far.

Side Scan and Down Scan will show fish. It works best for schools of baitfish and panfish, and other suspended fish, but it will also show fish on the bottom. Fish on the bottom are harder to see and you'll need to study the screen to see them. It's a lot easier to see multiple fish than to identify 1 or 2 fish by themselves.

I almost always use my Side Scan to look for structure, not for fish. It works great for finding weedlines, scattered weeds, rocks, logs, bottom transitions, etc.

It's going to work best if you're moving at least 2 mph. It works best if you're trolling, or if you're driving around looking for structure or fish. If you're fishing and moving slowly and trying to use Side Scan, the images on the screen will be stretched out, and there will be details that you'll miss.

A bigger screen is definately a plus. When looking at Side Scan images, the bigger the image the easier it will be to pick out the details.

Even though I normally use Side Scan to look for structure, not fish, I have a great example of when it definately put fish in the boat for us. We were fishing on Pool 4, pulling cranks on 3-way rigs. We'd fished several spots and only picked up a few fish here and there. We pulled into a new spot to check it for fish with the electronics. The traditional sonar wasn't marking any fish, but the Side Imaging showed tons of fish. So we pulled our 3-ways through there and got multiple fish on each pass. We NEVER marked these fish on traditional sonar, due to the turbulence in the water, but the Side Imaging picked them up just great. We ran into another boat with guys we knew in that same spot, and they were there for the exact same reason --- they saw tons of fish there with their Side Imaging.

Hope that helps a bit!

[live4chrome]

I wonder how these would work on superior, to find schools of smelt.

[thatoneguy]

Great input so far - thank you!

[Deitz Dittrich]

I wonder how these would work on superior, to find schools of smelt.

I have not used my boat on the big lake.. but I can say that I have driven around to find a school of crappie before.. couldnt be a whole lot different?

[harvey lee]

I was on a shallower lake yesterday and saw alot of stumps, weeds and trees fallen in the lake with my side scan. I also saw that there was a trap in the lake and also picked up that. Not the trap but it was located on the side scan.

Wonderful for finding structure as MNfishing guy stated.

[Jason_Halfen]

Humminbird Side Imaging fishing systems excel at finding both structure and fish. I'll add a couple of recent examples from my boat. I run an 1197 at the console, networked to an 858 (a non-side imaging unit) at the bow.

The first image is a large school of walleyes that are scattered over a shallow flat, 8-10 feet deep. How do I know they are walleyes? I caught many of them in this area, pulling spinners and crawler harnessed through this school.

The second image is from Mille Lacs. It is a school of tulibees, and is shown in both Side Imaging (on the right) and Down Imaging (on the left). How do I know they are tulibees? I confirmed that with a camera.

The third image is also from Mille Lacs. It is either a ball of bugs or a ball of shiners, hanging out over the gravel on the south end.

The fourth image is a crib on my home lake that has a school of crappies associated with it (the little white dots arpound the crib). I know these are crappies, because of the last pic.

Side Imaging finds both structure and fish. Give it a whirl....and you'll never go back.

[thatoneguy]

Awesome stuff.

@Jason - I assume the walleyes in the first pic are the white streaks?

I hope I can find someone with an SI unit to fish with this spring, maybe chase some crappies on Leech or something. This is an awfully expensive purchase for me, so I want to be really sure it's what I want before I pull the trigger. It is definitely encouraging to hear such positive reports though. Thanks again for all the input.

[Jason_Halfen]

That's right, all the white dots and streaks are fish...many of which are walleyes.

I've been running Side Imaging for two years now, and I'll never go back to fishing without one.

If you want to learn more about Side Imaging, do a google search for my name and "seminars". I have a nearly one hour streaming video seminar on my HSOforum that will cover many of the aspects of Side Imaging that I use in my boat.

[thatoneguy]

I'll check it out. Many thanks.

[Nick Kuhn]

Awesome stuff.

@Jason - I assume the walleyes in the first pic are the white streaks?

I hope I can find someone with an SI unit to fish with this spring, maybe chase some crappies on Leech or something. This is an awfully expensive purchase for me, so I want to be really sure it's what I want before I pull the trigger. It is definitely encouraging to hear such positive reports though. Thanks again for all the input.

It can be a little tricky. Just because something shows up as long and white does not necessarily mean the object is that shape. The Si beam is not razor thin, it does fan out some. Therefore objects further to the side get stretched. Even something you know is round (like a dock post) looks like a white streak if you are passing a ways away from it. To get the clearest picture you need to pass almost right over the object. Further to the side it's more of a "something's over there" type indicator, and then you use your intuition as to what it is.

It is very sensitive though. I think this is a picture of an anchor rope, so it'll nab nearly anything if there's something there. This was when I had the sensitivity too high though, so you can see it picking up a lot of noise.

[swampbuck]

Kyle I will take you to the cutbanks in June and show you hoe to find the basson leech

[reddog]

Im coming up on my 4th year with SI and I can honestly say that I love my Humminbird 997 and hope to upgrade to the 1198 as soon as they come out. The unit has been bulletproof as far as performance is concerned.

It is a joy to fish with the unit even if the fish are not cooperating.

I was able to use an 1197 on the dash last year and moved my 997 to the trolling motor. What I thought it would do, it did good, what I didnt know it could do, was nothing short of phenonemal.

I had two acquaintances with me this March that had never seen SI in action. Well, what side imaging cannot do for you is put fish under your boat, I dont care what kind of structure youre on or looking at. We seen a few scattered fish all day and I told them that we just had to put our head down and keep looking, which we did.

When we pulled up on that shallow bar (4 fow) and they saw my eyes light up as I eased the motor into reverse to avaid spooking what I knew was our goldmine for the day. We hit that school for 2 days, catching lots of fish while others struggled out in the basin.

If your not using your SI to locate fish, than you are not using the full capabilities of SI.

I found my unit very user friendly, right from the get go, but I do know that some guys struggle with figuring out exactly what the unit is showing them.

Getting your settings correct is paramount.

One thing that need to be mentioned that I seldom see mentioned, is the "Shaded Depth" feature. If you are on new water, this is an incredible tool for locating fishing areas. I feel that Shaded depth is as important to me as SI.

My screen stays split between 60% Si and 40% GPS. 90 % of the time. Abouth the only time I toggle back and forth between views is when I see something of interest in Si and I want to see if it shows up in 2D or DI. Dont get me wrong, 2D and DI are nice, but wil never replace SI as my main screen.

3 fish in what would show in 2D sonar, not sure how many are in the SI view.

Follow the properties of the picture to see more screencaptures and explanations.

[reddog]

Triple D,

Can you post a screencapture so I can see whats going on with your unit. Possibly the settings also. Which Xducer and sensitivity settings.

My guess is it is eather the settings of the unit, or the positioning of your HDSI transducer.

R

[NTW]

Kyle - Next year we will definitely have to connect for a day on leech. I have the 998 and have to agree with all the positives! Maybe we can get out after prespawn crappies...side imaging keeps me from wetting a line where there isn't a school waiting.

[thatoneguy]

Sounds great, NTW. I've actually never fished crappies before, but it's something I want to get into. My email address is kawj at arvig dot net - file it away til springtime then give a holler when you're up this way.

How's Mankato these days? I did my first two years of college there...always liked that town.

[NTW]

Sounds good! Like everything on Leech, the crappie fishing is amazing.

Mankato is a great place to live. Plenty of lakes and rivers around to occupy any free time I can find. I have to say I am a little jealous of your location...quite partial to the Walker/Longville area!

[delmuts]

Next question!

I've been looking at the Humming bird 798si units thinking this may be what i go with. On the Humming bird outlet store the new units are around $900. I see several places that have last years model on sale for $ 700. Is there that big of a difference to justify the extra cost?

[MN Mike]

As far as I understand it, the only difference between next years 798 and last years is the network port. Everything else is the identical.

Mike