OK Boomer...Anglers Over 50 Banned From Purchasing or Owning Modern Marine Electronics! The Truth...

OK Boomer...Anglers Over 50 Banned From Purchasing or Owning Modern Marine Electronics! The Truth About Marine Electronics

Sometimes I get on a soap box and go on a politically incorrect rant about banning anyone my own age from purchasing the fancy new fish finders, GPS units or bow trollers. I can’t tell you how many customers have purchased $5000+ and even $10,000+ marine electronics packages for their boats but have no clue how to use them. Those anglers would have had better success using the simplest functions of 10 or even 20 year old electronics…and please don’t suggest that it’s my job as the retailer to “train” customers. Your computer store doesn’t teach you how to use the computer…the gun dealer doesn’t teach you how to shoot…and marine electronics have become so advanced there are now day-long training programs to teach you the basics. That’s right…day-long courses just to learn the basics. You can spend weeks and months dialing in the newer hot-rod features. Sorry, I’m an accommodating sales manager, but I can’t spend days trying to teach anglers how to use systems that I’m personally barely fluent with. I help teach how to get the units powered up and screen(s) selected...the rest of the software is "learning curve" for the new owner.

Fish finders and GPS systems have advanced so much in the last 10 years it’s downright amazing. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago when we all marveled that they could make fish finders with color screens…Now, we’ve got on-water map-making, side views, multiple frequencies running simultaneously (chirp), massive screens with multiple windows, connectivity with our outboard engines, ability to control the bow troller via our fish finders and LOTS more.

My own experience with sonar fish finding started more than 50 years ago watching salmon underneath swarms of anchovies on my grandpa’s flasher unit. By the time I was 7 or 8 I could confidently interpret the blips on that flasher and we would modify our presentations to get to the depth of the salmon. In the late ‘80’s I signed a promotional contract with a company that manufactured high-end scanning sonar for the commercial fishing fleet. They were starting to offer consumer models that sold for less than the $25,000 their commercial gear sold for. By the ‘90’s I was chatting nearly weekly with the president of Interphase Electronics regarding their new move into LCD screens instead of the video screen they built their name on. That was when Interphase first offered a forward scanning sonar but with no software to simplify the view…you had to interpret the rough imaging yourself, and I was pretty good at deciphering the raw data on screen.

Showing Off My New Radio Controlled Wrist Fish Finder Back In 1988

I’ve thrown in this little bit about myself so you understand that I’m not a sonar dolt. My capacity to understand and interpret sonar readings is, well, I’ll say better than average. But when it comes to the new whiz-bang sonars, they are over my head…there are so many features and functions that I have to sit with a manual on my lap or phone in my hand streaming Youtube videos to teach me one feature or another. And it’s not just me...

At High Country Boats we sell more than 200 fish finders annually and we have customers who have spent decades setting the gain/sensitivity and adjusting depth ranging and other specifics pertinent for their machines. These are customers with pretty high sonar aptitude, yet the modern array of features is throwing people for a loop. And not every new fish finder owner has passable sonar skills. To wit: this past spring 3 different customers called from the lake with the same sonar issue. They couldn’t get the units out of the start-up screen that warns not to use it as the sole means of navigation. If you own a modern fish finder with built-in GPS, then you already know…you don’t get to use the finder until you click one button or tab to indicate that you saw their warning about navigation…it’s an insurance and liability protection for the manufacturer of the sonar unit…nothing more. We had three customers who couldn’t get past that…and two of them I had personally shown how to start up their sonar but they, “forgot.”

Those three new sonar owners are examples of issues of the simplest kind…when we start talking about more detailed stuff, well…

A few years ago Humminbird came out with the LINK system to connect a Humminbird fish finder/GPS to a Minn Kota trolling motor and then steer the troller with the mapping in your fish finder. Sounds good and looks great on the TV commercials…When LINK first came out they had an extended backorder on the wire to connect the machines—the "dongle" it’s called. And the first two customers who spent the extra hundreds for the LINK model Minn Kota and the associated LINK ethernet cables and ethernet junction box and dongles were perfectly fine with waiting for the backordered dongles. Nearly two months later when the dongles arrived, I phoned both customers to tell them their dongles finally came in and we could now hook up their LINK systems.  Both customers told me their Minn Kota and their Humminbirds were working just fine and there was nothing missing. Yet, in both cases all that was working was the troller and the finder. They were not LINKed in any way. So all those neato features you read about and see on the TV ads were not functioning and the customers who spent the hundreds of dollars didn’t know nor care. Both have since been updated with functioning LINK systems yet neither actually uses the LINK functions.

This spring, a customer who paid thousands of dollars to swap out the fish finders and trolling motor on their boat to accommodate a brand new LINK system went out the first weekend  without understanding how the LINK system worked, had a steering glitch that put him in shallow rocks where he destroyed his $800 stainless steel prop using the main engine to get out of his shallow trap. The fully networked system was just a touch too complex and he thought the maps which controlled the steering of his motor were accurate…they are not.

And the maps don’t adjust for variable water levels in our reservoirs which means you have to reset your map parameters each time you go fishing—if the water level has changed. Don’t get me wrong, the LINK system works, but it requires a very high level of understanding to use effectively. Basically, anglers buy these types of systems thinking they can turn off their brains and let the fish finder/GPS drive their trolling motor. All they have to do is reel in the fish. Nope. Doesn’t work like that. To use such systems requires that you are more involved with the driving of your boat. You need to dial in lake levels. You need to monitor and learn where the maps don’t match the actual lake contours—which is more common than you might think. There’s one shoreline at Tiber Reservoir where some of the maps make it look like you are driving on shore when you fish through the area. And even if you have your modern fish finder draw custom maps for you, that still doesn’t compensate for changes in water level.

Some of the difficulties with modern sonar derives from the fact that customers presume the features make it easier to fish and that the machines will send the info to the trolling motor and then it will do the driving for you. As mentioned above, that just ain’t so. Just like features on your computer or phone that you learn to use. You have to use those features regularly or else you’ll have to relearn them every time you want to use the feature. And the networking capabilities of the modern sonar systems require you to be able to zip around the menu screens like a pro. Modern networked systems are NOT a way to dial down your own level of involvement. These systems require that you dial UP your level of involvement

Sometimes the issue with the latest and greatest marine electronics is that we’ve gotten caught up in their marketing. A few years ago when Lowrance came out with a 3D transducer, one of our long-term customers just had to have it…So, $1400 later he had his new 3D transducer. Pretty much immediately he reported back that it wasn’t as super as he’d hoped. When queried recently he admitted to not using it at all anymore. Ouch, that’s an expensive lesson! But a lesson we can all learn from. Manufacturers are busy trying to one-up each other so they constantly seek to introduce something more whiz-bang than the other manufacturer’s widget. And we sometimes get ahead of the technology curve by jumping in on these marketing manifestations.

And there’s more to it…part of the problem is simply age…I’m over 50 and I don’t use but 2 or 3 of the functions offered in the dashboard of my pickup truck. I don’t use even a fraction of the possible things I could adjust on my laptop. Heck, I still make voice phone calls every now and then—I’m that old! But like I said earlier, it’s not just me. Even anglers half my age don’t use all the features built into the odometer of a modern pickup truck, let alone all the features of their sonar.

A customer in his ‘30’s who bought a new deluxe Ranger this spring wasn’t getting the result he wanted on his screens. He ended up cornering another of our recent Ranger buyers while both were at a walleye tournament. The older of the two helped set up a template for how he liked using his multiple unit system and the customer in his ‘30’s now uses the set up of the other fellow for his day-to-day sonar set up. Even anglers who grew up with menu-driven templates don’t automatically have a template in mind. So regardless of your age, you need to know exactly what you are trying to use your fish finders for, and you need to know how to set your machine(s) for your specific needs. Are you primarily trying to make maps of the actual lake or use maps of the lake as drawn by one of the map companies? Are you seeking bottom-related fish or suspended fish? Will you need to drop waypoints/icons on various places? Is your goal to find something new or to record or relocate something you found on a prior trip? Will you be coordinating normal downward sonar screens with side imaging screens? Do you like or dislike having a track drawn on the map on-screen? Is you goal to use the fish finder to drive the bow troller? Are you using a Vessel View type product that allows you to use your fish finder as a dashboard with full engine info? 

Just as we’ve all learned to only use the functions we really need on the dash of our trucks and only use the apps we need on our cell phones, it’s time to narrow down which functions we choose to use on our fish finders. I’m going to confess my method of simplifying my sonar set up. Not recommending this, but letting you know the choices I’ve made and why. Please understand that I'm a "turn on the sonars and fish" kind of guy so my personal system is designed to keep me out of the menus and daily set up time. 

• I don’t connect my fish finders or bow troller. No networking of any kind. My goal is to spend as little time as possible messing with my electronics. Networking automatically increases the amount of effort you MUST put in to get the system to work. Not of interest to me, sorry.
• That means when I look at the bow sonar it’s showing the bow depth. Console sonar shows depth at the stern. I commonly run into anglers who have no clue which transducer view they are looking at, nor any clue of how to switch views or split their screens for multiple views. Look, if you don’t know when or how to look at one transducer vs the other, then you don’t even need both bow and transom fish finders! I believe you absolutely must have both bow and stern fish finders if you are fishing bottom contours or shorelines. I’ve found my way to make it work for me and you can find yours, but the point is you really need to make it work so you can see the view from both ends of the boat.
• I drive my bow troller myself. I loved the old PinPoint system of the ‘90’s and early 2000’s—it actually followed the depth contour as the fish finder pinged the depth--not the depth on the maps like the current systems. As of today, none of the fish finder/bow troller combo’s in the marketplace follow depth contours, they just follow map contours of the depth that’s supposed to be there based on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the lake map. Hopefully these new Lowrance and Garmin bow trollers coming out this year will solve this issue.
• I don’t feel the need to have split screen views of the two different transducers—bow and stern. I have my larger sonar in the bow so I can see it easily from anywhere in the boat. Depth at the stern is right in my face on the console fish finder. I have my 8” bow sonar on a mega-sized RAM mount so I can move it around as necessary…Like every now an then when I actually fish with someone else in the boat and need to see around that person to view the bow sonar.
• I do not use side imaging of any sort…I was “shooting” forward with the Interphase Probe back in the ‘90’s and had a buddy with full 360 degree scanning sonar (with the transducer enclosed in an oil-bath glass bubble) back in the ‘80’s. Bottomline, Humminbird and Eagle all offered side viewing sonar by 1995. Long before that,  I mounted transducers to a revolving shaft off my transom so I could shoot whichever direction I pointed them. That was in the late ‘80’s…Shooting sonar signals somewhere other than down is not new to me…but it’s also not pertinent for my day-to-day fishing. It is for lots of other anglers, but honestly, I’m over it (for now).

So I’m going to stop short of saying it should be illegal for anglers over 50 like me to own high tech fish finders…or high tech bow trollers. Instead, I’m going to say that we all need to calm down about the groovy TV ads and marketing claims. We need to understand that the technology won’t do the fishing for us--we can’t turn off our brains. I believe that modern marine electronics are killer tools if we think of them as tools, not as methods to minimize our active role in catching the next fish of a lifetime!

P.S. I highly recommend supplemental training for using your marine electronics. Dale Gilbert of Ulm MT teaches full-day courses on electronics—www.montanawalleye.com and Dr. Bruce Sampson has a nice DVD on Lowrance fish finders. The DVD is available through Cabela’s/Bass Pro Shops and other retail outlets. Matt Cowen of Billings does seminars and installation of Humminbird systems. You can find him on facebook. For all electronics, YouTube is your friend! You'll find tons of tutorials and simple video explanations to assist with your learning curve.