Fish Finders - How to Find More Fish Faster

Humminbird Side Imaging Sonar is a great technology that can help you find more fish faster. Normal "2D" fishfinders look straight down, mostly giving you a view underneath the boat. Side Imaging fishfinders are able to look to the side of the boat up to 240 feet on each side. That's a total of up to 480 feet around the boat! The sonar's high frequency beam can also map underwater structures such as reefs and wrecks.

So how does this help you find more fish? Simple! It allows you to see a large volume of water and also gives a very good, detailed view of fish attracting structures so that you can see fish that other anglers cannot.

Let's say you fish in freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. With many waterways being over fished nowadays, most anglers will focus on fishing from docks, near the shore or near grass. With Humminbird Side Imaging on your side you'll be able to go out into the open water and find submerged structures that others just can't see easily with their standard "2D" sonar. Your fish finder will help you find timber, stumps, rocks and anything else that attracts fish. You'll also be able to observe transitions from soft (muck) to hard (gravel, sand) bottoms and you know fish loves these transitions. You could identify these transitions with a normal fish finder, but it would require tirelessly circling the water until you are directly above the transition and great skill at reading your fish finder display. With the side imaging sonar you'll not only find these transitions easily, but be able to see them extending for several hundred feet.

If you fish more in saltwater your side imaging fish finder will give you detailed views of reefs, wrecks and dropoffs, all places fish like to hide. The very narrow high frequency beam will let you easily distinguish between the fish, the reef (or other structure) and the bottom. It will also show you baitballs and of course, Fish!

The Humminbird Side Imaging fishfinders do include standard downlooking "2D" sonar if that is more to your speed. Simply switch to the "2D" mode and use your fish finder the way you're used to.

Side imaging is available on the Humminbird 1100 series, 900 series and 700 series models. Unlike commercial fishfinders, these units can be mounted on the transom, trolling motor or thru hull thereby making them more practical for the recreational or sport fisherman.

Karen Janos is an expert on fish finders. When she is not fishing, she is the webmaster for http://www.fishfindersdirect.com, an ecommerce site dedicated to helping fishermen catch more fish.

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