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Hardwater and Sonar…Inseparable
By Noel Vick with On Ice Tour
“If there’s a single piece of ice fishing equipment that will double
your catch, it’s portable sonar.”
Chip Leer
Good stories make good lead-ins. And during a recent interview
with On Ice Tour’s Chip Leer and Tommy Skarlis, Chip broke into the following…
“I was winter guiding on little northern Minnesota lake. Our
crew was after crappies and it didn’t take us long to find fish suspended
in 35-feet of water.
While unpacking the gear I noticed we were short a flasher. Being
the guide, I volunteered to go flasher-less. But one of my guests
demanded that I use a flasher and that he would go without. After
some discussion, I agreed.
The crappies were on fire! Everyone in the group, aside from
Mr. No Electronics, was seeing fish 20-feet down, dropping down to them,
and hooking fish. I figure he was out-fished at about a 10:1 clip
– the guy got his clock cleaned.”
They go by the names of depth finder, fish finder, and sonar.
In essence, all forms of depth and fish finding electronics are considered
sonar because they utilize sonar technology. In modern day fishing
there are two categories of sonar: liquid crystal graphs and flashers.
Liquid Crystal Graphs
Think of these as the sorts commonly used on boats. Typically
wide screened, liquid crystal graphs (LCD’s) are employed to acquire depth
and bottom contour as you motor across a location. The “picture”
is in turn “printed” on its liquid crystal screen. But they stink
on the ice. LCD’s aren’t designed to operate in subzero temperatures. Most
are cumbersome to transport, which doesn’t bode well for mobility. LCD’s
are terribly inefficient users of battery power. Serious modification is
often necessary to retool a LCD for winter operation. And their greatest
shortfall is the realized time delay before images actually appear on the
screen.
Flashers
Flashers are your best choice. Flashers have reached a point
where they’re being designed and packaged specifically for modern ice anglers.
Like a LCD graph in the summer, portable flashers show depth, fish, bottom-content,
and structure. But that’s where the similarities end. On the
ice, flashers offer something no other piece of electronics can.
They provide a 100% real time (instantaneous) reading of what’s happening
beneath your hole. Their concentrated power is capable of simultaneously
marking your tiny jig and the fish that’s about to eat it. Ice anglers
have a choice between two types of flashers, LED and liquid crystal. LED
(light emitting diode) flashers are the originals. Motor driven,
their back lit circular faces represent objects in one or three colors.
The
ColorPoint is a fine example of a three color LED flasher. There is a company
who takes the positives of liquid crystal and puts them in a flasher built
for cold weather use. Zercom uses military grade liquid crystal in
their portable flashers, and this stuff doesn’t freeze. Another upside
of liquid crystal technology is that motors aren’t needed, thus providing
six times the battery life of motor driven units.
Zercom’s portable LCF-40 is the latest and greatest in liquid crystal flashers.
A Day in the Life of a Flasher
To illustrate the importance of sonar we’ve reconstructed a usual afternoon
on the ice with On Ice Tour’s Chip Leer and Tommy Skarlis…
Sonar plays a major role in the initial search. The boys are
fixing to catch a mess of early ice perch. They arrive in the general
vicinity of a gravel bar that extends from a shoreline point. The
ice is fairly lean but solid at a thickness of 8-inches. Tommy breaks
out his flasher and starts taking depth readings before cutting any holes.
By pouring a gulp of water on the ice Tommy’s transducer is able to fire
through the ice and report depth. When ice is particularly clear
it’s possible to see fish, weeds, and even determine bottom composition.
Later in the season, profoundly thick, slush covered, and/or layered ice
may be impenetrable. Tommy found the breakline he was after.
He sets down the flasher and begins plugging holes – lots of holes.
This is where Chip and his ColorPoint enter the mix. He follows Tommy
up by testing every hole. His ColorPoint unveils depth, bottom content,
breaks, and even a few fish... Bingo! Two or three holes down
the line, Chip contacts a batch of perch. He signals Tommy and continues
moving along, graphing, but not angling. Tommy runs over with his
jigging rod and LCF-40. Sure enough, his flasher displays numerous
black bars cutting just above the bottom – they must be wily perch.
Tommy drops down and watches for a reaction. He pauses the jigging
spoon – visible as a slender bar – a foot above them. Jiggle.
Two thick bars rise and draw nearer. The incoming bars appear to
merge with his spoon. A tug. Tommy sets and reels in a sizable
perch. A quick re-bait and he’s back down. Another fish rises
to greet his spoon. A merger, but Tommy feels nothing. The
unification of bars continues so Tommy gives the rod a snap. Hot
damn! A perch had inhaled his spoon without twitching the rod.
Tommy wouldn’t have suspected anything had he not been toting a flasher.
It’s time for Chip to rip some perch. With rod and ColorPoint
in hand, Chip returns to a hole that had shown fish. Plunk, down
goes the transducer. Where’d the fish go? Suddenly, he notices
an orange bar separate from the bottom, but just barely. Fortunately,
his ColorPoint is able to recognize the subtlest gap between two objects,
in this case, the distance between the lake floor and a perch’s belly.
Chip stalls his spoon three feet above the “flicker”, aiming to provoke
the fish. It responds with vigor – it’s ON! Chip was able to
determine the fish’s mood by how quickly it attacked the spoon.
Tommy’s hole cooled down, so he moseyed over to another. While
taking a depth reading he noticed that the bottom line weakened, signaling
a change in bottom composition. He had gone from gravel to mud or
clay in just a few paces. Additionally, Tommy’s LCF-40 displayed
a cluster of faint-flickers just off the bottom. Baitfish?
More than likely.
As modern ice anglers, we no longer have to rely on instinct and guesswork.
Cutting edge portable flashers are able to show us depth, structure, bottom
content, fish, forage, and even our lures. The time has arrived for
ice fishing electronics to be considered as standard as rods, reels, heaters,
and fish houses.
On Ice Tour is an intensive effort directed at expanding the sport
of ice fishing. Cofounders Chip Leer and Tommy Skarlis offer public
seminars and kid’s clinics; appear at in-store events; exhibit at sport
shows and ice fishing competitions; broadcast a weekly radio show and conduct
hands-on product demonstrations. On Ice Tour produces an annual ice
fishing publication (On Ice), and they can be found on the Internet at
www.onicetour.com
Special thanks to On Ice Tours Sponsors
Fish
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