Imagine that your boat is a plane flying over the lake bottom taking aerial photos of the bottom through windows on both sides of its hull, and you have a rough idea of what you get from Humminbird’s new Side Imaging feature.[…]
Spotting fine details on your fish finder, GPS chart plotter or radar calls for the best screen visibility possible.[…]
When work or play calls for AC power on your boat or tow vehicle, an inverter is usually the simplest and least-expensive way to provide it. Just plug the inverter into a cigarette lighter or accessory power socket and then plug your AC tools or toys into the inverter.[…]
We encounter all sorts of light conditions out on the water, and they all affect the way the screens on our electronics look.[…]
About two decades ago, a friend and I witnessed a miracle. We were fishing a stump bed in about 3 feet of water at the edge of a large bay on a popular freshwater lake.[…]
I suspect most fishermen use fewer than half the features on their electronics because, like me, they are too busy using their units to learn how to use them.[…]
A couple of decades ago, I was a diver for the Dallas Fire Department, one of the last people anyone wanted to need to find a friend or family member.[…]
Transducers are much like television antennas — both must be mounted in the right place and carefully aimed to deliver top performance. A boat’s transducer must be installed where it maintains constant contact with the water as the craft runs and maneuvers at its top speed or pounds through waves in rough weather.[…]
Gremlins almost never bother your fish finder in waters near your home or close to a repair shop. They wait until you pull your boat a hundred miles from home on vacation. Here’s how to defend against these little wire chewers and slug it out with them when they get past your defenses.[…]
The best place for your front fish finder’s transducer is on the bottom of your bow-mounted trolling motor’s lower unit. Until recently, this meant clamping a transducer to the motor and routing its cable up the outside of the motor’s shaft.[…]
Have you ever wiped that wet, sticky looking mess off the top of a battery and then come back a short time later only to see it wet again?[…]
A few simple tips can keep things working when summer’s blazing heat brings out the worst in everything from batteries to LCD screens[…]
Lots of fishermen think they save money when they go to a discount center and plunk down about $50 for each trolling motor battery they need. They did the same thing last year, and they’ll do it again next year.[…]
An obscure paragraph of Murphy’s Law says that no matter how many deep-cycle batteries you connect to a trolling motor or how much storage capacity each one has, Mother Nature can hit them with enough wind or current to send you back to the dock early.[…]
Do you see all the detail that your fish finder’s screen can show you, or only part of it? Making the best possible use of your screen’s pixels helps you see subtle changes in bottom contour; differentiate between weeds, brush and submerged timber; see individual fish holding close to the bottom and each other; and estimate fish size more accurately.[…]
Many fishermen spend less time on the water during the winter, and that can be hard on their boat batteries. Proper off-season care includes keeping the batteries clean, and maintaining at least 75 percent of a full charge in them.[…]