InTheBite

Two Minute Warning: Tools of the Trade

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By Captain Scott “Fraz” Murie 

In the last few years, fishing in the northern Gulf of Mexico has evolved into a high-tech business. The tournament fishing has changed dramatically. Back in the day, most tournaments had boundary lines and perimeters that you had to stay within.

For instance, you could not fish west of this point or east of that point or south of some other point.

Tournament boundaries were meant to keep the competition even, but that’s old school thinking. Today with the technology, speed, fuel and bait available to captains, you can fish anywhere you want.

To compete in today’s Gulf tournaments, you really need the right tools. Speed is one tool that gives you great advantage over the old “slow boat to China.” Also, lots of fuel. It’s not unusual to see boats loaded with 1500 gallons of fuel bladders in their cockpits and strapped to their bows. If you have the fuel, it enables you to venture off 300 miles in one direction to fish oil platforms and oil rigs that have seen little fishing pressure. The days of trolling the lumps, spurs and canyons, hoping and poking along during a tournament, are pretty much gone unless you’re the one on the “slow boat to China.”

Then there is the coveted sonar, like the Furuno CSH8. These tools provide extreme advantage – allowing you to track fish 360-degrees around the boat. You can pick up one of these units for a hundred plus grand!

Another must-have tool are tuna tubes. Not just two or four, but 12 or 20 – so you always have live bait ready and waiting. The more tubes you have, the less time you have to spend catching bait, and therefore more time marlin fishing.

All of these advancements do not come without their downside. I’ve seen a lot of boats fall out of the tournament circuit and have also heard a lot of negative feedback about tournament fishing. Some owners and crews feel they can’t compete with the speed, distance and advanced technology. Being “outgunned” makes it feel that much more risky for them to drop 20, 30 or 50 grand in the Calcutta. These crews feel they are starting the tournament at a disadvantage – and they’re probably right.

While some have withdrawn, I have also seen more new boats with the right tools getting into the tournament circuit. So, the boats that have quit tournament fishing hasn’t hurt the overall tournament participation – just changed the names on the transoms.

What does it all boil down to? If you can’t fish with the big boys, stay at the dock!

That’s my two minute warning. Fraz

Airmar Announces New Wide Beam Chirp-Ready Transducer Aimed For Freshwater and Inshore Anglers

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TM165HW Enhances Performance of Today’s Leading Fishfinders

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  MILFORD, NH. (August 2, 2019) – AIRMAR® Technology Corporation, a world leader in ultrasonic sonar and Chirp technology, is pleased to announce the TM165HW, a 600 watt, Chirp-ready transducer in an easy-to-upgrade transom mount housing. “Anglers in the freshwater market have asked us for a high performance, 600 watt, transom mount Chirp option as an alternative to conventional 600 watt transducers,” stated Jennifer Matsis, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “The TM165HW provides anglers with better ability to find bass and crappie in structure and more sensitivity to detect bottom hugging walleye on soft bottom. Anglers, overall can expect more detailed returns of fish and baitfish targets over a greater area under their boat” Matsis added.

The TM165HW delivers an ideal combination of power, sensitivity and coverage for bass, walleye, and inshore anglers looking to enhance their fishfinder’s performance.  Traditionally, high frequency transducers provide the best resolution, but normally have a narrow beamwidth that limits the viewable area under the boat. The patent-pending, ceramic design enables the TM165HW to deliver an average beamwidth of 30° across the entire high frequency band of 150-250 kHz. The results are three times the total coverage and more fish revealed in a wider area under the boat than is possible with traditional non-Chirp transducers. In addition to providing vast bottom coverage, the wide beam enables excellent fish detection in the upper water column, an area missed by most narrow beam transducers. Airmar’s expanding series of wide beam transducers deliver large, crisp return images on the display with a noise-free, clear picture of the action below. The TM165HW is perfect for fishing boats up to 25 feet (8 meters).

The TM165HW is initially available with an Airmar Mix & Match cable that easily pairs with all major fishfinder brands when connected with the appropriate adapter.  At this point, the sonar unit connected to the TM165HW may need to be manually set to High Chirp at power up.  With manual setup, the TM165HW is compatible with with Lowrance HDS Live/ HDS Carbon, Humminbird Helix, Raymarine Axiom Pro and Simrad EVO 3 sonar units.  All Sonar manufacturers will have future releases of software which will recognize Transducer ID™ in the TM165HW and will automatically set to the correct parameters.

Dealers can order the TM165HW by contacting Gemeco Marine Accessories or AIRMAR EMEA.   MSRP for the new TM165HW is $499.00.

Fish Finders: Then and Now

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Fish finders – Old school to new.

This column first appeared in our June 2019 Issue Volume 18 Edition 4 of InTheBite The Professionals’ Sportfishing Magazine.

by Captain Scott “Fraz” Murie

A lot has changed since I got into the business of fishing. Electronics have become the most important tool you can have on board your boat. When considering all of the abilities of modern electronics, I sometimes think of back “in the day” – if we had a Loran and a Raytheon 735A fathometer, and a booster on our CB radio, we had it going on.

The fathometer was a paper graph machine that scrolled and was marked by a stylus needle. The stylus drawing showed the contour of the bottom and any fish or bait as it scrolled. Actually, it was a pretty amazing machine at the time. Our Loran was operated using microwave towers that transmitted signals from shore, so your range was limited and bad weather decreased its accuracy. When we would take our boat to Mexico or the Bahamas, or other faraway places, you could forget it because our Loran was useless. It was all navigating by charts, parallel rules and dividers.

Today that’s all changed. You can take a boat anywhere now and never be out of touch. You can even see at night! Our satellite systems and technology are pinpoint accurate. That brings me to the latest and greatest game changing fish finder – the new Furuno Omni Scanner.

This is a full color scanner. It scans 360 degrees in 0.54 seconds. Think about that! That is almost two full 360-degree scans per second. This scanner is a game changer when it comes to finding fish, bait, or structure. With this tool fishermen can actually identify the species of fish under the boat. They are able to mark and track a single fish, enabling the anglers to present a bait directly to the targeted fish.

This scanner has become so popular here in the Northern Gulf that I know of at least a dozen boats that had them installed during the off season – previously only a hand full of boats had them. The sonar takes the guess work out of the question, “Is there any fish or bait or structure around the boat?” It reads out several hundred yards from the boat. For instance, you might be heading south but you see something on your sonar screen that is 300 yards to the west. So, you go over there and you get covered up. The point is, you would never have made the turn to the west without the sonar. It is truly a game changer as far as finding and tracking fish.

These scanners are expensive – with a typical price tag of between 100k and 150k depending on the installation. But if you are throwing down 20k, 40k or 60k a weekend in tournaments, it’s a no brainer.  A lot of boats without the scanner are having second thoughts about betting against the sonar boats.  You can’t hardly blame them. Also, there is nothing automatic about this machine. Like anything else, you have to learn how to use it. When using it properly you are constantly panning in and out, up and down – your head is literally in the sonar all the time. It takes a lot of time to get dialed in on this machine. But once you do get it dialed in, you won’t want to go fishing without it.

Technology is an amazing thing. You need it now days to stay in the game.

 – That’s my two-minute warning. Fraz

ICAST 2018 “Best of Show” Awarded to Garmin with Panoptix LiveScope

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Garmin® Panoptix LiveScope wins Best of Show at ICAST 2018

New sonar technology wins top honors at industry’s most prestigious trade show

OLATHE, Kan./July 16, 2018/Business Wire – Garmin International, Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRMN), today announced it earned the coveted “Best of Show” award for its new Panoptix LiveScope™ at the world’s largest sportfishing trade show, the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST), presented by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and held last week in Orlando, Fla. Prior to being selected as the Best of Show, Panoptix LiveScope was first voted by media and buyers in attendance as the “Best Electronics” in the ICAST New Product Showcase where 974 products were entered by 331 companies, all vying for the ICAST 2018 Best of Show award.

“To not only win the ICAST Best Electronics award, but the Best of Show award, too – it’s an honor we’re incredibly proud of,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of global consumer sales. “Panoptix LiveScope delivers the best of both scanning and live sonar technologies and there’s nothing out there even close to it. These awards solidify our commitment to giving anglers and mariners the most innovative technology on the water, and they further strengthen our desire to be the top marine electronics brand in the world.”

Panoptix LiveScope is a live scanning sonar that gives anglers higher resolution and easier-to-interpret images of structure, bait and fish swimming below and around the boat than ever before. Garmin’s revolutionary Panoptix™ all-seeing sonar technology was the first to deliver live sonar images in real-time – forwards, backwards, sideways and below the boat – even while stationary. Now, thanks to the active scanning capabilities of Panoptix LiveScope, anglers can see images and movement so clear and precise that it’s even possible to distinguish between species of fish. See Panoptix LiveScope in action here.

“Panoptix changed the electronics game a couple of years ago,” said Jason Christie, Bassmaster Elite Series and Garmin pro. “Now, LiveScope is even taking it to the next level. The cool thing about it is the simplicity of it. What you see is what is there. The only picture that could be better is if you dive into the water with goggles, and I’m not sure that’s really even better.”

Another Bassmaster Elite Series and Garmin pro, Fred Roumbanis, agrees. “Never before have you been able to tell what species of fish you are looking at like this,” he said. “You can see the movement, you can see the profile. I was snapping a jig on the bottom and I saw a walleye and I could see the fins of the walleye! There’s no way I could have seen that before.”

Like other Garmin Panoptix transducers, LiveScope features two modes in one transducer –LiveScope Down and LiveScope Forward – and can be installed on a trolling motor or the transom (recommended only for LiveScope Forward). Depending on the angler’s fishing preferences and techniques, LiveScope can easily be adjusted to change views. Simply point the LiveScope transducer down to see directly below the boat, or forward to see around the boat. Either view provides incredibly sharp, real-time scanning sonar images up to 200 feet down or away from the boat, even when the boat is stationary.

The Panoptix LiveScope scanning sonar system includes a compact GLS 10 sonar black box with an LVS32 transducer and a simple plug-and-play Garmin Marine Network connector for easy installation and integration with a compatible Garmin chartplotter. A trolling motor barrel and shaft mounting kit and a transom mounting kit are also included. Panoptix LiveScope is compatible with Garmin’s ECHOMAP™ Plus 7Xcv/7Xsv/9Xsv chartplotter/sonar combo series, as well as the GPSMAP® 8400/8600 multifunction displays, GPSMAP 7400/7600, GPSMAP 10X2/12X2, GPSMAP 12X2xsv Touch and GPSMAP 7X2/9X2 series chartplotters.

Available now, the Panoptix LiveScope system has a suggested retail price of $1,499.99.

For more information, videos and images, visit www.garmin.com/panoptix.