IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
IceShanty Main => General Ice Fishing Chit Chat => Topic started by: stinkyfingers on Feb 10, 2019, 02:37 PM
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Okay, time for this old dog to learn some new tricks. At issue is suspended schools of kokanee, maybe down 40' in 70' of water. My Marcum LX7 will sure point them out in the
water column but they roam in schools. If you drill over them you're guaranteed hot action but if you miss the school by fifty paces, you'll never see a one. Been on both sides of
that crapshoot. It occurs to me that sidefinder technology may be the answer. Looked at the Panoptix but the laughably low, low sticker price ($1500) stopped my heart. Decades
ago the Fishin' Buddy was touted as having that capability but I never heard if they actually worked. Anybody ever turned their fishfinder transducer at an angle and mounted it to
enable rotation below the ice? Better ideas out there?
Btw--- I put together a dandy jigging machine to pull them over to my location but I still need to get more or less within range for that to work.
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Back in the "Old Days" we used boat transducers and you could aim them and look around. I would think you could make that work for 50' or so at least give you a look around. I know from fishing from kokanee in the summer you need to find the area with the most fish because the schools are kind of loose but a majority of the fish are in an area.
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sportsmens direct has a device, or you could afro engineer your own with a piece of conduit & some addl. bits.
https://sportsmensdirect.com/shop/Sonic-Ice-Hopper/ice-hopper-hoppn-pole/
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I have a bottomline fishing budddy 11 with the sidefinder, I use it with my ice 35, and it helps.
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sportsmens direct has a device, or you could afro engineer your own with a piece of conduit & some addl. bits.
https://sportsmensdirect.com/shop/Sonic-Ice-Hopper/ice-hopper-hoppn-pole/
There we go. Won't take much Afro-Irish engineering to get something approaching what I had in mind. As appleye reminds us, we used to use re-purposed boat fish finders for that purpose. Which prompted me to check down in my bone pile and there was an old Eagle Fishmark finder that I had bought 30 years ago with just this project in mind. Still in the box unopened. Man, am I getting senile!
I'll take it from here. Thank you gentlemen.
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They say with age comes senility, I have a bunch of projects sitting around waiting for me to find them again... ;D
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Okay, time for this old dog to learn some new tricks. At issue is suspended schools of kokanee, maybe down 40' in 70' of water. My Marcum LX7 will sure point them out in the
water column but they roam in schools. If you drill over them you're guaranteed hot action but if you miss the school by fifty paces, you'll never see a one. Been on both sides of
that crapshoot. It occurs to me that sidefinder technology may be the answer. Looked at the Panoptix but the laughably low, low sticker price ($1500) stopped my heart. Decades
ago the Fishin' Buddy was touted as having that capability but I never heard if they actually worked. Anybody ever turned their fishfinder transducer at an angle and mounted it to
enable rotation below the ice? Better ideas out there?
Btw--- I put together a dandy jigging machine to pull them over to my location but I still need to get more or less within range for that to work.
The schools move around. If you can figure out their basic pattern, then set up on top of the "highway", run a jigging machine to get their attention, and you can have non-stop action. We had a magical day like that at the Wolf yesterday... ;) ;D
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There we go. Won't take much Afro-Irish engineering to get something approaching what I had in mind. As appleye reminds us, we used to use re-purposed boat fish finders for that purpose. Which prompted me to check down in my bone pile and there was an old Eagle Fishmark finder that I had bought 30 years ago with just this project in mind. Still in the box unopened. Man, am I getting senile!
I'll take it from here. Thank you gentlemen.
Atta boy! I love what a little brainstorming can do.Sometimes if I'm thinking of something I spill it on someone that has no idea what I'm talking about. Just getting it out in the air can sometimes help. I've used my ice graph 'ducer on a stick and just move it 90 degrees to get a (one) side finder.
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I regret that that the Sonic Ice Hopper that JonPerry mentioned appears to be no longer made. However, the concept of rotating an angled transducer puck surely is no great leap of mechanical engineering.
Co_Dinky… the Wolf is a little out of my natural range so I'm working the Mile instead. On that lake they traditionally cruise in an area about 1/2 mile x a mile with a couple of intervening islands and depths from 30 to 90 feet. Up and down the water column chasing plankton. I've got a good jigging machine but as for finding the "highways", I wouldn't know where to begin. Glad you got over them yesterday. Ain't that amazing fishing?
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So... Jigging machine stinky. Will it work in -20F? Care to share a concept? I've been looking for something to bob dead bait when it's way too cold to maintain a wind tippy. ;D
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I :clap:regret that that the Sonic Ice Hopper that JonPerry mentioned appears to be no longer made. However, the concept of rotating an angled transducer puck surely is no great leap of mechanical engineering.
Co_Dinky… the Wolf is a little out of my natural range so I'm working the Mile instead. On that lake they traditionally cruise in an area about 1/2 mile x a mile with a couple of intervening islands and depths from 30 to 90 feet. Up and down the water column chasing plankton. I've got a good jigging machine but as for finding the "highways", I wouldn't know where to begin. Glad you got over them yesterday. Ain't that amazing fishing?
11 Mile would actually be a little closer for us too, but the populations have been so down the past 4 years, we haven't been there to chase them for some time. We don't always hit pay dirt at Wolford either, but this trip was a gem! ;D Non stop action, SO much fun! And the results out of the smoker yesterday were wonderful!!! :thumbsup: :clap: