4 Suprising Things Live Sonar Has Taught Us

By Lance Valentine

Live or Forward-Facing Sonar has taken the fishing world by storm the past few years and has also created a storm of discussion around the use of it for recreational and tournament anglers. Whether you use it or not, there is no denying that “video game” fishing is here to stay. While most anglers use LIVE sonar to pinpoint fish to target and see how they are reacting to certain presentations and retrieves, the past year or so has also shown us many things about fish and fish behavior we never expected. Below are four things that have surprised me while watching Forward Facing Sonar.

1) Fish will follow a LONG way when trolling: Anglers know this, but they may underestimate how long and in what conditions fish will follow. While trolling, it is not unusual to watch a fish follow a lure, sometimes even darting into your trolling spread, for a half mile or more! It seems that fish are a LOT more curious than we thought and most fish will examine a lure and NEVER bite, regardless of what changes an angler makes. Watching these fish follow for so long has encouraged me to changes speeds and directions a lot more this year in hopes of triggering bites from following fish

2) River fish don’t always face up current: River fishing with LIVE sonar has probably been the most eye opening. We used to think that walleye set on the bottom, facing into the current. You jig would come from upstream; the fish would see it and bite it or let it pass. Well, that is NOT true all the time. This spring we saw a lot of walleye see our jig, lift off the bottom and follow it swim downstream to follow the jig. Sometimes these fish would follow for hundreds of yards before attacking the jig or losing interest and disappearing.

3) River fish don’t always hit a jig from behind: This goes along with #2 and was probably the most puzzling thing I saw this spring. Again, out thought was fish faced upstream, saw our jig and sucked it in. If we missed a fish, we would attribute it to “short strikes” and shorten our plastic body, add a stinger hook or jig slower. BUT LIVE sonar showed us that some of those fish that follow the jig downstream (see #2) often hit a jig from the FRONT and just smack the head, never getting the jig hook or stinger in their mouth….hmmmmm.

4) Your transom mounted sonar can fool you: Successful anglers know that when you are trolling you have a much better chance of catching fish if your lure is ABOVE the fish and use their transom mounted sonar to find fish, determine their depth and set the depths of lure accordingly. Well, we may be fishing our lures TOO LOW. Forward Facing Sonar in “Scout” mode on the front of the boat while trolling has shown us that sometimes walleye will be high in the water column (let’s say 10-12’ deep) but when the boat goes over they drop and by the time we see them on our transom mounted transducer they may be as deep as 20-25’ down! If we use that info, our lures are TOO LOW to attract the higher active fish. I now intentionally keep one or two lures up in the top part of the column even if I am not marking them.

While LIVE or Forward-Facing Sonar is an invaluable tool used the way it was intended, understand how much it can show you about fish activity and behavior and you will become a better angler.