Humminbird Side Imaging reveals river structures
Dr. Jason Halfen
Professional Walleye Angler
Navigation:
Many river anglers are familiar with the fish-attracting abilities of man-made structures like wing dams and rip-rap shorelines. This past week, I had a chance to hook up with James Holst and Dustin Stewart to see how these river features are handled by Humminbird's family of Side Imaging locators.
Here's another wingdam. I imaged this dam in the same manner as the one above....moving upstream past it at 4.5 mph. In this particular dam, the entire body of the dam is to the left of the boat's path, so it only appears in the left side image.
Some cool things to note about this dam are the anchor drag marks that are in the right side image, and also how the current swirling past the tip of the dam (again, marked by the circular cursor) has shaped the rock and sand downstream of the tip. It's easy to see a couple of distinct circular patterns generated by the force of water moving rock and sand behind the dam.
Navigation:
Here's how a rip-rap shoreline appears using Humminbird's Side Imaging locators. I imaged this shoreline moving downstream. The shoreline itself is shown in dark blue along the left of the image, with rocks extending down the shore until they contact the sandy bottom of the river channel. The transition between the rip rap and the sand bottom is marked by the circular cursor. At certain times of the year, we HAMMER walleye and sauger by dragging light plastics or livebait right along this transition, which deflects enough current to hold feeding gamefish.
This first image is a wingdam. You can see it extending from the left end of the image through the centerline, with the tip of the dam marked by the round cursor. I imaged this dam moving upstream at ~ 4.5 mph, so the upriver (front) face of the dam is up.
Some cool things to note about this dam are (1) the small rockpile just downstream of the main body of the dam (below the dam, in this images), and (2) the fish (marked by the red arrow) sitting just where he's supposed to be....in the slack water pocket at the base of the front face of the dam.
Humminbird's Side Imaging technology provided all of that information, including the shape of the dam, the precise lcoation of its tip, the neat rockpile just below the dam, and even fish relating to the dam....all in one upstream pass at 4.5 mph.
What collection of Side Images would be complete without some good images of fish?
Here's one that we captured the other day. Maybe we should have a contest to see who can guess the number of fish shown in this image. I wish I could repeat some of the things that were said in the boat when we saw this image live...but this is a family site so I'll omit them for now.
