North Australian FISH FINDER forums

Hey Ronje

I have attached drawing of angle I find most ideal. Perpendicular and dead on does work occasionally but that 45 degree angle seems to be the best. Now take in to consideration this is for fish in open water not sitting on snags. Staging Barra on snags bringing up with current still works well. Just what I and some mates have found. The biggest trick is burning lure close enough without spooking then ensure it courses that line at right water depth at a pace that doesn't spook the fish.

Here is one from last night only ended up with an 84 as I had two rookies on the boat spooking a lot of fish. This one was on that 45 degree angle floating the jackall just above its head then a slow roll away.

Cheers
Gibbsy

Back again.

Gibbsy, is your little diagram vertical or horizontal AND which mode on the live imaging do you use most often?

What role does CHIRP play in live sonar animation?

A very significant role.

The introduction of CHIRP allowed better resolution of targets close together. THAT feature is called range resolution and separates fish that are close together or close to the bottom.

Like so with a simple CHIRP sonar in which CHIRP can be switched on or off to compare the effects. On the left is
normal pulse sounder while on the right is the same sonar unit with its CHIRP switched on. Bit of a “no contest” isn’t it.
On the pulse sounder, there are 2 blobs. At top looks like a few “blobs” close together. Moby Dick or sharks close together? Under that “blob” is another halfway down towards the bottom.

Switch on CHIRP and the top “blob” is clearly 7 fish close together. The lower blob has moved slightly towards the left and is clearly a fish arch.

THAT isn’t all that CHIRP brought to the fisho’s “table”. This significant improvement is called Range Resolution.

The other thing that it brought to the fisho’s table was increased terminology confusion. The word resolution had been misunderstood for years before that.

Remember the terms “clarity, definition, resolution”? These terms were used like they were interchangeable all meaning the same thing. They weren’t interchangeable and they referred to different things. Confusion has grown and grown.

Then we had another one thrown into the mix. Range resolution to distinguish it from screen resolution. Did that distinguish the term from the others? No. Just made the confusion worse.

That was a few years ago with the introduction of CHIRP technology.Fast forward to sonar animation (live).

Look on ANY of the videos now produced by the usual experts, guides, techos, gurus or retailers.

The terminology confusion hasn’t gone away. Its simply gotten worse. The experts etc simply don’t understand the technology.

If they are going to be giving out advice more than what they are sponsored to do, then they have to understand at least the basics.

They just get paid to write the product up using terminology that easily misunderstood (especially by themselves) due to being "sponsored" (an obligation to produce favourable opinion in exchange for free product).

There are a quite a few in Aus like that including the “ego” brigade.

And who pays the price for the confusion brought about by this “fake news”?

The fisho who can only “phone a friend” to find out anything. The friend usually can’t help either even if they own and use a live imaging sonar.

Let’s pull “range resolution” out of this dog’s breakfast of confusion ‘cos it’s the most important term of them all.

The image above shows the impact of CHIRP.

What range resolution means is the ability to distinguish between targets that are close together. CHIRP has the ability to resolve the difference in range between 2 or more targets and display each target separately.

Hence the somewhat technical term “Range Resolution” (like resolving the blobs into 7 different targets above).

We can blame the “engineering boffins” of the manufacturers for that term. What they are describing is how the technology can accurately resolve “range” to display image separation.

Fishos don’t want to know the technical process (the how). They want to know the outcome (separation of images close together).

If they had called it target separation in the first place, the term would have been recognised for what it meant immediately by fishos.

So from now on, I’m going to call it target separation.

Definition is another misunderstood term thrown around which simply means the ability to show detail of an object or image. Nothing at all to do with range resolution/target separation (except in the minds of the confused).

Definition has everything to do with the frequency being used. The higher the frequency in use, the smaller the object that can be seen thus the better the definition.

Here are some examples of definition Vs frequency. Straight science and nothing to do with manufacturer.
Compare the definition numbers above to the “fuzzy/blurry” images on the screens of your live animation sounders. Why the difference?

I said earlier that target resolution is determined by the speed of sound in water and the bandwidth of scanning CHIRP pulse that’s sent out. Those 2 things alone.

You’ll recall what I said about a manufacturer with a new transducer “improving target separation”. Transducers DON”T improve target separation UNLESS the new model improves the bandwidth. In technical terms that’s called changing the Q of the transducer.

In this case the new transducer is larger than its predecessor therefore contains more “crystals”. The new transducer is supposed to increase the “target separation” from an original claim of 24 inches (610mm) to 14 inches (355 mm).


THAT’S an enormous improvement and most certainly accounts for the rise in popularity (and sales) amongst a gullible and confused fishing population.

So what’s the easiest way to improve target resolution to that degree? We can’t do anything about the speed of sound in water so the only way is to turn up the level of CHIRP.

I suspect that’s what’s been done with nobody the wiser due to the confusion. Sells a lot of product though.

The obvious question is why aren’t the manufacturer competitors doing a similar thing? Continuous improvement is a natural progession yet these guys are busy playing secret squirrel with each other and the loser is the customer.

One might say that the manufacturer policy is “we’ve got a pretty good electronics thing going here but the desires of pesky customers keep getting in the way”.

Hi ronje

I only run scout/perspective mode. Barra will show a similar image on scout when high, active and on the move. When sulking , stationary or deep they tend to look more like that sounder shot.

Here is a few from last night biggest went 94.

Unfortunately had to keep it due to it swallowing the six in plastic into its stomach. All you can see is the stinger at entrance of its stomach.

Unfortunately there was no way this 94 was going to be able to regurgitate lure and be fine nor would we be able to remove the lure without harming fish as the single pinned fish inside entrance of stomach.

Cheers
Gibbsy

Hi Gibbsy

Thank you for all the extra info.

I've tried to send u a PM with my e-mail address (ronje1@optusnet.com.au) inviting you to e-mail me so we can talk about stuff while not clogging the page with stuff not on topic.

There's a lot in your stuff like that and that I also don't agree with so, we can talk about it on e-mail instead rather than on here

Waddya reckon?

regards
Ronje

Amazing what y'all learning with this new tech!

Yep, and it ain't rocket science.

I don't know everything about this stuff but the idea is to put up on here the technical facts. Its not opinion, myth or conjecture. Simple technical facts that are easily proved.

And its aimed at 3 types of readers.

First group is average Joe Fisho who (if a bit more aware of these facts) is quite capable of pulling themselves out of the sea of confusion and basing their fishing on fact not fiction. A better understanding is the first step.

The second group is the retailers and manufacturers (including lure manufacturers of all types and sizes) who have disappointingly let their customer base down. They need to lift their game to stay in the race for customers.

The 3rd type are the gurus, experts, sponsorship recipients and experts who need to know the facts about what they are talking about.

Changing the habits of groups type 1 and 2 can only be prompted by a more informed customer base and that's what I'm trying to offer.

Changing the habits of group 3 can be frustrating and I'm convinced that the only way to do that is by gentle coaching. We're dealing with egos there so the recipient basically has to find their own way out of the delima that their ego has put them in.

If that fails (it takes time), then the next step is a more drastic one (brutality) and I'd prefer not going down that path.

regards
Ronje