Common Side Imaging Confusions Explained! | Bass Fishing Fish Finder Basics

what's up y'all welcome back to fish the moment today you're joining me in the middle of an empty parking lot nowhere near the lake and the reason for that is because I'm gonna be explaining how side imaging works in this video I'm actually going to be laying on objects in the middle of parking lots showing you how this fish finder picks up those different objects to the side of your boat and how it displays on the screen and also talk about how you can actually make sure you hit those objects with a cast after you see them on your side imaging where they are in relation to the boat all kinds of stuff I get a lot of questions about this and I finally want to put this one to bed and hopefully by the end of this you guys are gonna know exactly what your side imaging image is reading and what it's showing you and how to find a lot more fish with it so let's get into it [Music] okay so first up let's talk about the transducer and the transducer for my fish finder is connected at the back of my boat here on the outside of my boat and all site imaging transducers need to be mounted outside the boat and this transducer connects to the graph right there up on my steering wheel and so all the images they're showing up on your fish finder facade imaging originated from this transducer right here so first up let's explain what the side imaging image that has shown you and there's a lot of misconceptions about this so we pull up a side imaging image here you can see that right in the center of the screen there's a really bright beam and that's actually where the transducer the boat is and so the image actually originates at the top of the screen and it starts right where that beam is and that's our image originating right here off your transducer and then to create the image this transducer first pings straight down to the bottom of the lake or in this case the floor of the parking lot and it goes straight down so right now we're about a foot and a half off of the actual pavement here and so right now my graph would read one and a half feet of water right here one half feet and so if we take a ruler first the image comes here and it goes one and a half feet down to the bottom of the lake and the foot and a half between my transducer and the bottom of the ground which is represented by my ruler here is actually this space on the side scan image it's the space between that bright beam that's in the center which again is where the transducer is and then the bottom of the lake or the ground and that's where you kind of start seeing the color come in and so you can see there's actually a black space right here and that black space is the area between the transducer and the ground or the bottom of the lake which is represented by the ruler and so if you could imagine our bow out in the middle of a lake if we're now in the foot and half of our let's say we're in 20 feet of water well in your side imaging image everything between that beam and where the actual bottom starts where the color starts that's going to be the water column between the transducer and the bottom of the lake and so again right now we're dealing with a foot and a half of water in this case but again it could be 20 feet 40 feet 50 feet 60 feet okay so I don't want to beat a dead horse here but I do want to make sure that this is crystal clear and so I want to use one other visualization to explain this make sure everyone's on the same page and so here's an illustration I made that shows a boat on top of some water and you can see that there is a red bar that goes from the bottom of the boat to the bottom of the lake this space right here where this red bar is is the exact same thing as the black space in the side imaging image right here and just to be again super clear the bright beam and the center of this image right here that is where the transducer of the boat is or was because this is actually a pass recording I'll explain that here in a second but basically transducer is right here and then where the color starts on the right and left side that's the bottom of the lake and so the bottom of the lake and the illustration images here the bottom of the lake and the side imaging image is here the transducer of the boat in the side imaging image is here the transducer of the boat in a real-life illustration is here and the black space between the transducer and the bottom of the lake and the sight imaging image is the exact same thing as the space between the bottom of the transducer and the Bazo lake represented by the red bar in this image and you'll notice that there's black space and both the right and the left side of the side of Jeng transducer and that could be confusing to all the people and basically what happens is that site imaging transducer captures this kind of same image on both sides it kind of takes half of the image puts it on the right half of the image puts it on the left a little bit confusing but basically what this space here is this black space is actually what makes up your down imaging image in the other view and your fish finder and so to put this another way we can actually pull up a down imaging view and here's where the boat would be in a Down imaging image transducers right here the bottom of the lake is here and the black space here between the transducer and the bottom of the lake that is the exact same thing as the black space here in the side imaging image where you have a transducer and you have the bottom of the lake that black space and again there's a good duplicated black space one on the right one on the left and the down imaging trans or the down imaging image is created by basically stapling both of those images kind of together in a way a little bit confusing I don't want to get to the technicalities of that there are other videos that might people explain that better than I can but just know that this black space in this image in the black space in the side imaging image are the exact same thing and you can actually see fish just like you would on down imaging in your side imaging image by looking in this black space so and that was a long-winded explanation of that but I want to make sure that was super clear because it can be very confusing and I think it's very helpful to know going forward okay so now that we know that black space on the screen is actually the water between the transducer and the bottom of the lake we now have to know what the colored sections are on the right and left side which is actually what the side imaging is meant to capture and basically what side imaging transducer does is it goes straight down from the transducer to the bottom of the lake then it will ping right and left and so if we take this ruler will actually do is it will go straight down to the bottom of the lake then it's gonna shoot to the right and to the left a certain distance I'm going out with my ruler hopeless is making sense let's say right here we had 23 feet so it's gonna go 23 feet to the right and it's gonna go 23 feet to the left of the boat and basically what that does is it's going to create an image that shows you everything that's along the bottom to the right of your boat and to the left year boat on both sides using this image okay so let's say then that we have a brush pile which I'm representing with this laundry basket here 14 feet away from the boat 14 feet away from the boat and I'm using that ruler here to tell me that 14 feet away from the back of my boat we see a brush pile right here again the laundry basket and this is on the bottom of the lake that will show up on our side imaging like this this is basically what the image will look like this is just a brush pile I've graphed over before and right now this brush pile is 14 feet away a ruler length right now is 23 feet and remember the distance between the transducer and the bottom of the boat that's a foot and a half and so really the total distance our total range right now is 25 feet that's a foot and a half from the bottom of the transducer down to the ground and then 23 and 1/2 feet this direction out to the right side of my boat for a total range of 25 feet again it's really important to remember you actually don't have a full 25 foot range when you are scanning with your side stand it's not like you're going 25 feet to the right of your boat 25 feet to the left you're actually going a certain number of feet straight down there's a certain number of feet over so for example in this image you can see them like 20 feet of water and 20 feet of my image is being taken up by this black space which is the area between the bottom of my transducer it's the bottom of the lake then I have let's say an 80 foot range set that means I'm showing 60 feets to ride my boat 60 feet to the left of my boat so I'm really only covering 60 feet on both sides in that case in this case I'm only covering 23 feet even though my range is 25 feet hopefully that makes sense super important when you're trying to figure out how much distance you're covering with your side imaging and so one thing that people get confused about all the time with side imaging is where the objects they're showing up on their screen are in relation to their boat and so in this case we have this laundry basket the brush pile which is 14 feet away from my boat and it's just been captured by the side imaging transducer and so it'll show up in the very top right of your screen then as you continue to drive forward that image is going to continue collect data so you'll collect data here and this kind of swash right here you'll then collect data from here they'll collect data from here and it will build your image and you'll basically scan all out on the side of my truck here 25 feet the side of my boat in my truck all the way here so all this area basically where you see these high yellow lines all of that's going to get captured by the side imaging transducer and the image is going to keep kind of moving and moving and moving it's like a kind of a historical record and so I've actually moved my truck here and do that real quick ok so I just moved the boat in the truck head about 20 feet and if we were on the lake that would mean that my transducer scanned from where the state measure was right here all the way ahead 20 feet to where the transducer is now and also is scanning twenty three and a half feet to the right of my boat so now we've scanned basically a twenty by 23 foot square in this section and that's what's going to show up on the side imaging on the fishfinder and so the image now is going to show that my boat is over there and we're actually gonna see a new image at the top of the screen that basically is being scanned from a transducer here straight down all the way across this is at the top of the screen right now and my brush pile here is gonna be kind of saved in like the memory of the side scan and it's just going to be pushed down down down down the screen it's now going to show up on the screen right here and so we have our basket here now and our boat is over there and so if you kind of think about this image now you can see this is where the brush puddle is in the side scan image this is where the brush pile brush pile is right here in real life my boat's all the way over here and so if you're going to try - let's say hit this brush pile with a cast after you driven over it well you've just driven 20 feet past this brush pile you know that it's on the screen right here and you know your boat is now over there all you'd have to do to hit that spot is basically stop your boat right there spin around a bunch of up my boat okay so now when they get cast on that brush pile and I know that brush pile is 14 feet to the right of my boat and I also know that it's behind my boat and so if you just want to take kind of a random guess you can kind of cast diagonally off the back your boat off the front of your boat all right that brush pile try to hit it okay now this is really important the number one point of confusion I find with people who are trying to interpret sight imaging is they think they can tell how far away that brush pile is from their boat just by looking at the side imaging image but you cannot do that it does not work you can't say that from this point where the transducer is now to that brush pile is let's say 30 feet or even from the top of the screen to where the brush pile is 30 feet you can't tell distance kind of vertically on your side imaging image the reason for that is because you travel over different distances at different speeds all the time when you're graphing let me explain so take it back to this example here in the parking lot I just moved my truck ahead 20 feet and let's say I was moving at 3 miles an hour for 3 seconds to do that so I move 20 feet going 3 miles an hour in 3 seconds and that produce the image is on the screen now well let's say that instead of going 3 miles an hour I went 15 miles an hour well in 3 seconds I'm going to cover a lot more ground going 15 miles an hour than that well going 3 miles an hour and that's going to mean that my trucks can be way further that way and this brush pile is still going to be in the same spot on the screen the image is going to look pretty much the same might be a little bit different little bit distorted a little more shrunk but I can't then say that this brush pile is 20 feet behind my boat because I moved at a completely different speed and so that's something that confuses a lot of guys and it is not super intuitive but the best way to get around that is to either drop a marker buoy once you see this image going across just dropping it there or by actually marking it on your GPS and a video here that explains exactly how to do that and so check out this video it'll explain how to actually mark stuff on your fish finder scroll over to a drop away point and then turn around the cast on it and so again don't think that you can tell the distance between your boat just about looking at the image you have to use your waypoints use a marker buoy to determine that super important super misunderstood and one thing that I didn't explain but hopefully you guys understand is that the image from your side imaging unit is going to produce equal images on the right side of your boat and then the left side of your boat and so if you look over here I put a black crate down that I'm gonna say is let's say a rock pile and in this case our side imaging is showing a rock pile to the left of the boat and then a brush pile over here to the right of the boat and basically the image let's say the range is 25 feet again is going to be a foot and a half straight down from the transducer to the bottom of the lake or the parking lot then twenty three and a half feet to the left twenty three and a half feet to the right that's where you're going to be able to get your full image and so I know this can be very confusing guys and it's definitely not something be ashamed about if you have to watch this video a couple times also if you want to lose some comments let me know it also book a one-on-one video lesson with me I can do a Google hangout with you and talk through all this and explain it if you need some extra instruction this is again took me years to figure all this stuff out and it is very complicated so no shame there okay so at this point in the video I had planned to talk about what bass or fish look like on side imaging but this video is already 15 minutes long and it's a lot of information to process all at once and so I'm gonna split that off into a separate video and I'm sure I didn't cover everything absolutely perfectly there may have been a few things that may even have been explained as well as it could have been and so I'm going to try to address that in the next video as well based on your comments so feel free to leave a comment down below letting me know what you thought of the video what questions you had now we'll address those in the next part of this video and also just want to remind everyone that I am doing a fish the moment bass camp with a sonar class component on Sam Rayburn lake in Texas this January and all the informations on my website fish moment calm I'll be doing a four hour classroom session where I'll talk about fishfinder sonar explain how it all works how to use it to find fish in the classroom also be going out on the boat with ten anglers and setting up their fish finder in their boat with them explaining how it works on the lake showing you what fish look like on your fish finder stuff like that so if that's something you're interested in but if fish muncom go to the bass camp tab and then you'll be able to find the fishing sonar class and so check that on my website and again leave a comment with your questions so I can address them in my upcoming video ok guys so I know that was a lot of information to take in in one video but hopefully it was helpful in explaining how to interpret the side imaging image on your fish finder I know there's not been very many good videos made about this and it's a huge point confusion in the fishing community at large and so if you did enjoy this video and found it helpful please share it out with friends share that with anyone you know hopefully we can get everyone informed about how to actually use these fish finders we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on so again hope you enjoyed this video if you want more fishing content on electronics on the water stuff how actually going find fish on the lake with these units subscribe to fish at the moment and also check out my website fish the moment calm for a lot of other great information about fishing in general so thanks again for checking out this video I'll see you all next one [Music]

Channel: Fish the Moment

Views: 569,031

Rating: 4.8749881 out of 5

Keywords: Bass fishing, bass fishing tips, Fish the Moment, Jonny Schultz, Largemouth Bass Fishing, how to bass fish, how to catch bass, fish finder basics, how to read a fish finder, what do fish look like on a fish finder, bass on fish finder, how to read fishing sonar, down imaging explaination, fish finder explaination, fish finders for beginners, how to use a fish finder, how to use lowrance, how to read lowarnce, how to read humminbird, fish finder for beginners

Id: VwWqwN28pFw

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019