Find More Bass On Side Imaging | Bass Fishing Sonar Instruction and Explanation Humminbird Lowrance

what's up y'all welcome back to fish the moment in this video i want to explain what six different types of cover look like on side imaging so let's get into it [Music] now before we start identifying different types of cover on side imaging it's really important that you understand how to interpret a side imaging image i've actually made several videos explaining how to interpret the image you see on the screen here i've actually gone out the parking lots using objects above water to explain how the image is created as well as other videos on how to identify fish on your side imaging unit and so i would highly recommend checking out the videos on the screen here before checking out this video because they'll make this video make a lot more sense and you'll be able to easily understand what i'm talking about when you watch all these videos in sequence number one rock piles the first type of cover we're going to identify are rock piles and rock piles are basically just piles of rocks in the middle of the lake and they come in all different shapes and sizes sometimes rock piles will be on soft bottom like sand or mud and you'll have some bigger boulders or junk rock mixed in other times you may have smaller pea gravel rock with bigger boulder size or softball sized rocks and the different size in the rocks will attract crawfish bait fish and then as a result bass and so i spend a lot of time graphing with my side imaging to identify rock piles because these are great ambush points that bass will group up on to feed on all kinds of forage now there are two primary identifiers of a rock pile the first is that most good rock piles are going to look brighter on your screen than the rest of your side imaging image this is because a rock is a hard solid object it's made of well rock and therefore it's going to have a stronger return than a softer object like wood or silt or sand and i've actually explained this concept in my video explaining how to identify different types of objects on down imaging now i would definitely recommend checking out that video as well if you want to better understand why the image on your screen is going to be brighter or darker depending on the hardness of an object but assuming this is all making sense so far a lot of times when i identify rock piles i'm looking for these difference in brightness on the screen and if you find an area on your screen that is darker and then all of a sudden it becomes bright usually you're going to be dealing with some harder bottom and a lot of times that's going to be some sort of rock whether that is big boulder size rock or even just a patch of slate rock that's laying flats to bottom now in addition to looking for the bright spots in your side imaging you also want to look for the shadows that the rocks are casting on the bottom and if you don't understand how the sound imaging image creates its image and how these shadows are created definitely check out this video explaining how to identify fish on a fish finder it explains this whole concept and it will make this video make a lot more sense and so basically these shadows are going to show you where these rocks are and for the most part i'm looking for shadows they're anywhere from a quarter inch to two inches long these are rocks that might be anywhere from a foot to two or three feet off the bottom and these are the type of rocks that bass like to use to ambush bait fish now there are times where bass will just set up on a hard spot on the bottom but a lot of times the better rock piles i find are going to have longer blacker shadows because they're going to provide those bass a better ambush point to ambush bait fish and crawfish and so i always am graphing around to look for the bright spots on the screen that also have good black streaks through them or the shadows this is the ideal situation to find a lot of fish in a rock pile and it may take you a long time to find a rock pile that looks as good as the ones i'm showing on my screen here but when you do you're usually going to put a lot of fish in the boat and one important thing to remember is you don't always need to find giant rock piles with rocks that are three or four feet tall and they're the size of your bedroom a lot of times you can find fish relating to very small rock piles that might be the size of the front deck your boat and that have rocks are only six inches to a foot tall especially if your lake doesn't have a lot of rock cover a lot of times on lakes that have silty mud bottoms or flat sandy bottoms just a small amount of rock can attract a lot of bait fish and as a result attract a lot of bass number two brush piles the next type of cover we're going to talk about are brush piles and brush piles are basically just piles of wood that have been dropped in the middle of the lake and sometimes these are full trees that people drag out in the middle of the lake they can be christmas trees or sometimes just stacks of logs and these brush piles are pretty easy to identify on a fish finder when the brush piles are relatively new let's say less than a year or two old and you'll actually be able to see the branches of the trees pretty clearly on side imaging just like you do in this image and these are some of the easier brush piles to find and it's pretty easy to know that this is brushed just by looking at the side imaging image unfortunately not all the brush piles you'll find on your leg are going to look as obvious as the one on the screen here a lot of times brush piles will be in the water for a long time let's say three to five years and they'll start to decay over time and this will make the brush piles a little bit harder to distinguish on your side imaging because the wood will give off a weaker return when it's older than it does when it's brand new or let's say less than a year old as a result sometimes brush piles can be very tricky to identify on your side imaging unit because those tree branches are almost transparent on the side imaging and they blend in with the bottom and so i've found some tricks over the years to identify some of these older brush piles and i've also found some ways to identify which brush piles are going to be better to fish based on how new they are and how big they are based on what i'm seeing on side imaging so let's get into it here's an example of one of these brush piles that's harder to see on the side imaging because it's an older brush pile and the logs and the wood are beginning to decay and these brush piles usually aren't as productive for me as the newer brush piles because those logs and things like that have begun to decay and they're not as hard or solid as they used to be which is going to cause them to attract less bait fish and as a result fewer fish now can you catch fish how these brush piles still absolutely but i find that my best brush piles are the ones that have been the lake for less than three years and it still show up pretty clearly on side imaging now i will say that the best brush piles a lot of times are the ones that are freshly planted and have only been the lake for about two weeks or the ones that have been the lake for let's say three months or longer there's kind of this in between period where a fresh brush pile gets put in the lake and then the leaves start to decay after a couple weeks and as those leaves start to die the bait fish and the fish start to avoid that brush pile but then once all leaves are gone then the fish will pull back into the brush pile as well as the bait fish and that brush pile is good then from about three months out all the way to about that three year mark now again you can catch fish on brush piles that have been in the lake for more than three years but usually i find that my best brush piles with big groups of fish are those newer brush piles or relatively new three years or younger and those are the ones that i always try to look for when i'm graphing for brush piles with my side imaging especially on lakes that have a ton of brush piles like lake dardanelle in arkansas lake eufaula and alabama places where people just plant brush like crazy all over the lake and so while brush piles are relatively easy to identify inside imaging it's important to look for these brush piles that show up very clearly on your side imaging unit and some of you may be worried that the settings on your fish finder aren't set properly and therefore you may not be able to determine what a good brush pile looks like from a bad brush pile just because those settings aren't set properly i've actually made a video explaining how to set up the settings on your fish finder regardless of the brand now check out that video it'll make sure that you have the right settings so that you should be able to identify the difference between these newer brush piles and the old brush piles and put a lot of fish in the boat really quick guys i want to let you know that i'm going to be hosting a virtual seminar focused on advanced bass fishing electronics techniques and you can sign up for the seminar on my website fishthemoment.com just go to the virtual seminars tab you get more information about this seminar and it's going to be held over a zoom meeting from 6 pm to 9 pm on june 26 which is a friday and the topics for this seminar are not going to overlap at all with my youtube videos i know i've made a lot of youtube videos about basic interpretation and understanding of fish finders but this class can be focused more on taking you to the next level it's kind of like a 3.0 or a 4.0 as opposed to the 1.0 type of lesson and what i want to focus on is teaching you guys how to actually interpret the images so you know if you should fish a spot when the best time to fish eat spot is should you come back in two three hours or is the spot completely worthless and you should just give up on it entirely and we'll be talking about how to identify active bass the best baits to use in those situations and all kinds of stuff to help me put a ton of fish in the boat and i haven't covered before in my youtube videos and so if you guys are interested in the seminar there are only 30 spots available i think right now there are 19 spots left so i would sign up as quick as you can again that is on friday june 26th from 6 p.m to 9 p.m on fishthemoment.com number three stumps the next type of cover we identify are stumps and stumps are one of the most overlooked types of cover and one that i fish all the time to put big bass in the boat and stumps can be somewhat difficult to identify inside imaging if you don't know what you're looking for and so let me explain the nuances of identifying stumps with your side scans you can put a lot of big fish in the boat this summer so stumps can be somewhat tricky to identify on side imaging because unlike a rock which has a strong return and therefore shows up as a bright object in your side imaging most of the stumps you find will be in the lake for let's say 10 to 15 years and therefore not have a very strong return this causes them to blend in with the bottom of the lake and the only way you can really identify these stumps is by looking for the black shadows that the stumps cast and usually these shadows are going to be about the size of a jelly bean on your screen the reason for that is because the stumps aren't going to be that tall off the bottom but they're going to be pretty wide because it's the base of a tree that was cut down before the lake was flooded or it has fallen down over time and so these shadows are going to be not very long but somewhat wide and therefore resemble the shape of a jelly bean and so that's what i'm looking for on my side imaging when i'm trying to identify stumps and a lot of times i don't actually even see the stump itself because again it will blend in with the bottom of the lake but if i see those shadows there i know that it's not a rock because it doesn't have a brighter return and i see that jelly bean size shadow so i know it's probably gonna be a stump and a lot of times you can even see fish in the shadows of those stumps because those shadows are somewhat wide and long enough to be able to see dots in the shadow of that stump and you can find a lot of fish that way but a lot of times i don't see fish in them and i'll just pull up and fish them regardless if i see bait fish in the area and so stumps are a very sneaky type of cover that again are very overlooked and something that i'm always looking for on my side imaging because not many fishermen are going to actually target them just because they're a little bit tricky to find and you can get a big advantage over your competitors if you can learn to identify these stumps on your home lake number four shell beds the next type of cover we're going to identify is shell beds and this is by far the most difficult type of cover to identify on your side imaging shell beds are basically muscle shells that are laying flat on the bottom of the lake and therefore they are not sitting up off the bottom and casting a shadow that you can easily spot with your side imaging at the same time shell beds are a little bit harder than the surrounding body so sometimes you'll find that areas with shell beds are going to have a brighter or stronger return unfortunately rocks will also give off a stronger return and so it's sometimes difficult to determine if you're looking at rocks or shell beds on the bottom but there is a method for identifying shell beds that is about 75 percent accurate and will allow you to differentiate rocks from shell 75 of the time it's not perfectly accurate but it will get the job done and point you in the right direction as i mentioned earlier shells are usually harder than the surrounding bottom and therefore going to give off a brighter or stronger return and this means if a shell bed is on a mud or a sandy bottom you should easily be able to pick out a bright spot on your side imaging or that shell bed is present another thing you'll find about shell beds is that again they're not going to be raised up off the bottom and so you're not going to see any shadows in this bright spot if you do see a lot of shadows it's usually some type of rock that's down there therefore when i'm looking for shell beds i'm trying to find bright spots surrounded by darker areas with no shadows or black spots around that brighter area this is most likely going to be a shell bed and a lot of times shell beds are tricky to find because the shells may only be slightly harder than the surrounding bottom for example if the shells are on a gravel bar then the gravel is going to have a pretty strong return and those shells will also have a strong return and so it can be difficult to differentiate them especially with your traditional blue color palette or your amber color palettes and so one trick that i use to identify shell beds on my hummingbird unit is to switch the color palette from the standard blue to the red green color palette and this will make the bottom of the lake that soft bottom appear as green and all the hard bottom areas appear as red and this is an awesome way to distinguish shell beds from other bottom compositions and what i found is that you can actually adjust the sensitivity and the contrast in the hummingbird unit to make the pea gravel bottoms appear as a bright green color and make the shell beds pop in that bright red color and this is really one of the only ways you can actually differentiate that pebble or pea gravel bottom from the shell beds because they're both going to give off a pretty strong return relative to let's say mud or sand and so if your lake does have a lot of rock in it this is the way you have to set up your graph to identify these shell beds now this is how i do a hummingbird unit there's also a color palette on the lowrance unit which i believe is a blue green color palette so i'm not 100 sure i'm hopefully going to be able to film out of a boat with one of these lowrance units and verify the exact color palette for you guys and i'll make a follow-up video about that but i believe it's the blue green color palette and the softer bottom areas will appear as blue and then the harder bottom areas will appear as either a green or a yellow color so that's the way identify shell beds on my fish finder and finding shell beds inside imaging is no easy task and a lot of times you will misidentify certain bottom compositions as shell when it's actually rock and so one thing i'll do is if i think i've found shell on my side imaging unit i'll actually take a tungsten carolina rig weight cast it on the area where i marked my supposed shell bed and drag it and what i'm feeling for is basically what would feel like an egg carton that's covered in sandpaper the best way i can describe it you'll go over these small little bumps and it'll feel very sticky and almost like you're having that weight getting dragged along sandpaper and so if you feel that feeling you're in a shell bed if not then you're probably in some rocks and you just need to keep graphing and keep looking for those shells and it's a very sneaky type of cover that a lot of fish use especially in the summertime and in the post spawn but also works really well in the fall and in the winter so definitely be looking for shell beds on your lake using this technique and you're going to put a lot of fish in the boat in areas that a lot of people are passing up number five grass or weeds the next type of cover we're going to identify is grass or weeds and this could be anything from milfoil hydrilla coontail grass eelgrass they pretty much all look the same on your side imaging so there are two ways i describe how grass looks like on side imaging it depends on the type of grass you're graphing so some grass will look like shag carpet on the side scan and here's an image of some grass that looks like shag carpet and you can actually notice that there are some sections of this image where the bottom is relatively flat and uniform and there's other sections where you can see this combination of dark spots and then these brighter patches that look like shag carpet and this is your grass and the shadows are basically where the sonar beam is hitting the top of the grass and it's causing the shadow to appear and then wherever you see that bright patch of shag carpet is where the actual grass is and so you can pretty easily define the edge of the grass on side imaging by looking for where the smooth darker bottom areas connect with the brighter shag carpet areas and a lot of times when i'm graphing for grass this is one of the key things i'm looking for the edge of that grass right where it transitions from grass to clean bottom now grass doesn't always look like shag carpet and i find that grass will look like this when it is deeper water and it's relatively tall let's say three or four feet strands of grass but when you get into shallower water or when the strands of grass are pretty short let's say only a foot foot and a half tall grass will look more like cottage cheese on your side imaging it's kind of weird i'm comparing grass to cottage cheese shag carpet just kind of what i use to describe what they look like but here's an image of some grass that's in two or three feet of water and you can see actually right here there's an opening in the grass where the bottom is relatively smooth and there's no grass growing and then on both sides you have these brighter areas of what i call cottage cheese and this is your grass you can also identify the grass by looking at the black space between the beam and the center of the screen that kind of looks like a lightsaber and then where the actual bottom of the lake starts right here and if you look carefully in that black space you can see these small strands of grass sticking up and all of a sudden there's a point where the strands disappear where those strands disappear is a hole in the grass where there's no grass in the bottom and then where you see those strands is where the grass is present and so you can both look at the actual side imaging on the bottom for the cottage cheese or look at that black space between the beam and the bottom of the lake to identify your grass as well so just a couple different ways that you can find grass on your side imaging and again the key things i'm looking for really are either the edge of the grass where you have the grass stopping and hitting those outside edge clean bottom areas or looking for holes in the grass where you might have a big grass bed and you'll see the cheese everywhere and all of a sudden it'll disappear you'll have flat bottom that's a big hole in the grass and those are great places where bass will ambush bluegill and perch in the summertime in the spring and that's where i want to be fishing and throwing my fishing lure number six road beds the last type of cover we're going to identify are road beds and road beds are probably the easiest type of cover to identify on your side imaging because they are made of a very hard bottom which creates a strong return and very clear image and they also look pretty much exactly like they would unsign imaging as they do if you're looking at them above the water and so here's some recordings of what row beds will look like on side imaging and again it's very easy to tell that's what you're looking at and i've actually made a video explaining exactly how to use your side imaging and down imaging to graph road beds how to move your boat to graph them properly as well as how to identify fish on these road beds and so i'm actually going to send you guys over to that video instead of explaining it here because i spent over 10 minutes explaining all the details you know about road bed fishing not only the electronics portion but also the actual fishing and applications and so check out that video if you haven't seen it before it didn't get that many views when i posted a few years ago but it's one of the most underrated videos on my channel so i definitely check it out and that's it for this video guys hopefully you learned how to better interpret different types of cover on your side imaging and you have some new ideas of different types of cover to look for in your home lake you may have never thought to look for before so if you enjoyed this video please leave a comment down below letting me know what you learned from this video and i would really appreciate it if you would share this video out with a friend if you think they could use some help identifying different types of cover on their side imaging so thanks again for checking out the video guys and i'll see y'all next one [Music] foreign

Channel: Fish the Moment

Views: 38,120

Rating: 4.9581881 out of 5

Keywords: Bass fishing, Fish the Moment, Jonny Schultz, side imaging, side imaging humminbird, side imaging explained, side imaging lowrance, Side imaging fish finder, side scan sonar, side scan, side scan fish finder, side scan sonar explained, sidevu, sidevu garmin, sidevu garmin explained, fish finders for beginners, fish finders explained, fishing sonar basics, fish finder basics, fish finder instructions, how to read fish finder, what bass look like on side imaging

Id: dCzRIdDOm7Q

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020