How to use Side Imaging to Find Crappie

a good screenshot there there's a ton of fish yep there we go right there bam just like that just like that there's a big school down there welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another sonar video today we're going to be talking about how i use side imaging i'm going to walk through some of the settings that i use and then we're going to find some crappie this time of year we're in mid-july these crop are going to be set up specifically on a lot of our lakes up north 15 to 22 feet either on the deep relief weed edges or if you've got brush piles which this lake does have actually in a previous video i called them brush piles they are technically called cribs just because they are basically they look like a child's crib the way they stack the logs on four corners or they look like a lincoln log cabin without the top on it but for everybody's sake i'm just going to call them brush piles for simplicity we're going to be using our side imaging to find which set of cribs or brush piles has the most fish we're gonna be throwing out a buoy and then we're gonna be vertically jigging these fish maybe using a bobber depending if we can get right over the top of them or not but let's run and find a school of fish and i'll show you how i use my side imaging to pick out the best brush piles and the best weed edges all right now i have some brush piles marked here on a deeper point that sticks out and if you're ever looking for where you should be idling over with side imaging down imaging 2d sonar to find either brush piles or deeper weed edges look for where the contours stack up fairly tight and then try either the inside edge or the outside edge of this i know i got tracks all over the place but the contours sweep out and around like this and there's brush piles actually right on top of this little point here but if i didn't know anything about this lake i would simply idle around where these contours are stacked tight see how they kind of fade and get flatter that means it's more of a gradual slope right through here then it gets tighter again right on the point and then it goes back to a gradual slope on that side i would simply idle around this uh with side imaging or down imaging to see if i can find some brush piles so that's that's how i would find them now let's talk about side imaging i'm over the top of a big rock pile right now these are a bunch of boulders there's actually a brush pile right here but we're moving pretty slow so first thing about side imaging let's talk about just quick settings contrast you can set to i found that actually lowering the contracts on side imaging is a little more helpful to find some definition for me so i like it a little bit lower than 50. there's actually fish popping up right here on our screen i'll uh let's do a little screenshot for you so you actually see a little bit better of a picture but i like the contrast a little bit lower than 50. you can play around with it the brightness again same with the down imaging setup i like the auto low function i like it pretty bright when you're fishing for smaller fish like panfish i like that this is this is like your game for other sonar units this is your game your brightness i like it up a lot higher than what you normally would if you're looking for bass or walleye now this is probably the one of the most important setups that i see a lot of people who try to use side imaging this is what they mess up when i'm using side imaging right now you can see i have it on 40 feet left and right of the boat i've seen guys that fish for walleye or bass they probably go all the way out to maybe 70 feet or so and they'll feel pretty comfortable with that you can actually see those schools of those bigger fish and if i'm looking for uh pieces of cover like brush piles i might go all the way out to 70 feet left and right but if i'm actually trying to determine if a weed line or a brush pile actually has crappie on it i'm going to bring this all the way back down to about 40 feet left and right 40 to 50 feet left and right that's where i think this is probably the best and it doesn't matter what sonar unit you have whether it's a garmin humminbird lowrance i like running 40 feet left and right and here's why i got fish coming up right here these are bait fish actually i don't think those are crappie this this rock pile drops off there's a school a bait fish of some kind right there now let's quick talk about frequency because this is the garmin 93 sv uhd so you see the frequency here i have it on this is 1.12 megahertz it says 1120 kilohertz now there's two options typically on most sonar units there's three options uh there's a 455 an 800 and a one point something mega so if this is your boat you're you're cruising straight to the camera here the 455 is your widest angle of side imaging okay this is kind of like i talked about when it came to 2d sonar your lowest frequency typically on 2d sonars there's two of them because most older models are dual beam there's 83 kilohertz and 200 kilohertz your 83 is your widest cone angle on your 2d sonar your 200 is a narrow cone angle same concept with your side imaging your 455 is your widest angle for your side imaging a lot of people run these new mega imaging units or ultra hd in in terms of garmin here and that's because what it does is it's got a little bit narrower of a cone so it's only taking in a certain amount of data and because of that because of the higher frequency and because it's got a limited or it takes in less data it can give you a crisper picture so the 455 let's say is right here here's your boat it's going out like this your 800 is 800 kilohertz is a little bit more narrow and then your mega imaging your 1.12 or 1.2 it's a little more narrow the mega imaging is a smaller i guess cone angle it's not really a cone but the smaller area that it's covering in terms of water and it's trying to take in less data therefore it can give you a crisper picture on your unit so that's what i want you to understand from frequency standpoint i'm going to run the 1.12 megahertz ultra hd that this garmin 93 sv has i like running it it gives a really crisp clear image the humminbirds if you have a humminbird or lowrance that 1.1 or 1.2 megahertz frequency is going to give you a really crisp image all right one more thing i just i'll show you here when you go to sonar setup there's this thing called range lines i know people a lot talk about hey how far whoops wrong button range lines i'm going to turn that back on how far away from the boat is a certain object now this shows you on the bottom of the screen here it's got the numbers and then it has the lines showing you roughly how far away from the boat it's not exactly 25 feet there's a certain angle mathematical equation that it's actually not quite 25 feet away but it gives you a ballpark estimate of where an object or like in this case some rocks you got some bigger rocks down here i'm sure there's some small mouth and some walleye off the edges of these things gives you an i guess an idea of where certain objects are relative to your boat real quick this is your boat this is your transducer i'm not moving very fast right now i'm just drifting about half mile an hour but your boat's up here your transducer this is to the port side your left starboard to your right and everything going down that is historical data so all of this stuff i've already gone over with my boat i've already drifted over there's a school of something right there right there that could be panfish it could be some bait fish most likely some bait fish they look pretty small oh there we go cool little image there i hope you can see that right there oh well there's a better one right there right there you see that little that little line i'm going to screenshot that for you there's a fish down there that's a bigger fish that's that could be a walleye a bass muskie northern something uh right off the edge but that gives that tells me it's about 25 feet to the right of my boat so another cool little little function on these units and the last thing if you go to your menu setup and go to sonar setup kind of the last thing i want to talk about i talked about it in the 2d sonar and the down imaging that's the color scheme here i like running the orange crawfish pattern this is very similar to what the humminbirds were and i this was the first hummingbird that i bought like four years ago i'm used to this kind of color pattern it's that gold and black pattern but you can choose whatever you'd like a lot of guys run this blue pattern or even this green one so you guys you can pick what you think is best and shows up the best but let's go back to uh finding some brush piles here all right here we go so looks like i'm slowly going over top of let's just bring that back down a bit there's some brush piles right here and i'm gonna go once i see something that i like on my side imaging like right here there's some fish i'll screenshot that for you once i see something like on my side imaging there's a couple things you can do you can throw down a waypoint or you can just slam it in reverse and go back over it with either your 2d or your down imaging and once i go back right over the top of it which means it's gonna show up right here i'm gonna throw a buoy out right on top of it so once it starts showing up and i get right over the top of it again i'm just gonna throw that buoy out and then we'll hop on a trolling motor and start vertically jigging or casting towards it oh there it is right there there's the brush pile i'm gonna throw the buoy out and there's some fish on top of it yep there we go right there bam there's a good screenshot there there's a ton of fish now if you notice those fish are kind of elongated that's because we're not moving very fast same thing with the 2d sonar and the down imaging when you're not moving that fast all that deep that signal is doing is pinging off the same fish back and forth of that transducer and it's going to kind of create that straight line going the going with the six six acc crabby sticks rod and i don't know if you guys saw the email that came out today from acc crappy sticks but they along with pretty much every other fishing company in the industry had some supply chain problems of getting the rods were in the u.s but apparently they were stuck between the the ports and illinois where acc crappie stix is located but i guess august 1st they're going to be they're going to be ready to go they'll have stock of i think pretty much everything and ready to ship so august 1st that's when you go back on the website order yourself some rods this is the pc fun viper x 1000 size reel this is six pound monofilament one with the eighth ounce acc jig and then this is the crappie monster curly tail little pink action going on these fish are stacked all over these brush piles there's like two or three brush piles here i threw that that buoy out and i actually just looked over with the side imaging and you can see the motor's turning it's a little difficult when you got it on spot lock to kind of see everything but but there's fish stacked between like three or four different brush piles so i'm just going to kind of cast this thing out and hopefully they're hungry it just rained like it just got done raining about 20 minutes ago so we'll see how active these fish are i cannot stress enough if you're looking for a brand new sonar unit even if you're looking for a used one on facebook or craigslist get something with site imaging it's going to help you so much in terms of just finding these fish if you're fishing a new lake fishing a lake that you know has deep weed edges or brush piles that hold fish consistently being able to look left and right of the boat compared to your down imaging or 2d sonar to me it's invaluable so if you're gonna if you're going to spend money spend it on a unit that is that has capabilities of side imaging there's one here we go fish number one i don't think he's that big nope it's a little guy it's like a five incher right there see you buddy well if he's hungry enough to eat this thing i'm sure there's some bigger crappie that are nine to ten inches in there good eater size fish i wonder if i keep some tonight oh there he is wow hit it on the drop oh is this a crappie this is a crappie this is a good one where i hooked him funny i hooked him funny i think oh no it's a better one this be a quality eater notice how he he got bit on the bottom lip it's because he hit it on the fall when they're reeling it in or when you're reeling it in they're gonna get hooked on the top of the lip but on the bottom usually that means they they do down to it that'd be a quality eater fish it's probably about a nine incher trick when you're casting out usually just watch the line probably should have high vis on when i'm casting like this so i can see the line shoot out otherwise the bite's just going to feel it's not going to feel like a thump most of the times you're just going to kind of pull back on it it's just going to feel like dead weight and then i'll start fighting just like that just like that there's a big school down there oh yeah these would be some decent eaters see buddy so i guess the the two or three biggest takeaways for simon side imaging get comfortable with a pallet that you like i like this orange crawfish pattern it's very similar to what humminbird uses and shrink that screen i know i talk about shrinking that screen with 2d sonar and down imaging to make sure you're only viewing about 30 feet down we'll shrink that screen i got this this one's at 50 feet left and right but normally i run 40 to 50 feet left and right if i'm looking for fish if you're looking for brush piles go ahead expand it out to 70-80 feet because you're not really looking for fish you're just looking for something that you can maybe scan over in a in a much closer window or maybe with down imaging or something there he is there we go that guy smacked it oh dang it trying to catch one more to end it here and that guy dang it that was a decent crappie too that's probably about a 10 inch fish which for this lake is actually pretty decent so you can get one more here the keys to let it drop all the way down there i'm in about 20 20 feet of water these fish are anywhere from six feet below the surface to three four feet above them above the bottom there's a tap come on dude smack it oh man they're right there there he is got him that time i don't think this is a big fish now they are feisty though that'd be a decent eater i think that's going to wrap it up go ahead head out on the water this weekend or sometime this week try out these little tactics for side imaging those are my settings go find yourself some crappie have yourself a fish fry so appreciate you watching if you got any comments or questions post them in the comment section below or you can message me on either facebook or instagram anything whether it's 2d sonar down imaging side imaging gps maybe you're looking at a new sonar unit feel free to message me at facebook or instagram i always appreciate hearing from you i'm going to try to catch a limit here and fry them up for dinner tonight so i appreciate you watching we'll see ya bye

Channel: Flopping Crappie

Views: 196,360

Keywords: how to use side imaging, how to find crappie with side imaging, how to use side imaging to find crappie, crappie, crappie fishing, how to find crappie, how to find brushpiles, how to locate crappie, crappie fishing with a jig, crappie fishing tips, fish finder, fishing sonar, how to use sonar, how to read fish finder, how to use fish finder, how to interpret side imaging, how to find fish with fish finder, what is fish finder showing, flopping crappie, how to, fishing

Id: aL3nNh1fqgM

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021