1/08/2001
- Article
Hardwater
and Sonar…Inseparable
By
Noel Vick with On Ice Tour
“If
there’s a single piece of ice fishing equipment that will double
your catch, it’s portable sonar.”
Chip
Leer
Good
stories make good lead-ins. And
during a recent interview with On Ice Tour’s Chip Leer and Tommy
Skarlis, Chip broke into the following…
“I
was winter guiding on little northern Minnesota lake. Our crew was after crappies and it didn’t take us long to
find fish suspended in 35-feet of water.
While
unpacking the gear I noticed we were short a flasher. Being the guide, I volunteered to go flasher-less.
But one of my guests demanded that I
use a flasher and that he
would go without. After
some discussion, I agreed.
 The
crappies were on fire! Everyone
in the group, aside from Mr. No Electronics, was seeing fish 20-feet
down, dropping down to them, and hooking fish.
I figure he was out-fished at about a 10:1 clip – the guy
got his clock cleaned.”
They
go by the names of depth finder, fish finder, and sonar.
In essence, all forms of depth and fish finding electronics
are considered sonar
because they utilize sonar technology.
In modern day fishing there are two categories of sonar:
liquid crystal graphs and flashers.
Liquid
Crystal Graphs
Think
of these as the sorts commonly used on boats.
Typically wide screened, liquid crystal graphs (LCD’s) are
employed to acquire depth and bottom contour as you motor across a
location. The
“picture” is in turn “printed” on its liquid crystal screen.
But
they stink on the ice.
LCD’s
aren’t designed to operate in subzero temperatures.
Most
are cumbersome to transport, which doesn’t bode well for mobility.
LCD’s
are terribly inefficient users of battery power.
Serious
modification is often necessary to retool a LCD for winter
operation.
And
their greatest shortfall is the realized time delay before images
actually appear on the screen.
Flashers
Flashers
are your best choice. Flashers
have reached a point where they’re being designed and packaged
specifically for modern ice anglers.
Like a LCD graph in the summer, portable flashers show depth,
fish, bottom-content, and structure.
But that’s where the similarities end.
On
the ice, flashers offer something no other piece of electronics can.
They provide a 100% real time (instantaneous) reading of
what’s happening beneath your hole.
Their concentrated power is capable of simultaneously marking
your tiny jig and the fish that’s about to eat it.
Ice
anglers have a choice between two types of flashers, LED and liquid
crystal.
LED
(light emitting diode) flashers are the originals. Motor driven, their back lit circular faces represent objects
in one or three colors. The
Zercom ColorPoint is a fine example of a three color LED flasher.
There
is a company who takes the positives of liquid crystal and puts them
in a flasher built for cold weather use.
Zercom uses military grade liquid crystal in their portable
flashers, and this stuff doesn’t freeze.
Another upside of liquid crystal technology is that motors
aren’t needed, thus providing six times the battery life of motor
driven units. Zercom’s
portable LCF-40 is the latest and greatest in liquid crystal
flashers.
A
Day in the Life of a Flasher
To
illustrate the importance of sonar we’ve reconstructed a usual
afternoon on the ice with On Ice Tour’s Chip Leer and Tommy
Skarlis…
Sonar
plays a major role in the initial search.
The boys are fixing to catch a mess of early ice perch.
They arrive in the general vicinity of a gravel bar that
extends from a shoreline point. The ice is fairly lean but solid at a thickness of 8-inches.
Tommy
breaks out his flasher and starts taking depth readings before
cutting any holes. By
pouring a gulp of water on the ice Tommy’s transducer is able to
fire through the ice and report depth.
When ice is particularly clear it’s possible to see fish,
weeds, and even determine bottom composition.
Later in the season, profoundly thick, slush covered, and/or
layered ice may be impenetrable.
Tommy
found the breakline he was after.
He sets down the flasher and begins plugging holes – lots
of holes. This is where
Chip and his ColorPoint enter the mix.
He follows Tommy up by testing every hole.
His ColorPoint unveils depth, bottom content, breaks, and
even a few fish...
Bingo!
Two or three holes down the line, Chip contacts a batch of
perch. He signals Tommy
and continues moving along, graphing, but not angling.
Tommy runs over with his jigging rod and LCF-40.
Sure enough, his flasher displays numerous black bars cutting
just above the bottom – they must be wily perch.
Tommy drops down and watches for a reaction.
He pauses the jigging spoon – visible as a slender bar –
a foot above them. Jiggle. Two
thick bars rise and draw nearer.
The incoming bars appear to merge with his spoon.
A tug. Tommy
sets and reels in a sizable perch.
A quick re-bait and he’s back down.
Another fish rises to greet his spoon.
A merger, but Tommy feels nothing.
The unification of bars continues so Tommy gives the rod a
snap. Hot damn!
A perch had inhaled his spoon without twitching the rod.
Tommy wouldn’t have suspected anything had he not been
toting a flasher.
It’s
time for Chip to rip some perch.
With rod and ColorPoint in hand, Chip returns to a hole that
had shown fish. Plunk,
down goes the transducer. Where’d
the fish go? Suddenly,
he notices an orange bar separate from the bottom, but just barely.
Fortunately, his ColorPoint is able to recognize the subtlest
gap between two objects, in this case, the distance between the lake
floor and a perch’s belly.
Chip
stalls his spoon three feet above the “flicker”, aiming to
provoke the fish. It
responds with vigor – it’s ON!
Chip was able to determine the fish’s mood by how quickly
it attacked the spoon.
Tommy’s
hole cooled down, so he moseyed over to another. While taking a depth reading he noticed that bottom line
weakened, signaling a change in bottom composition. He had gone from gravel to mud or clay in just a few paces.
Additionally, Tommy’s LCF-40 displayed a cluster of
faint-flickers just off the bottom.
Baitfish? More
than likely.
As
modern ice anglers, we no longer have to rely on instinct and
guesswork. Cutting edge
portable flashers are able to show us depth, structure, bottom
content, fish, forage, and even our lures.
The time has arrived for ice fishing electronics to be
considered as standard as rods, reels, heaters, and fish houses.
On
Ice Tour is an intensive effort directed at expanding the sport of
ice fishing. Cofounders
Chip Leer and Tommy Skarlis offer public seminars and kid’s
clinics; appear at in-store events; exhibit at sport shows and ice
fishing competitions; broadcast a weekly radio show and conduct
hands-on product demonstrations.
On Ice Tour produces an annual ice fishing publication (On
Ice), and they can be found on the Internet at www.onicetour.com
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