BoatU.S. - May/June 2012

ground truthing: the author dropped a jig overboard to verify that what he was seeing on screen was really the fish he was seeking.

EXTEND
YOUR
SEASON

#1A, exactly where my chart said it should be. I must’ve tuned out in manual mode. Bummer! Machines 2, human being 0.

advertising and communications manager Jeff Kauzlaric said. “So we separated our auto features. This way, an advanced bottom fisherman can use manual gain while taking advantage of auto range control.”

Skarne Marine
Milford, CT
www.skarnemarine.com
info@skarnemarine.com
(203) 283-5300

Something’S FiShy

Being a die-hard angler whose experience dates back to the days of flashers and paper graphs, I had high hopes I could do better pitted against the fishfinder. But after speaking with a few industry sharpies on the matter, I knew it would be no easy feat.

“When automatic functions first
appeared, a knowledgeable captain could
always set the machine up better himself,”
said Allen Scheider, a vice president at
Si-Tex. “But with the advent of digital sound-
ing technologies and high-speed processing
capabilities, today the auto functions are
just about foolproof.” Jim McGowan of
Raymarine also believes that going digital
makes a huge difference. “Digital signal
processing (DSP) techniques are far more
sophisticated than the analog products of
just a few years ago,” he explained. “There
are no fixed filters in the receiver (as older
analog units had). Instead, our HD digital
fishfinders send all the information to the
receiver and let the DSP chipset (a high-
performance computer chip with custom
software) sort it all out. This makes the filter-
ing totally dynamic.”
Even if you think you can do better
than the fishfinder’s automatic settings,
there’s a downside to using manual mode
that one must consider: In many cases, it
means you’ll have to constantly shift the
range scale as depth changes. Some new
units from Garmin get around this issue
and split the difference between manual
and auto, with “hybrid” auto-settings (auto-
high, auto-medium, and auto-low). Furuno
also has a way of addressing this issue.
“We’ve found that as good as the auto fea-
tures are, seasoned fishermen still like to be
able to manually tune in certain situations,”

hurricane irene createS a teSt Bed

Truth be told, I know from using the latest fishfinders from these manufacturers and others that, generally speaking, on modern high-quality units, the auto mode works extremely well — most of the time I leave it on myself. But unusual conditions can sometimes fool a mechanized brain. And when push comes to shove, I’m pretty confident I can beat the average angling automaton. But there’s only one way to say for sure if the human brain can outthink this new technology: It’s time for another on-the-water test. After Hurricane Irene passed, Chesapeake waters were roiled, full of suspended solids and multiple temperature barriers. That would be a good challenge.

I entered the bay and slowed down to eyeball an underwater hump, and it became obvious that my fishfinder had a very tough time dealing with the conditions. The screen was constantly cluttered, and although I could make out fish hovering over the structure, the screen was quite cluttered and could easily be deceiving. So I switched to manual, and set the meter where my human brain said it was best. In a nutshell, I kicked Cyber-Charlie’s butt! I could get the screen 80-percent cleaner without losing the ability to see those fish, and it only took me a minute or two to do so.

Just to prove I knew exactly what I was looking at, I dropped a jig over the side and caught a few stripers. Finally, I could claim victory! That stupid machine doesn’t have the brain power to make the right adjustments as quickly and effectively as my good old medulla oblongata.