Anglers are always striving for the ultimate solution in how to find and catch more fish. It might be a gadget that tells you what color lure to use, or a meter that checks the PH or oxygen level of the water. Most have a ring of truth to them, but seldom do they become the ultimate answer to the age of question of “how to I catch more fish?”
Anglers also need to deal with lots of rumors and legends that also have a ring of truth to them. Like the great line debate, “A line you can see is a line you can control. For this reason you need a highly visible line and you will catch more fish.” OR “The best thing you can use is no line at all, so the clearer the line, the better.” The double standards set forth here confuse the general angling public and this level of confusion is often hard to filter through unless you are directly exposed to fishing situations where your own experience gives you the answer. Down right misleading advertising is bad for the fishing industry. Fishing line for example is often sold at a pound test rating, so how can a company say they have the strongest 10 pound test when all lines should break with 10 pounds of pressure? You would think fishermen would figure out that 10 pound test line that breaks at 12 with pounds of pressure is actually 12 pound test line….but they don’t for some reason.
One of my favorite issues is one that is almost never talked about. It is the power rating of fish finders. One company says they have 1800 watts of power, the other 1200 watts of power, while Vexilar proudly boasts only 400 watts of power. What is better? Doesn’t everyone already know the more power you have, the better it must be? The answer is not in the technical wizardry of the unit that may indeed have an output power of 1800 watts, but with the often overlooked transducer. You see the crystal in the transducer is designed to transmit and receive at a specific rate of power and you simply cannot change that. Almost all the 200 KHz transducers on the market today for the recreational fishermen are designed for an output of between 300 and 400 watts of power. The big myth is that more power is better, but more power hitting a transducer not designed to handle that much power simply vibrates itself apart in short order.
To make matters even more interesting, these high power units fail to support the depth ranges you would think would come from a unit with four times the power as a Vexilar. One company might boast, “Our units can be used down to 3,000 feet. So anglers might assume they must be twice as good as those units that are only rated down to 1,500 feet. The truth of the matter is that neither unit may even show you a bottom beyond 200 feet. I firmly believe that some companies know you will never fish that deep to test their performance, so they are free to make these wild claims, and who will argue it?
I would be very safe in saying 99.9% of the fisherman on the water today don’t realize a true 1800 watt transducer crystal weights nearly 20 pounds! The weak link in the modern sonar systems for the fisherman to understand is the transducer. The long-term ability of the sonar unit to send and receive a clear, non-distorted signal lies not in the power of the unit, but in the ability to balance the output power to match that of the transducer crystal. Vexilar has long known this, and is the only major electronics company to simply ignore the hype and gimmicks of pushing a high power unit. They know you need to balance the output of the sonar unit to the output power of the transducer crystal to not only get longer life out of the crystal, but to avoid unwanted interference issues that is one of the first signs of a failing transducer. It is not uncommon for a Vexilar transducer to still be performing well after 10 years of use.
Many anglers look to friends who fish and who might have a better understanding of fishing for advice. Guides also tend to be the reason many fishing legends continue to stay alive. Lets talk about one rumor many serious fishermen
promote and will swear is true. “Sonar sounds scare fish.” More than one top guide I know will shut off his or her sonar once they find fish so that they don’t spook them with sonar. Is this true? Can you actually spook fish with your sonar? Let’s first say for a fact, you can fish with a Vexilar flasher directly over fish in the winter months with zero effect of spooking fish. In fact, most anglers feel they actually catch more fish with the sonar running since the fish may be excited by the tick, tick, tick of the transducer sound below the ice. We have seen northern pike will actually attack a transducer if you suspend it too deep into the water. So Vexilar sonar systems will not spook fish, this is well documented.
The answer to this question does not mean experienced guides are not wrong in their beliefs that sonar will scare fish, it just means that a Vexilar flasher system does not hurt your fishing success. There is no doubt scuba divers an hear the ping of the transducers, while diving, and if you are in a moving boat that is working around a spot, the instant motion of the transducer may indeed push some fish off a spot. This may be especially true in areas with lots of rock, as the rock tends to make the sounds of the transducer very crisp and loud.
Several Vexilar pro staffers will tell you that once they see fish on one of those 2,000 watt systems, they turn it off and fish with the 400 watt Vexilar flasher/fisherfinder to avoid spooking the fish. I too have heard the very obvious
“tick” of some super powerful units, but as I mentioned, the transducers are not outputting more power, they are just being hit by more power and it is causing the crystal to make a very loud tick, tick, tick. Using the Vexilar, you might hear a very soft tick, tick, tick in open water or maybe not at all. I know for a fact you can spot a single waxworm in 40 feet of water with a Vexilar, so having a loud tick, does not mean you are getting better sonar performance. At Vexilar, the factory folks often say, “It is not how loud you yell that counts, but how well you listen.” I understand that Vexilar units use the most sensitive transducer receiver technology on the market. This is the reason you seldom need to adjust the gain from the lowest setting.
I don’t know if legends and myths will ever leave the sport of fishing. I feel that the industry almost feeds on these legends to get more and more people into the sport. The key is filtering those legends, myths and down-right lies so that you are fishing with the best equipment possible to make your time on the water more enjoyable and productive. So don’t be afraid to ask around and seek advice, but remember to let your own fishing experiences be the final judge in you believe is fact or fiction, first hand knowledge is the real power to be a successful angler.
Story courtesy of Veixilar
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