SI tips for crappies

Anyone search crappies with SI? Tips? Is their a depth where it does not work well? Thanks

its hard enough to see walleyes which look like a grain of rice on SI. I like to drive over schools and drop waypoints on the bigger marks or schools just using DI, then come back and bomb em with jigging raps. lakes that i fish will have whitebass and gills that mix in the same schools.

Si works great for finding schools of crappie pre spawn and in the fall. Very easy to see the schools. Lay a waypoint and swing back over the top of them.

Thanks-how far do you stretch in feet right and left?
Think I just need to get back in the habit of using it.

Look for the shadows on the bottom. Crappie will cast a round/oval shadow on si.

How far you are scanning depends on your screen size. bigger the screen the further you can scan, otherwise the image is too compressed and cant see anything.
Finding crappies, or any fish on SI is similar to locating structure, tweak settings as needed depending on the lake characteristics.

Some depends on the screen size and water depth you are using as I use Helix 12 I usually never go past 100 feet.Since I do not care about a pretty picture I set my scroll speed faster so this will elongate any fish returns and make them easier to see. If I run across something interesting I will drop a waypoint cut my distance to 60 feet or less depending on depth of water. Swing around and slow down my scroll speed to get a better look at what I seen. If I want an even better picture I will just use one side of my SI full screen and run beside my marked waypoint.
A small screen and SI kind of sucks to be able to pic out fish it helps to use just one side as full screen if your unit will do this..

You have to turn the contrast up to get the fish to show up real good. There is a good video online about this, locating fish with SI.

The reason I say pre spawn and fall is the crappies school in deeper water and are easy to find with SI. I am not looking for a few fish i’m looking for a cloud of them.

Have been doing well finding them on a lake I know well. This lake has few ‘gills and the gills you find are nice, so if I find a good school of pannies I’m good. The other day I fished a lake that has good crappies but has tons of small sunnies-anyone have advice on how to see the difference?
Is the shape or position of the schools different? Thanks

Tom P. wrote:

Since I do not care about a pretty picture I set my scroll speed faster so this will elongate any fish returns and make them easier to see.

Wouldn’t it be the opposite- slower chart speed to elongate the image?

LabDaddy1 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Tom P. wrote:</div>
Since I do not care about a pretty picture I set my scroll speed faster so this will elongate any fish returns and make them easier to see.

Wouldn’t it be the opposite- slower chart speed to elongate the image?

No. Slower chart speed makes it shorter. You are compressing more information before it goes off the screen

Default is 5mph I think, so you could just scan at 3-5.

I usually try and match chart speed with actual (Boat) speed as a general rule. My avg chart speed is 3-5 on the ‘bird I’d say.

Onthewater wrote:

No. Slower chart speed makes it shorter. You are compressing more information before it goes off the screen

That makes sense. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone