Side Imaging Question

Still trying to smarten up on SI. Most UTubes, etc. I see about utilizing SI are in 20 FOW or less. How effective a tool is in deeper water (say 30 feet)?

Knowledge comes with use. I run my old original 1197 in 160 fow and find lakers/salmon.

All units will display slightly different and you get very acquainted with what you’re looking at with time. You’ll also learn what settings to change with speed, depth… so many people buy them and don’t really use it. Just don’t give up, keep learning. Once you dial it in, amazing what you’re going to find

Goldwinger, when setting your range remember it’s calculated from surface of water, down to bottom and then out to side. If you’re in 20’ and you see fish at 40’, they’re actually 20’ from boat. To see farther out you can switch to a lower frequency. The highest frequency washes out at a certain distance, but also bottom composition plays a factor. Mud flats on Mille Lacs are easiest to start with, low frequency and soft bottom and fish really stick out

Craig Sery wrote:

Goldwinger, when setting your range remember it’s calculated from surface of water, down to bottom and then out to side. If you’re in 20’ and you see fish at 40’, they’re actually 20’ from boat.

This is not true, alot of youtube videos people have made make this false claim.

I attended a humminbird seminar in March put on by Jason Halfon (technological angler) I asked him this exact question because videos I had watched the guy was in a parking lot trying to explain what you said., the fish would be closer to more along the lines of 35ft away, not 20ft.

Can you please explain why? I use mine a lot so would like to know

Craig Sery wrote:

Can you please explain why? I use mine a lot so would like to know

The black portion of your screen that runs down the middle is the dead zone to get to the bottom as the side beam is going out. For visual purposes he took 2 pieces of paper and folded them in half and put next to each other to represent how the beam worked. I’ll have to grab the manual that he gave us out of the boat to explain it better.

That portion is basically down imaging. Its just looking from the boat to the bottom then out to the sides from there. What really helped me understand side imaging more was just using it to find weed edges and then seeing fish just off the weed edge.

This may help.

SI distances

Joe Jarl wrote:

This may help.

SI distances

That was very informational and helpful, thanks for posting.

Go along side a dock so legs of dock are on edge of screen… Bring rangefinder and range dock posts… never done it.

Are you saying to use the hypotenuse theory for the distance from the boat?

eyekatcher wrote:

Are you saying to use the hypotenuse theory for the distance from the boat?

If you want to get technical, use the pythagorean theorem. I do think that’s overthinking it though. Just assume that in shallow water, the distance shown on the screen is very close. Deeper the water, the closer the object is to your boat horizontally.

I’ll be the first to admit I need help with SI which is why I’m watching this thread.

However… does it really matter if the fish are 10 ft away or 20 ft away?? I’m my mind, they are either left or right and they move anyway

lindyrig79 wrote:

I’ll be the first to admit I need help with SI which is why I’m watching this thread.

However… does it really matter if the fish are 10 ft away or 20 ft away?? I’m my mind, they are either left or right and they move anyway

Where I think it matters is when you are working a weedline/rocks and you will get snagged up if you get into them and are trying to work an edge and the fish are right on the edge.

Jeffrey Trapp wrote:

Where I think it matters is when you are working a weedline/rocks and you will get snagged up if you get into them and are trying to work an edge and the fish are right on the edge.

I guess that makes sense. Still to me, you’d use the SI to locate the weed line but not actually fish it. 10 ft isn’t even a boat length.

All good. Carry on.

Here’s your curveball, what about in contour mode.
Spoiler, it’s the same coverage as when not.
I am trying to run contour mode more often when I’m fishing but I always have that turned off while on plane. I run my sensitivity so low that trees barely show up in the water column on my si anyway so it’s pretty useless to me for fishing and a waste of valuable screen space. I’ll bump it up a little on mud or in deeper water…like 2 setting above the lowest and in 455hz to boot.
I crank up the sensitivity on plane and watch the water column to know depth since @wot I don’t get depth readings, 3/4 I do but honestly I could tell you the depth by the si reading.

Hmmm, I am a bit confused with this. Let’s say we are in 20′ deep of water. The side imaging would show basically black to the 20′ marker correct? Then if there was a object (hopefully big fish) lets say 5′ out the side where would this object then shop up on the screen? Would this object show up at between 20′ and 21′ marker?