Much of the serious discussion about forward-facing sonar and its effects on fishing has centered on largemouth bass, and in particular, on tournament bass fishing.
Some critics describe the process as “spotlighting” – using the same term that describes the illegal, after-dark practice associated with deer poachers – in part because it can be almost as effective in the pursuit of bass as a big, Q-Beam spotlight can be in the illegal pursuit of whitetails.
Pro or con, agree or disagree, approve or disapprove; that’s not the issue up for discussion. I have spent exactly 2 hours in a bass boat with a young pro angler who was using forward-facing sonar. He cruised around an underwater railroad bed, found two 3½-pound fish and caught them both. So my introduction to forward-facing sonar has been relatively limited.
As far as bass are concerned.
Crappie fishing, however, is another ballgame, because I’ve been in the boat with one of the best FFS/crappie experts around, WIll Hinson of Cassatt, SC, a pro fishermen who has won the Crappie USA National Championship, is former host of the Southern Crappie Angler TV show and is a pro staff member of Fish Stalker Lures.
Hinson’s business card says he’s in the “Livescope Consulting” business – he takes crappie fishermen who want to figure out FFS in his boat to show them how it’s done, or in their boat to set up their electronics and teach them how to catch more crappie by looking at a depth finder for hours on end – video-game fishing, as it were.
“If you have somebody who can help you set it up, you do away with the 6 to 8 weeks it takes to learn it, you’re way ahead of the curve,” he said.
Yes, FFS has taken over the crappie tournament scene. Hinson said, “Nobody I know who fishes crappie tournaments doesn’t use it. You’re only fishing for five to seven fish a day, so you’re riding around, looking for big fish.” But he said that the technology is in use by a lot of anglers whose idea of crappie-fishing success isn’t a big check, but a cooler full of slabs for a fish fry.
Unlike bass fishing, where FFS has changed the way anglers fish – and the lures they use – crappie fishermen are doing a lot of the same things they’ve always been doing, just with a higher rate of success because of the electronic advances. Now, single-rod techniques can be just as, or more effective than the multiple-rod “spider-rigging” that became popular 20-some years ago. You can ease along a bank, a grass edge or a row of stumps and really work on crappie, one at a time, and expect to do as well as the guy who is trolling a dozen jigs on a dozen rods in rod-holders radiating from the bow or stern of his boat.
The secret?
So what is Hinson’s secret? Well, it’s no secret. Most of the year, he’s going to be looking for crappie the same places every other angler does: around stumps, brush piles, boat docks – cover that’s easily visible to anyone with any kind of working depth finder. But his FFS unit – the special transducer is attached to the shaft of his trolling motor – enables him to look directly at the cover, pinpoint any fish around it, and allow him to present his bait right above the crappie’s nose.
I’ve been crappie fishing with guides who were tremendously successful at setting up 30 feet away from a brush pile in 10 feet of water, pitching a tiny jighead and soft-plastic trailer – or live minnow – at the target, then counting the bait down to the correct approximate depth, and tempting a crappie to chase its next meal. FFS is all that and more. The guesswork is gone. You can see individual fish in the 14-inch “cone” the electronics covers. You can put the bait literally right on top of them, and you can watch individual fish react: hit the lure, miss the lure, turn away from the lure at the last second.
“The only time it absolutely won’t work is in the spring when the pollen gets on the water,” said Hinson (843-618-5776). “It will get stirred up in the water, and the sonar will reflect off of it. But I can catch them anytime they’re around cover, or I can find them in open water by putting my trolling motor down and easing along, swinging back and forth until I find a fish. I can lock in on that fish and dial in until I’ve got it in casting distance. You might see 15 or 20 crappie on a ball, and you can catch one and stay in contact with them and catch a second fish – or more.”
The key is understanding how to point the trolling motor in the right direction and what the grid on the depth finder screen signifies. From left to right, it’s the distance from the bow of the boat to the target, and vertically, it’s the depth of the fish and cover. Find a fish or two holding on a stump, pitch your bait just past the stump, watch it fall to the fish and get ready to set the hook before you ever feel the crappie breathe on the bait.
“It’s like a video game,” Hinson said. “FFS has changed the way I fish. Instead of probably 16, now I carry two rods in the boat with me. It’s more precise getting on fish and staying on fish and not wasting your time.
“But you’ve still got to make ‘em bite.”
Lake Wateree on the Catawba River system is Hinson’s home water. He estimates he’s got around 1000 brush piles marked on the 14,000-acre reservoir. Any of those brush piles are subject to hold crappie, but his favorite targets are stumps left standing a couple of feet above the ground from trees that were cut when the reservoir was being impounded.
“Underwater islands will have stumps; so will river ledges,” he said. “There will be all sorts of trash piles on them. I just move around, looking for stumps. They might be 20 feet apart, 50 feet apart.”
Hinson will approach the stump, look it over on his FFS sonar, and pitch a jig in, letting it fall until it’s at about the same level as the fish.
“I like to find a stump with five or six fish around it. If you look at a stump and see a lot of fish moving around real quick, they’re probably bream. A crappie will sit still on a stump,” he said. “Stumps are a lot easier to fish, but that can depend on the brush. If somebody has cut all the little limbs off a brush pile, that’s okay, but a lot of brush has so many limbs you can’t get into it.
“And I don’t like to fish right over ‘em. You get too close, they’ll scatter. Waves slapping the boat will bother them. And I’ve dropped pliers in the boat and watched them scatter on the screen.”
Hinson’s tackle is simple: a 6-foot, HH spinning rod, medium-light, an HH reel spooled with 6-pound fluorocarbon, and a 1/16-ounce Fish Stalker jig. He squeezes on a small split shot about 6 inches above the jig. On FFS, you can see both the jig and split shot falling vertically toward the stump or brush.
“I like those small hooks, because you want to hook him in the top of the back of the mouth,” Hinson said. “Bigger hooks will slide up to the outside of the mouth, where they can tear out.”
One of the favorite features on my aluminum bass boat is the spot-lock feature on the trolling motor, which is great for “anchoring up” in the wind or stopping the boat immediately to mark a spot where you’ve caught a fish. With his FFS, Hinson doesn’t use a “spot-lock” feature, because he has to keep the electronics pointed in the right direction – whereas a spot-lock or anchor feature will be constantly adjusting where a boat’s bow is pointing, often reacting to changes in current and wind.
Hinson likes to make multiple casts to any stump or brush pile he locates. Sometimes, it will take a half-dozen or so casts from various angles before he puts it right over a crappie’s nose.
“If he doesn’t follow it, he didn’t see it,” Hinson said. “That’s why I make multiple casts. But I’ll keep looking if I don’t get a bite on the second try.”
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