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Hillars could fish or
sit back and gab with me because this skipper had already figured out
his new tools. The captain used the sounder to track where we were in
relation to the continental shelf below and the searchlight to find bait
bunches. Note that looking sideways with sonar pings is notoriously tricky.
As Hillars says, “There’s a substantial learning curve to the
image interpretation,” and Eric Kunz, who I spoke to subsequently
as a representative of chief sonar competitor Furuno, agrees, noting how
searchlight sonar scans much more slowly than radar and at a variable
horizontal angle. In our case, that angle had to be set just so to avoid
chatter off the surface, and the little baits were still a bit vague even
at a few hundred yards. But, by golly, that machine helped catch fish.
At least once during my time on the bridge, we got a strike the instant
we dragged our own baits through a sonar-located bunch.
I also learned that
the skipper had found the sonar effective for exploring Mexican backwaters
in search of good places to anchor and deploy the yacht’s flats-fishing
tender, but the transducer had to be hydraulically retracted at speeds
over 15 knots for its safety. Hillars explained that Simrad can supply
low-profile “podded” transducers that are more suitable for
gunkholing and collision avoidance. He also said that a SL35 costs around
$30,000, which does not include the monitor, but does come with his expert
services and a money-back guarantee—less the substantial installation
cost, of course.
That’s when I thought
to my Scotch-blooded self how difficult it must be for the owner of a
boat like this to budget equipment, especially if one’s skipper is
as electronically inquisitive as the guy running this high liner. You
see, I’d heard him talking about upgrading the already superb sounder
to one of Simrad’s ES series, which use a split transducer to estimate
target fish sizes, even species and biomass tonnage; and he also wants
a CM60 which can automatically build high-resolution 3D bathy maps as
he fishes. It seemed that Simrad had found the perfect skipper to show
off its gear, but actually more impressive was learning that he had become
a fan by his own process of trial-and-error.
For me the trip was
full of lessons about using electronics in unfamiliar ways, which in turn
suggested why so much gear seems overstuffed with features we don’t
need—someone else does. An example besides those “oddly”
used plotters included a VHF direction finder, an exotic item I’d
only seen before on search-and-rescue boats. The skipper explained how
he could use it, combined with radar, to locate another fisherman who
might brag, even hint, that he’s on big ones. Tricky! During those
hours on the flying bridge, I was also vividly reminded about how important
human skills are to a winning strategy. Despite all the fabulous electronics
humming away, the truly intense processing—the putting together of
screen images and fishing history, even catching the glint of a marlin’s
tail—was going on under the skipper’s cap. I believe that’s
true whether the goal is catching billfish or avoiding ledges.
Simrad USA Phone:
(425) 778-8821. www.simradusa.com.
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