Sports Column: Electronic fish finders work quite well...in the right hands

Learning to use a fish locator.

Like a lot of anglers, I'll never forget my introduction to fish locators. A fishing friend, Jim Campbell, had his 18-foot fishing boat tethered in a slip at the Mutton Creek Marina on Lake Stockton. Along with a lot of fishing gear and assorted electronic doohickies and doodads, Jim had a state-of-the-art fish-finder.

During some slack time, I decided to play around with the fish-finder. The eletronics liquid-crystal display -- black on silver -- popped on, and a succession of lines began moving across the screen. Pushing another couple of buttons, a curved object looking something like a sickle blade appeared on the right and began crawling across the screen. Then another bigger line appeared followed by a swarm of smaller lines. FISH!!!

"Jim, look at this," I said, "There's a ton of fish right under the boat!! Some of them are real monsters."

As Jim walked over to look at the screen, a veritable fleet of small, medium and large images the shape of finger-nail clippings scrolled, conga-line fashion, across the display.

Our first clue was that the depth on the finder registered 360 feet. At the time the bow of the boat was about five feet from the bottom. Jim immediately recognized the problem.

"You're running the test pattern," he said, laughing. "It's to show you what it looks like when there's fish down there."

After noodling with the dials and buttons, the display was reading true; depth about five feet, bottom flat as a pancake and nothing living in sight.

Since that embarrassing introduction to the world of electronic angling, I've come to the conclusion that there's more accurate description for such devices, Frustration finders.

First let me say that in qualified hands, the gizmos do work. The good news is that they do find fish and they are a great way to concentrate your quality time getting skunked where you know there are fish.

That's as opposed to the time-tested technique of getting skunked where you suspect there are fish. The bad news is they find fish just fine.

"There's a couple fish now," Jim said as the now familiar arcs appeared on the screen.

We were fishing for walleyes near the dam. They sure were there. We knew there were there because we watched them for almost an hour as we dragged our worm-rigged jigs over, around, by and through those fish on endless passes without success.

With a fish-finder you lose the traditional excuses of the lake being fished out or the channel being changed by winter flooding. The fish are there, right there. You can see them, right where your lure or bait is.

You can almost watch them look with disdain as your offerings passes within inches of their upturned noses. Which brings up to the second problem with fish finders. Sure, its a fish, but the finder doesn't say what kind or species of fish,

"There's one and its a good size fish," Jim said.

We passed over the fish and as if on cue, the fishing rod Jim held dipped and bobbed. It was a whopper. After about five minutes Jim dropped the net under the heaving, wallowing fish, the largest of the day.

Gleaming and gasping in the net, the lunker had to go at least 10 pounds. The sun was gleaming off its golden sides. It was the largest carp that we had seen in some time. No, I take that back. The biggest suckers I've ever seen are those who think that fish finders are a guarantee of success. Finding the fish isn't hard: It's catching them that is tough.

OUTDOOR NOTES -- House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) has confirmed that he will be in attendance at the annual Lake Stockton Chapter of Ducks Unlimited on Saturday, Feb. 18 at the Orleand Trail Convention Center in Stockton.

The annual fundraiser for DU promises to be the best ever as the list of items available for raffles and auctions keeps growing. Some of the items include an eight-hour guided fishing trip on Stockton by guide Les Jarman, a 44 mag. redhawk revolver, 16-piece dinnerware set, waterfowl carvings and artwork along with items from the collection of the late Ray Zumwalt, who was an active member of the Stockton Chapter.

Trout fishing in the four trout parks has ended while preparations are being made for the big March first opening of the 2008 season. Since the opening day falls on a Saturday, a large crowd is expected.