Bass Club Digest

While some new innovations are expensive and better suited for sponsored anglers on the pro circuits, there are plenty of affordable options that will help bass club fishermen pinpoint fish just like the pros. This year’s innovations include a GPS sounder unit that’s simpler to operate; a smaller, more affordable side-imaging model; a smaller screen depth finder with higher resolution display; a flat-screen flasher; and a flush- or gimbal-mounted sound device.

Electronics manufacturers recommend the following new devices that will help bass club anglers catch more fish in their tournaments this year.

Biosonix

The “signature sounds” of baitfish emitted through a portable Biosonix unit are now available on new flush- or gimbal-mounted Biosonix units.

Two-time Bassmaster Classic champ Kevin VanDam has become a firm believer in this sound device and he believes it can give a bass club angler an advantage over his buddies.

“The bottom line for me is that I have used it for three years and it is not magic by any means but it does definitely increase the fish’s activity level,” VanDam said. “You are creating sounds that they hear when other fish are feeding or baitfish are active, so it perks their interest and increases their activity level.”

Another new feature from Biosonix is a signature sound package available on memory chips that can be inserted into a BSX unit. “One of the most confusing things for the average angler who has a BSX is knowing how to program it for the conditions and that’s what we are doing now,” VanDam said. He and Mike Iaconelli, Peter Thliveros and Aaron Martens have put together sound programs that bass club anglers can use for various water and weather conditions.

Garmin GPSMAP430/430s

The newest Garmin unit comes as a chartplotter or a GPS/depth finder combo. Garmin spokesman Ted Gartner considers it an ideal unit for bass club anglers because of its simplicity.

“The user interface is amazingly simple to operate,” Gartner said. “You fire it up and you can go. You really don’t even need to crack the user’s manual. That has been one of the big criticisms of marine electronics so far. Guys will say other electronics are great units but every time they have to punch a button they have to break out the instruction manual. This unit allows you to fish, get the information you need, hide the information you don’t need and it is all right there.”

The 430 features preloaded detailed maps of U.S. inland lakes, an ultra-bright 4-inch display and a built-in satellite-enhanced worldwide base map. The 430’s sounder version comes with a dual beam transducer that can clearly display depth contours, fish targets and structure.

Humminbird 997 and 797 Side Imaging

Humminbird’s innovative side-imaging technology has been added to two new units that give anglers a couple of viewing options. Side-imaging sonar shows detailed, picture-like images through dual sonar beams with one beam providing wide coverage and the second giving better structure and bottom detail.

The new 997 model replaces the original 987 unit with a screen designed for easier reading in bright sunshine and an improved transducer for clearer images. The 797 unit is a smaller and less expensive unit that can be flush-mounted into a bass boat console or on the bow. The unit has a 5-inch diagonal screen with a high resolution 640 x 480 pixel count.

The side-imaging technology helps find fish-holding spots quicker, which is a must for bass club anglers who have limited time on the water.
“The great things about the side imaging is the incredible range that it offers,” said Mark Gibson of Humminbird.

“With a typical down-looking, single-beam sonar in 10 feet of water you only cover 3 feet of the bottom. So if you are out there scouting an area or pre-fishing for a tournament you are just covering little tiny areas. If you go into a creek channel you might have to make 30 to 50 passes to try and understand what is going on in there and you never get a good picture.

“With side imaging in 10 feet of water I can scan 150 feet to either side. So I can take a football-field width worth of scan. I can understand that whole area, everything that is laid out in there including every stump and ditch.”

Longtime West Alabama Bass Fishermen’s Association club member Fox Harmon rates the 797 as a hot seller at his Woods & Water store in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He recalled selling a 797 unit to a club angler who relied on the side-imaging unit to win a club tournament. While fishing Bankhead Lake, the angler and his partner caught a couple of 5-pounders from a spot. By looking at the spot closely with the side imaging, they discovered why the fish were holding there and spent the next hour hauling in 40 pounds of bass from the honey hole.

Harmon believes other bass club anglers can have the same success with the side-imaging technology.

“It will help them because it will expose all of the secrets of the bottom,” Harmon said.

“They are going to see places they have never seen before and then they are going to see places that are going to improve their catch ratios by knowing why the fish are there (as Harmon’s customer did). ”

Local anglers who think they know their lake like the back of their hands will find out differently with side imaging.

“It is incredible the number of people who have used it and said they had no idea of what was there. So even a bass club guy who fishes a lake all the time can now learn his lake inside out and find every tree stump and ditch out there,” Gibson said.

Lowrance SolarMax screen

The Oklahoma-based electronics manufacturer has introduced four models with Lowrance SolarMax screen technology in a new 8.4-inch diagonal 16-bit color display with a high resolution 600 x 800 pixel count. SolarMax screen technology maximizes viewing at the widest angles and in the brightest sunlight.

The 8.4-inch display answers the requests of anglers wanting a smaller screen that still delivers high detail. “It gives all the higher resolution of the big console units that look like they double for a windshield, but it is in a smaller more compact size that is easier to fit on bass boats,” said Luke Morris, Lowrance customer service technical supervisor.

Bass club anglers will opt for the new 8.4-inch display models because the depth finders are less expensive than the larger screen units. Morris suggests the new size screen is a happy medium because it provides a larger display than Lowrance’s mid-range and lower end LCX units. The new display is available in the LCX-38C HD and LCX-37C sonar/chartplotter combos along with the GlobalMap 8300C HD and GlobalMap 8200C chart plotters.

The LCX-38C HD unit, winner of the “Best Electronics” Award at the 2007 ICAST Show, features a 30GB internal hard drive preloaded with high-detail mapping/charts for waterways throughout the U.S., multiple full-and split-screen sonar/GPS options, six sonar display color choices and a choice of a dual or single frequency transducer with a built-in temperature sensor. The LCX-37C has the same sonar features as the LCX-38C HD, but is a non-hard-drive version chartplotter with a built-in background map featuring more than 3,000 U.S. inland lakes with depth contours.

Vexilar FL-12 and Alumaducer

These two Vexilar innovations will appeal especially to bass club anglers who favor fishing in shallow water.

The FL-12 is the next generation of Vexilar flashers with a flat-screen design that increases an angler’s viewing angle by more than 50 percent. The new unit needs only two control knobs for operation and has a 10-step interference rejection feature. It performs similar to Vexilar’s popular FL-8 model with its three-color display, but the FL-12 has an enhanced sonar receiver to increase the system’s noise immunity.

A new 20-foot Low Power range option built in the range control of the FL-12 provides shallow-water anglers with a clear signal even in super thin water and thick vegetation.

Bass club guys and gals who run aluminum boats will want to check out Vexilar’s Alumaducer, the winner of a Manufacturers Association product innovation award. Vexilar hails the Alumaducer as the first sonar transducer capable of transmitting sonar signals through aluminum hulls. The transducer has a universal connector that will attach on nearly any 200, 50/200 or 83/200 kHz sonar systems.

Aluminum boat owners can rig their boats with the AlumaDucer without drilling holes into the hull. The new transducer works on aluminum hulls ranging in thickness from .070 to .150 inches without any signal loss.
Tom Zenanko, Vexilar product and marketing manager, predicts the Alumaducer will be a popular item for bass club anglers in Louisiana, Mississippi and southeast Texas. Anglers in this region know their lakes can wreak havoc on transducers mounted externally on an aluminum boat.
“They are always fishing a lot of shallow-water situations and because of the stumps and everything else, they keep ripping off transducers,” Zenanko said.

These latest electronics innovations make it easier for bass club anglers to find bass quicker and easier, but more difficult for them to carry those heavy sacks of bass to the weigh-in scale. That’s a problem any bass club member would love to have.

Planning Tool Provides Shortcut

Club anglers can make their own customized contour maps with the new Navionics HotMaps Explorer, a planning tool DVD loaded with more than 10,000 fishing lakes.

“What this lets anglers do is take any of our lake maps and view them on their home computers,” said Shaun Ruge of Navionics.

“They can get latitude and longitude reads from the maps and plot waypoints and routes ahead of time. If they save the maps to an SD or CF card they can transfer those routes and waypoints into their GPS units.”

So the DVD gives anglers a shortcut to pre-fishing since they can find structure and mark waypoints on the maps on their home PC before getting on the water.

HotMaps Explorer users can enhance their maps with an additional download through the Fugawi website (www.fugawi.com) . The download provides high-resolution maps with 1-foot contours for all of the lakes on the HotMaps Explorer DVD.

“It kind of adds some life to the standard paper maps you can buy at the stores because it gives better contour resolution with the 1-foot survey data,” Ruge said.

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