What do you think this is?

I collected a slug of screen captures this weekend. I’ve got an example for you that will really demonstrate the power of Humminbird’s industry-leading Side Imaging technology.

Here’s a 2D sonar screen capture. My question to you is, what do you think this object is? (The stuff sitting above “Temp”)

Let’s collect a few guesses, and see who can get the closest before Side Imaging shows us EXACTLY what this object is.

A crib ? How knows if you cant switch it to SI for a real look

Anchor and chain of some kind of marker buoy?

I think you just found Jimmy Hoffa with his concrete overshoes!

an underwater volcano

Brett Favre’s Packer’s Helmet?

it’s a drift sock isn’t it.

I like the drift sock suggestion to

Sailboat.
Maybe even the one from Tommy Boy.

Underwater volcanoe?????

Underwater shallow seamount / volcanic activity / thermal plume with evidence of obligately photosynthetic bacterial anaerobes from a hydrothermal vent

ahhh, geez, mikehd, you beat me to it while I was typing my response!!! Great minds think alike, I guess..

A spring?

I’d love to try that thing on Knife lake. We have located a few holes varying in size, probably the biggest being 30ft in diameter. There are no weeds, some driftwood and the sides drop straight down from about 6′ to 9 to 13ft – depending on which hole we are talking about. We assume they are springs. Not sure why the wood is there though, unless they are left over roots exposed from the flow.

Or maybe they are drains, since our bobbers get sucked down there a lot.

A grease fire at the Crusty Crab,(Spongebob’s fault) ,no, a wingdam or rock reef with baitfish suspended above it.

My first impression was also a warm water spring.

Some interesting ideas here!

Let me say that most of the ideas so far represent, for lack of a better phrase, 2-dimensional thinking. It’s hard to break away from that, because after all, we’re used to looking at a 2-dimensional representation (traditional sonar screen) of a 3-dimensional world (the water column underneath our boats).

I’ll reveal the true identity of this object later. For now, let’s try to think about the 3-dimensional object that would appear like the picture above if we were forced to view it in only 2 dimensions.

marker bouy anchor and cable

flooded timber/trunk/root ball

I think it is a bunch of fish schooled up. Big fish. If the red blob was something hard, you would have lost your bottom return, but it is still there good and red. Have seen fish stacked up this way with my 997. The echo’s above are more than likely baitfish. I win!

Could be a giant space poopy. You know, like the ones ejected from passing airplanes. They freeze in the upper atmosphere and comes down to earth as a giant ball of crap.
(seen Joe Dirt anyone????)
The markings above it must be roving carp moving in for the kill!

I am guesing it is a tree trunk with a root wad at the bottom.

Scubba-diver.

Ok, we’ve had a good conversation about this object.

When I first saw this object, my initial impression was similar to many of yours….something big on the bottom, relatively hard, with perhaps some smaller things above it…perhaps some baitfish.

Outside of dropping down a Marcum camera or diving down to see the actual object, there would be no way to know what this thing is without the help of Humminbird’s Side Imaging technology.

One quick touch of the “View” button on my 1197 turned my traditional 2D view into a Side Imaging view. Side Imaging deomonstrated with 100% clarity that I had passed over one of Wissota’s abundant fish cribs. Note the square sonar shadow cast by some of the logs that comprise the crib, visible primarily on the right side image. Rather than passing directly over the center of the object, I had clipped a corner (note that more of the crib appears on the right side image than on the left….which means that more of the object was to the right of the transducer than was present to the left).

Now that we’ve identified the mystery object, how do we turn that information into fish-catching power?

Well, the first thing we need to do is drop a waypoint on that crib, so we can come pack later and fish it. Dropping a waypoint on an object identified by Side Imaging is simple:

1. Press the 4-way arrow key on my Humminbird unit. This freezes the screen and places a cursor on it.

2. Use the 4-way arrow key to move the cursor (the circle with the four “hash marks”) to the object that I’d like to mark with a waypoint.

3. Press the “Mark” key. No matter where that object is on my Side Imaging view, whether my boat is over it or not, Humminbird’s GPS technology knows exactly where that object is relative to the boat’s position and can accurately create a waypoint associated with the object.

In the case of this particular crib, the crib was 113 feet behind the boat and sat in 18.8 feet of water (displayed in the “cursor information” line across the top of the image.

Inspecting that Side Image, it’s easy to see two more cribs that were completely missed by the down-looking sonar. Let’s mark those cribs with waypoints too!

Once the first waypoint is generated, the cursor becomes controlled by the 4-way arrow key. That allows me to move the cursor to the next crib and press the “Mark” key again to mark the position of the second crib.

Note that this crib’s position is 107 feet behind the boat and sits in 21.9 feet of water.

The third cribs calls for a third waypoint. Cursor over, press “mark”, and presto….crib waypoint #3. This one is considerably deeper, sitting in 33.8 feet of water.

So, let’s review.

One mystery object identified by 2D sonar.

One mystery solved, and two additional cribs spotted and marked with waypoints, using Humminbird’s Side Imaging sonar/GPS technology.

Any questions?

Class dismissed!

What is my prize for the correct guess?

Maybe it’s 15% of my winnings. I hear that’s your going rate these days.