This is a fantastic look at what leader Brandon Palaniuk is doing this week. Looking at the MEGA View shot in the bottom right (streamed straight from Palaniuk’s Humminbird 360 to the Bassmaster LIVE audience), we can see what BP’s area looks like both above and below the water. He is fishing the shallow mouth of a narrow branch off a bigger creek. The black area on the right of his graph is the grassy shore to the front right of where he is fishing. There is also black to the left, which is the shore on his left.
The purplish/grey area in the middle of his graph represents the water. The brighter areas are shallow and harder, the darker areas (that aren’t black) are slightly deeper. The depth of water under Palaniuk’s transducer can be seen in the top left corner of his graph, at 1.7 feet. So, the water where he’s sitting is likely about 3 feet deep, since his transducer is mounted near the bottom of his trolling motor.
He’s seeing isolated stumps on his 360 and pitching to them, at least in part when he’s not pitching to beds and bass that he can see from above water with eyes. You can see what looks like a few stumps on this shot now. Look for the little dark circles, which are actually like shadows cast by the cover.
Think of the sonar ping going out from Palaniuk’s transducer like the beam of a flashlight. If that stump was above water and you shone a flashlight on it, there would be a shadow behind it. That’s kind of what’s happening with forward facing sonar. Now combine a bunch of flash light beams in all directions, and you have an idea of what you would see using Humminbird 360.
Palaniuk caught a 5- pounder a few moments ago pitching a dropshot this way. He said earlier that he could see out 105 feet in only 2 feet of water using this tech. As much as we talk about forward facing sonar, this is a good reminder that 360 is really even more powerful in super shallow situations like this.
