A few livescope pics

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Originally Posted by Inkdabber

It should be banned all together in my opinion. As you may have guessed, I hate, and am stringently opposed to this new technology. They ought to change the name of it to "FISHING FOR DUMMIES" Half the fun of fishing is searching for your quarry, trying to figure out what technique and baits will be effective, what location, depth, and presentation to use, all while not knowing for sure if the species or size your after is even present. If your sonar can tell you how many, what species, size, and depth are available it has taken all variables out other than knowing if you can make them bite what you are wanting to feed them.

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I'm not trying to start anything here but "banned all together" seems a little strong. No ones telling you you have to use it and I don't want someone telling me I can't. I don't fish tournaments and I don't keep fish. I just enjoy bending a rod. I've read a bunch of your posts and you seem very very good at working to sink your own brush piles and then coming back to them and putting a hurting on the fish. Isn't placing brush in the lake a way to also narrow down the water and stack the odds more in your favor? Do you use any electronics to come back to your brush after you have sunk it or do you do like Warren Crabtree did pre GPS at Santee and triangulate off land marks on shore. He would spend half his day cricling till he could find the brush pile he had put out. If you are cutting down on that time using a GPS to find your pile and then even heavn forbid, taking a glance at a sonar screen to see if any fish are hanging on the pile once you are over it then your statements seem a bit hypocritical. Live Scope is just forward looking sonar, its not some magic fish catching box. I can 100% assure you that I could put Live Scope on a lot of people's boats yesterday and they would have struggled to catch a single fish without live bait. It was a tough day and I had to put my lure in front of a ton of inactive fish to catch the 9 fish that I did.

You make some valid points. I do use a GPS on occasion to find brush that I placed in the lake. Placing habitat does increase ones odds of putting fish in the box, but it also helps the fish by giving them cover to protect them from predators, places to spawn, and structure to just hang out on when they are the hunters not the hunted. I only fish once or twice a week so the brush is more of a luxury to the fish than to me. I do not use a sonar to find or locate fish though. Mostly for depth and water temperatures in the spring. Live Scope is specifically designed to target fish that associate to structure. It will shine in late spring through fall, not as much during the late winter through early spring when the fish are on the move.

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Originally Posted by 91tiger

I'm not trying to start anything here but "banned all together" seems a little strong. No ones telling you you have to use it and I don't want someone telling me I can't. I don't fish tournaments and I don't keep fish. I just enjoy bending a rod. I've read a bunch of your posts and you seem very very good at working to sink your own brush piles and then coming back to them and putting a hurting on the fish. Isn't placing brush in the lake a way to also narrow down the water and stack the odds more in your favor? Do you use any electronics to come back to your brush after you have sunk it or do you do like Warren Crabtree did pre GPS at Santee and triangulate off land marks on shore. He would spend half his day cricling till he could find the brush pile he had put out. If you are cutting down on that time using a GPS to find your pile and then even heavn forbid, taking a glance at a sonar screen to see if any fish are hanging on the pile once you are over it then your statements seem a bit hypocritical. Live Scope is just forward looking sonar, its not some magic fish catching box. I can 100% assure you that I could put Live Scope on a lot of people's boats yesterday and they would have struggled to catch a single fish without live bait. It was a tough day and I had to put my lure in front of a ton of inactive fish to catch the 9 fish that I did.

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Originally Posted by Inkdabber

You make some valid points. I do use a GPS on occasion to find brush that I placed in the lake. Placing habitat does increase ones odds of putting fish in the box, but it also helps the fish by giving them cover to protect them from predators, places to spawn, and structure to just hang out on when they are the hunters not the hunted. I only fish once or twice a week so the brush is more of a luxury to the fish than to me. I do not use a sonar to find or locate fish though. Mostly for depth and water temperatures in the spring. Live Scope is specifically designed to target fish that associate to structure. It will shine in late spring through fall, not as much during the late winter through early spring when the fish are on the move.

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I can't tell you how much I appreciate your well thought out and civilized reply. Your a good man.

I will say this, so far I haven't used mine around structure much. Fished maybe 3 brush piles with it and it was very good. There is a stand of isolated flooded timber at Clarks Hill in 35 to 45 feet of water with about 3 of the trees sticking up higer to within about 10 to 12 feet of the surface. Without live scope it is extremly difficult to pinpoint those individual trees within the 30 or so trees in this patch of timber. I felt like I would spend half the morning bouncing around that patch trying to pinpoint them so I rarely fished it. Livescope helped me zoom in on those individual trees much better. On a completely isolated brush pile it doesn't help me near as much, once I verify the fish are there I am concentrating much more on fishing than watching.

But for my purposes, I have found it much much more useful for open water fishing which is primarily what I do since I mostly lure fish for stripers. I absolutely hate chasing birds around mainly because of the discourtesy of other boaters who blast right into the middle of the school. Live Scope allows me to watch the bird activity and let the bird chasers move on as soon as the birds leave. Once they are gone, I can ease in quietly and find the broken up schools that are often still there. Going back to my earlier comments, I'm wondering if I can use it to find open water crappie schools that most people pull jigs to target. Based on yesterday, I really think I can.

Didn't mean to get Brett's thread hijacked. Sorry!

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You guys have some great input to my questions. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by 91tiger

As you metioned, I was seeing schools of stripers in the area and moving around trying to find them with the live scope. I've had a lot of luck this winter getting in an area where I marked a bunch of fish with the big motor and then coming back through with the live scope and casting a jigging spoon into the schools. They respond much better generally speaking than if I try to get dead over them and vertical jig like I used to do pre live scope. Usually when I hook one or the jig passes through the school of stripers, the whole school will follow it back and then I can drop straight down into them and go to work on them. I've only had Livescope for a couple of months but it has already changed the way I am striper fishing. Yesterday, I just happened into those crappie schools while looking for the stripers and used the same lure and technique to catch them that I do with the stripers.

For specifically targeting crappie, I don't like to troll at all. Spent way too many days pulling planer boards for stripers and much prefer to single pole jig or cast for crappie, perch or stripers. When the crappie are prespawn and have left the brush piles for the open water flats in the creeks and coves, I was saying I think I can spot them out in front of me with live scope and cast a heavier jig/grub at them much like I did yesterday with the jigging spoon. I can basically use my electronics to sight fish for open water fish much like I'm doing the stripers right now.

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Please post a pic what you see when finding crappie schools. I tried it, moving towards blobs at a range of 70ft. But never ended up with a nice school.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by BigDawgg

Didn't mean to get Brett's thread hijacked. Sorry!

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Dawgg
I'm happy this thread is full of good information. Very interesting and useful. [emoji1]

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There are so many times I've wanted to grab a pic of my screen with live scope but I'm a fish hog and I can't make myself put the rod down. It's not like my Lowrance units where you can freeze the sonar screen, it's all live action.

So LS want let you take pics at all??

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I'm learning a lot more now Brett! Just didn't want to pyzz you off . So far LS is good for sighting and chasing, sitting stationary fishing brush piles and It's not able to stop the screen for a picture. What else can it or not do? :dono