I read a great an obvious quote in a magazine recently. It went something like, to be successful fishing you need to find that 10% of the water that holds the fish. Once you find that 10%, you then need to find the 1% where the fish really are. You can narrow this down a bit by looking for the obvious – points, tops, stream entry areas, docks, and such. However, once there, are there any fish around? In addition, what about all the hidden structure like channels and brushpiles? Without a fishfinder, you are throwing blind.
A great advantage to a nice bass boat is that they have the room and the power to sport the latest in fish locating technology – there was really nothing portable until a year or so ago when Humminbird introduced the PiranhaMAX 10. This wa a slick system. It ran on batteries and used a sonar that was built into a unit that you cast just like a bait. When it hit the water, the sonar activates and the fishfinder shows the bottom – just like a regular fishfinder. The problem is that you have to keep throwing this around and every throw with this is a throw you can’t make with your bait. The sonar unit is pretty heavy as well – it makes a hell of a splash when it hits – so I wondered if it was scaring the fish. My solution was to take an extra rod, attach the sonar to the end of the line and then just drag it behind the canoe as a remote sensor – basically got the same results as having a permanent mount. Except… that the signal never really seemed to be strong enough – the screen would continually blank out. I replaced the sonar unit, same result. I concluded that the postion of the unit in the middle of the canoe and the sonar being outside the canoe with the canoe plastic in between must have been filtering the signal.
So, I started looking for a replacement. Lo and behold, Humminbird introduced the PiranhaMAX 30! This solved the problem – it had a permanent sonar unit that mounts with a suction cup to the side of your boat and attaches directly to the display with a hard wire – no more signal loss! Mine also came with the remote unit and a little wrist version that I have not tried yet.
But, they trick you. You buy the PiranhaMAX 30 and it does not come with the boat mount. The mount costs another 10 bucks.- it’s called a “portable case mount”. Screw it onto a good spot and you are ready to roll.
Mount attached to the rail of my canoe – pretty quick and simple – just two screws.
Here is the Max mounted on the canoe. Really handy to use – sits right where I need it to be. Note the cable that runs from the Max to the suck on fishfinder
I gave this system a test run on a warm weekend in early March. It worked great! I had to play with the suck on sensor to find the right place for it to attach to allow it to have an unimpeded view of the bottom of the lake and not fall off. Once adjusted, it stuck just fine – in fact – it was hard to remove at the end of the day! I did not realize this version of the finder would also report water temperature. This is great! Now, I can have another indicator to use with the Bass Lure Solution Matrix I purchased and know when the water is cold – and actually be able to take advantage of the advice about where fish will be when the temperature reaches a certain point.