Sounding the seaway, analysing the returns

This article will show a bunch of sounder screens and a bit of detail into what they actually were, which might help in deciding how to approach different sounder returns.  More pics will be added as they get taken.

A school of 8 -15cm pike north of the north wall

Inactive Kingfish near the Canyon, with a school of frogmouth pilchards to the upper right

Active Kingfish near the pipeline

This is a school of active Tarpon in the Northern Y, plastics cast out, sunk to the bottom and slow rolled got hit.

This is a school of GT's hanging just off the dropoff to the canyon, these fish are not active and would not hit a lure.

This is a tightly packed school of Tarpon in the Northern Y, these fish are not active and would not hit a lure.

The first pic shows the pipeline on the left of the screen followed by active bigeye trevally between 4 and 10 metres down.  Twisties dropped down to the bottom and cranked back fast pulled quite a few fish.

This sounder picture shows a school of jewfish between 65 & 75cm holding on the edge of the deep hole at the north wall.  This day they were quite happy to eat big plastics jigged on the bottom.

This picture shows the dropoff  at the end of the north wall, at the line approximately 30 metres out from the end.  The fish shown here were GT's from 50-70cm in length, the run-in tide was in full swing so the fish were holding close to the bottom.  Baits held 1 metre off the bottom were eaten on every drop.

This picture shows a large bait school holding close to the bottom near the cardinal mark on the outer edge of the wavebreak flats, the fish above it were small tailor and twisties dropped to the bottom and cranked back to the top got fish every few casts.

This pic shows a large school of bigeyes between 3 and 6 metres down.  These fish were largely inactive but we did manage a few  on poppers.

This pic shows Tarpon that are scattered over a wide area, quite often this is all you will see when searching for Tarpon and its easily mistaken for something else.  Of course just because you can seee them on the sounder doesn't mean they'll eat anything.  On this occasion they were hungry and any plastic cast in the general area was eaten, staying connected to them once hooked was another matter.

This pic shows a school of Tarpon tightly packed in midwater between 4 and 6 metres down.  These fish were active but you needed to get down to the school, 1/2oz Jigheads were used with a 7 second sink time followed by a standard slow steady retrieve.

This pic shows a school of actively feeding GT's between 50 & 65cm, these fish were feeding on the surface sporadically but twisites dropped down and minnows trolled through them hooked up straight away.