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I'm not that fussed where most features are tbh. I use the carp to show me the where the features I need to know about are. If I spot them having a scoot-up I chuck a lead at them and estimate depth, and determine substrate through feel. Over the course of several sessions this method tends to tell me everything I need to know about a lake bed and why the carp favour certain areas. I have no interest in letting technology do the work for me. It is not just about catching for me. It is the act of trying to catch them that I enjoy; trying to work it all out. I don't want to cut short the part I enjoy. I don't get the buzz if I don't have to work for it. I want it to be tricky. For me that incredible high of catching a target after weeks, months or even years of hard work cannot be replicated by taking short cuts.

Suffix Stiff Link (i think)...but upgraded the lot now...

errrrmmm... I have chronic osteo arthritis in my knees (6 operations and no better, waiting for a knee replacement) and collapsed discs in my lower back (1 steroid injection and 2 nerve ablations to stop the pain... to no avail) arthritic fingers and wrists, tennis elbow, both ankles damaged ligaments due to motorcycle accidents and blind as a bat.... I can still chuck a lead out and I will till they put me into my pine overcoat

if you don't like it don't buy 1, simple each to their own, I thought about getting a deeper but decided against it as other people have said it take the skill and fun out of it just like bait boats do but if that's how people want to fish then good luck to um.

That would depend on the user no? You may well be adding to your skill set but I have seen with my own eyes others replacing skill, guile and watercraft with technology. There is only one way to acquire those skills buddy........ It is difficult balancing a young family, a full time job and fishing. I do it myself. But there are ways to make it happen. I am fishing a new water at the moment. I've been walking it once a week on a Saturday at 04:00 AM before the little'n and Mrs wake up. Those walks have taught me the areas the carp like to frequent - our eyes are the best piece of tackle we have. I head over there twice per week in the evening when the Mrs is putting the boy to bed too. I started by leading around, found the spots - and I've been putting a bit of bait in here and there since. I'm back at the house an hour later when the Mrs is back downstairs so we can enjoy the evening together. Actual fishing is restricted to the odd morning (2 so far since April) but I have had a couple of carp - and this is a hard water. Those fish wouldn't mean anything to me if I'd rocked up with a boat/sonar and plonked a bait on their heads. But given the hard work that went into catching them - they made my year! As you say mate, It's all about the journey.

If you read Davyd’s posts you will understand that the main answer to understanding the results displayed by the Deeper is experience. The more you use it the more you understand. In response to Elmo’s straightforward question “ does it show … “ the answer is an unhelpful yes and no. hence this rather long post. The only information that can be gathered from a SINGLE ping of any sounder is the strength of the returned echo (reflection) and the time it has taken to be returned. An echo is generated when the ping hits a change in density surface. Generally this is interpreted on a screen as a colour pixel corresponding to the strength and it is shown at a certain depth depending on the time. Remember the ping is not a single point that is sent down and returned, it is actually a wave front that has three dimensions – usually referred to as a cone. There is NO information as to where in that cone – e.g. front and back or side to side – the echo is coming from. So within that cone you may get many echoes which will show on the screen on a single vertical line of coloured pixels (colour depending on strength of signal) The size of the cone is usually described as the angle it subtends at the surface. A higher frequency ping has a narrower frequency cone. That is why you have a choice of two (or even three now) frequencies. Imagine you are sounding over a flat concrete bottom. You will see a pixel representing the exact depth of the water. Vertically below that dot, you will see more pixels caused by signals coming from left and right and fore and aft. These will APPEAR to be deeper – i.e. lower on screen – than the first echo because it has travelled a further distance. The hardness and the texture of the bottom will have an effect on the strength (colour) of pixel received. There is another property of the ping which also depends on the frequency. A higher frequency ping is absorbed more quickly than a lower frequency ping. This means a lower frequency ping can penetrate more. For example it may hit some weed and return a weak signal shown as green then it may reflect off the bottom and get a stronger echo shown as black. You may then think that green represents weed and black represents a hard bottom. Remember this explanation only represents one ping. In practise you get many pings per second. Then you introduce movement to the transducer by dragging it through the water and the interpretation of what you are seeing becomes a lot more complicated. So to answer Elmo’s question, you should understand all of the physics involved in the sounding process and then apply it to direct experience. Calibrate your observation with what you can actually see in the water. IMHO People who say fishfinders remove skill from fishing are missing the point. Fishfinders (echo sounders) give you a chance to apply a whole new area of skill and experience. It adds to, rather than relaces, other hard earned lessons.

I don't think one method of feature finding will find everything. Even gravel bars often have a layer of silt on them, which a Deeper may not identify as a bar, just as a shallower area. Strangely enough there are some lakebeds I really know well, some features that marker floats and leads are extremely unlikely to pick up, years of experience, getting out onto the lake with a boat or swimming. On Taverham, one of the island gravel bars has a trough that is around 150mm deeper than the rest of the bar. Fish use this slightly deeper line to swim up from the depths to the island margins, checking it for food as they come. Another swim has a massive great flat topped rock, standing proud of the lakedbed, with nothing around it except weed. A marker float or leading around is extremely unlikely to find these features; it would be quite difficult to land a marker, followed by fishing end tackle on the rock. The ONLY way to find these is by going out to them and seeing from above, boat or Deeper. Yet to identify a gravel bar or patch as (silt on) gravel may require personal eye visual or a marker float and lead.

Well let’s see how this pans out , Arrived at this venue around 06:00 this morning and setup with bivvy up rods in around 07:00 Fishing three rod, 2 with pop ups and one with particle on , so far 3 fish 16-17 and 25

I am a sucker for gadgets and use a bait boat/deeper/drone all the time but here is a product that combines them all into one product. It costs around $750 but am not sure if it is available yet but I know I can't afford it..

Unlucky mate☹️ I'm sure you'll get another chance mate you do put plenty of time in on that place.

Deffo be back on that lake...may get around September though...going to a different lake Sunday...then next week off for some sturgeon...then week after i will be on the local lake were i lost it EVER DAY for a week...

Jesus, how the hell do you get out of bed in a morning, I dont think the 6 million dollar man had that much wrong with him before they upgraded him All I've got is tennis elbow and a bad back and it was enough to make me retire the spod rod

And to top it off a speech impediment! Only jesting buddy😁

Agree. I have a bigger issue with guys that exploit the tech than I have with the tech itself. A few years ago I was on a syndi and a scotch fella showed up in the swim next door. He proceeded to drive his boat all over his water, found some carp milling about several foot down, and then drove (sailed?) a couple of zigs out to the area with his boat. The spot was 40 yards out for Gods sake. He just refused to cast anything. It was the most soulless piece of 'angling' I've ever seen. He blanked. I don't think anyone would have an issue with the use of tech due to medical or disability reasons.

the only tech I'll have on the bank is a bite alarm.... oh and a torch if I'm doing a night and me phone for emergencies.... I can't justify drones, boats, fish spies, deeper.... fishing as I do with antique gear may hamper my chances of getting that magic fish.... but then I'd have more of a sense of achievement if I did catch just using basic gear... if it's you thing then go for it.... I fished a water a couple of years back, with a tree-lined far bank and a lad next door was using a bait boat and was showing it off, and he said to me "how are you going to get a bait tight to the trees".... I had my third rod ready to go and dropped the lead and bait about a foot off the tree line and baited up on the ripples with a catapult... he just walked off.... I think folks who rely exclusively on tech to do their fishing for them are lacking core skills... when that tech breaks down it'd be nice to know that they have the skills to carry on fishing rather than packing up early as I've seen some folks do

Agree totally, if you use the tech the op has posted to it's full potential and don't clear up you should be doing something else. @Yonny That is commitment, cannot wait to get off day ticket waters in a few years when I have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills I am happy to apply anywhere to get that feeling I realize some don't agree with the fast acquisition of knowledge and I wish I could acquire it from fellow angler's but watercraft is hard to learn without help. I can see how fishing the type of venues I fish would not be of interest to some/many on the forums but I need to learn and they are the best place, at the moment. I can do this is by trial and error alone, being show by someone who knows their stuff or by buying tech that needs interpreting with a certain amount of trial, error and confirm, as best I can, with leading Some people will only fish hard spots, other like to fish clean silt etc etc and they will all have there reasons, which they may not share. Many will ask about venues and 'what works' to learn and they may get help with that. People will go out in a boat with a spy glass to look into the water to find the weedy runs where the carp pass through, if they are eating bait, has it just gone off on the lake bed or for lowering their rig onto their spot etc etc. There is almost an infinite amount of information about on the www on catching carp but waters fish very differently for different reasons at the same time of year. For some the journey is about working it with eyes and leg work, applying traditional methods to find there spots, that is fine by me and wished I was able to apply that. The thought of using sonar to drop you rig on a carps head does not appeal to me at all but I would happily use a boat or wade out to lower my rig to perfection, mad isn't it

I'm very torn about tech tbh, part of me thinks it's useful and part of me is like oscsha and yonny, many moons ago I naturally decided that i was on the anti bait boat side of the fence having seen some idiot at a day ticket drive it round to the point of the island I was fishing (it was in my water) and plonk his rig up tight to the island Moving onto the present I think a few days chucking out a deeper would give me a good headstart, however so far I've fished 3 swims and found spots and caught bream in all of those swims, they may not be the right spots for carp but I can build on those in the future, chucking a lead about a bit and building up the picture of each swim more will help each time I go in that swim or a new one, Tbh I can leave a deeper but a fishspy is more tempting to me tbh as having found the spots with a marker it would be nice to peer under the water and see what lies beneath, and see if its as you imagine, as of yet I haven't felt strongly enough to buy one and I think using distance sticks is advanced enough angling for me for now

Wow that observation could be taken straight out of quantum physics theory! 👍

Angling is never a level playing field; time, money available to spend on equipment, even transport and rules other constraints can mess things up. I can give you a simple that I use though, a 1oz lead sinks approximately 3feet (1metre) per second. On my local reservoir I use this quite frequently to get a rough depth when counting my feeder and lead down. I have 'double checked' my counted estimate with a marker float, and come up with the same reading. I have watched fish feeding, what happens when you can get up close can be very different from the same fish who don't know you are there. By that I have sat in cover watching carp, and I'm positive they knew there was a 'predator' about. Yet watching the same spot from high up a nearby tree, the carp fed comfortably, clearing the area rather than backwards, forwards, in and out. Now we all know the Korda team did the 'Under the Water' dvd's, yet they created a 'predator', an unlifelike situation, a blooming camera in the environment that is not normally there. Were the carp (and other fish) behaving normally or not? I have mapped various lakes, some physically put onto on paper, some physically recorded with marker and mentally remembered in my head. I have pictures from Google Earth with features showing, distances of casts to features of one lake. Some lakes can be googled and pics like that will appear! Strangely that comes to your next point of interest, weed. Weed is a brilliant one, it can grow over your lines in a day, it follows the sun, it is a food holding feature, it is cover, and weedbeds can be travel routes. I have seen weedbeds where the fish have 'tunnels' through it. The carp (and tench) will go through these tunnels under the weed.

Sorry this just says what is wrong with modern carp anglers , cameras , echo sounders so that you can 'clear up' on almost any venue . You may as well fish a clear gold fish bowl or stay in your house and play a computer game . Each to their own but that ain't fishing in my book .

I hear you Yonny but time is a big factor for a lot of people, young family, work commitments, costs of day ticket fishing, etc and sonar will greatly shorten the time til you are fishing accurately if there are any unknowns. I don't think there are many anglers who wouldn't look at a bathymetric map if it was available and then use that knowledge. Totally agree with the buzz you get from busting your backside off to get that carp on the bank, skill plus knowledge are huge assets and I am certainly lacking in both which is why I read forums and watch certain vids but at the moment my sonar is my best tool. I am hoping as time goes by that I can tell how deep the water is by how long it takes for the lead to sink and feel the drop everytime but to find depths and holes in weed, my sonar is best with the time I have available. Now put on that a mega moving camera to see if they are taking your offerings, conditions allowing, you should, eventually, clear up on almost any venue, rules allowing. Basically it will improve your knowledge very quickly but not your skill. It's all about the journey, tight lines

That' makes a lot of sense tbh there are always lots of those rumours, and I guess over time the silt will form and just fill in the voids, much like the water in a bath always goes to the lowest point ie plug and I guess the undertow acts like a rake and helps to smooth it all over

It all has its place , its just how you use it , What the deeper is good especially good for is dispelling laid down in stone ,facts about the lake bed like , Old river beds , Sunken holes , gullies you get the picture , only to find none of it exists . I dont have the heart to tell someone what its really like down their.

Thanks Dayvid I've been trying to get an answer like that for ages about how it defines the bottom that's all I would really want it for and depth I think I will stick with a marker float and lead then as that tells me enough of what I am fishing on, it also makes me think if I was going to opt for tech I would consider a fishspy as I think the camera would be more useful to me for finding spots

Here is a shot of a flying fish I caught a few years ago. Didn't notice it when I took the photo, only when I put it on the computer.

I've got a custom built stevie Neville F/O stainless pod, weighs a ton. Though the stability is spot on. Can really put my drags on tight knowing the pod isn't moving. That said I rarely use the thing because it is so heavy, other than if I know I won't get bank sticks in. My preference is for cork screws bank sticks as they are so much lighter.

Looking through pictures, found this one from June when on a flathead catfish sesh.