As I prepare for my next Tournament, the FLW Spring Valley IL on the Illinois River I can't help but be excited about the things that I have accomplished since the first run of my Live Fishing Web cast at Detroit.  If you tuned in an saw some live fishing in Detroit you know there were plenty of issues but for the most part, the concept is a good idea and did work.

For my next tournament I have upgraded all the equipment and it is very noticeable from a viewer standpoint.  First of all I won't have to shut down the live feed to move spots, my new Web Camera is waterproof, so bring on the nasty conditions.  Second, I have added a wireless microphone to the system so you don't have to listen to hours of wind blowing.  For the viewer, what I say should come across very clear with the new Mic system.  The changes are pretty cool and there is more to come.

I have an exciting announcement that should come to wards the end of the week.  Make sure you check back as their are some really cool things that will unfold this week before I take off to start practicing or my next FLW Tournament.  I continue to try to make things more interesting and if everything works out, this one will be pretty cool!

Sometimes we have to inspire ourselves to do better.  Last week while writing The Reality of Fishing, which talked about how to make competitive walleye fishing more interesting, I believe I inspired myself.  After writing that piece I decided that there has to be a way to show people what really goes on while tournament fishing and the practice leading up to the tournament. So after consulting with some people much smarter than I, this is what I came up with.

Starting Friday April 2nd when I hit the water to start prefishing for the FLW Detroit River Tournament you will be able to watch me fish live in the boat.  By clicking on the link at the right side of the page you will have access to the live camera in my boat.  Weather permitting you can watch hours and hours of true Reality TV. I figure the next best thing to actually catching all those giant Lake Erie and Detroit River walleye is getting to watch me do it live.  Ok, I was just rubbing it in a bit because I am getting really excited to hit the road. Be sure to check back this week for more updates but the testing is done and we are ready to go live.

Humminbird just made a good thing better.  If you haven't read about Switchfire it is worth taking a little time to look into this new feature on Humminbird Sonar units. Switchfire gives you two unique modes that all you complete control to adjust your sonar to fit the fishing conditions you are up against.

The first mode, MAX MODE gives you the ultimate detail with maximum return.  Max mode is great when fishing lakes without a lot of suspended particles and in non-turbulent water. If you want to see the thermocline, changes in current or everything under you, MAX MODE is your choice of modes.

The second mode, CLEAR MODE uses TVG or Time Variable Gain software to sift through sonar returns to display only fish, structure and larger sonar returns.  This mode is great when fishing shallow, in rivers, rough water or whenever you want reduced clutter in the water column.

Personally, I can think of hundreds of applications where I would have loved to have this option.  Last year while fishing the final day in the FLW Championship the stretch of the Oahe River I was fishing became very turbulent and the algae on the bottom was getting stirred up.  As the water became more turbulent it became harder and harder to distinguish fish from the bottom because of the algae layer being picked up by my Humminbird 1197C SI. You can't fault a sonar for being ultra-sensitive, after all that is what makes Humminbird the best.  However, it will be nice to have the ability to adjust the sonar now to the conditions!

While doing a talk last night I got several questions about the Minn Kota i-Pilot.  When I am talking to a group and they have common questions about a product I usually take that as a hint as a subject that I need to do a better job explaining.  For those of you that have questions about the Minn Kota i-Pilot, here you go.

The i-pilot is a a GPS based trolling motor control system.  Essentially the i-PIlot integrates a GPS with your current trolling motor and is available as an accessory for Terrova, PDV2, RTST and RTSP.  It includes features like:

Record a Track
Spot Lock
Cruise Control
Advanced AutoPilot
CoPilot

Record a Track feature is pretty simple, you hit the record button and start to move.  The unit will track and record your trail for up to 2 miles.  If you want to retrace the track ou hit the Start or End button and i-Pilot will steer the boat along the same path.  The nice thing is you can store and recall up to 3 different tracks which is nice for livebait fishing offshore.

Spot Lock works like an electronic anchor holding the boat in place with the push of a button.  The Spot Lock feature automatically corrects for wind, drift and waves and will adjust you speed and direction to keep you on that spot-on-the-spot. Once again, you can recall up to three Spot Locked locations.

Advanced AutoPilot is similar to the AutoPilot many of us are used to except it uses GPS technology instead of a compass to keep you online by projecting a series of waypoints based on the motor position.  The i-Pilot will maintain the boats heading while compensating for wind, current and drift.

cruise Control uses the GPS to maintain actual "on-the-water" MPH rather than trolling motor speed. So now instead of adjusting your thrust constantly to maintain a speed, the Cruise Control feature will do that by entering a speed that is adjustable to 1/10 mph.

CoPilot gives you wireless manual control of the trolling motor using the standard CoPilot functions.

I have always used a cable driven trolling motor.  First the Minn Kota Maxxum and lately the Minn Kota Fortrex but I have to admit the features on the i-Pilot have me convinced to make the change to the Minn Kota Terrova next year.  When you look at all the benefits the i-Pilot provide it is easy to see why this is a "must have" feature on your boat!
 

This past weekend while on the road I got a lot of questions in regards to "flasher" or sonar basics.  Several people I talked with wanted to know more about the basics of a flasher.  How do they work?  What are you seeing?  This was a good reminder to myself that I need to take a step back sometimes and cover the basics for those that are just getting into the sport or are new to using electronics on the ice.

First, to get started you have to be able to turn your flasher on.  Basically you power up the unit and drop the transducer down the hole.  I prefer to have the transducer just inside the very bottom of the hole.  This will give you the best return but will keep your line from getting caught on the transducer when you catch a fish.  With the unit on you want to determine the depth you are fishing and set the scale.  On the Humminbird you can see I am fishing 26.5 ft so I am using the 2 setting which covers 0-40 ft of water.

With the bottom set, you need set your Gain now if you haven't already.  Drop your jig down and make sure you can see it fall in the water column.  If you don't see your jig falling or the signal is very faint you need to increase your Gain level.  Basically, Gain is the amount of signal return being displayed on the unit. 

Pictured above is a screen shot of my Humminbird ICE 45.  At 12 o'clock or right above the "MM" in Humminbird you see a red line that represents the top of the water column, wherever your transducer is. From there, as you move clockwise, that is the water column.  At 22ft you can see my split shot and just below it you will see my Demon Jig tipped with a wax worm.  Believe it or not, when the wax worm is gone, the signal will come back green instead of yellow.  But, anyways, we can cover that in the advanced lesson.  As you continue deeper you will see bottom at 26.5ft just as the unit reads on the LCD in the center of the screen.  Anything you see after the "bottom" is not important for right now as we are concerned with the area between the transducer and bottom.

The signal below my jig and split shot is a crappie coming in from outside the cone.  The return signal for this is green.  As the fish moves toward my jig the signal return will get stronger and it will turn from Green to Yellow.  As the fish moves to grab my jig offering, the signal will turn Red.  In order to coax the fish I see to bite I place the deepest or second return slightly above the fish and continue to work them up slowly.  Once the signal of the fish and my jig line up on the flasher and appear on top of each other or as one signal, I stop watching the flasher and watch my rod tip.  If the fish bites, the easiest place to see the bite is a bounce of the rod tip......fish on!

The Humminbird ICE 45 has two beam options and since I was fishing over 20ft I was using my narrow beam transducer so the image (approaching crappie) appears a very faint green.  Because the return is a weak green signal I know the fish is sitting toward the outside of my transducer cone, as I mentioned earlier.  If I were using my wide angle cone, this light green signal would appear as a much stronger return, maybe even Red.  In deep water or when fishing around other people with flasher units I like to use my narrow beam to avoid giving out excess signal or also receiving it, in the form of interference.  When alone and in the absence of thick cover or other fisherman, I do prefer to use my wide angle cone, as you can see fish approaching from farther away.

There are a lot of things that I omitted from this to keep it short and to the point.  There are also many other things that I will be covering in regards to flashers that will go more in depth as far as how to read bottom content, how to determine what type of fish you are looking at, etc.  But, for today we will stick to the basics and save that for another day.

I now have a full month of fishing on my new portable, the Frabill R2-TEC 7080.  So far this portable is living up to all the hype.  As I said after I assembled it, it is very well made.  There are a lot of features that make you say "finally someone did it right" and I believe Frabill got it right with this house.

I was very skeptical about an insulated portable before I ran this one.  In fact, I could not find a reason you would ever want one.  I assumed they were very heavy and would be a condensation nightmare.  I have no problem admitting I was wrong on both accounts.  The house weighs roughly 160 lbs and I can easily load it in my truck or trailer by myself.  The hitch attachment at the front makes it very easy to load as it hooks your tail gate and won't slide off making loading by yourself very easy.  As for the condensation, well, there is none.  I have not had one problem with condensation yet this year, and it was VERY cold early ice, when condensation can be an issue.

I have only towed this fishhouse behind my snowmobile about 100 miles so far, so it is hard to judge the hitch system.  I do know it tows easy, does not bind and you can make sharp turns without tipping the portable.  So far I would  say it tows like a dream.  By the end of the ice season I should have another 250-300 miles on the portable so I will know more if it passes the test, but things are looking good.

Overall it is a very comfortable portable to fish out of.  The padded seats are very nice and don't give you a sore back or butt at the end of the day.  The sled has plenty of room to haul all my gear and the fabric is VERY strong.  I don't see wear or burns being an issue with this house.  The Zippers are very heavy duty and there is two of them, which is always nice.  It has been a little different getting used to the zipper system, as they both go the same way versus opposite like I am used to.  But, even I can learn to open a zipper the correct way, so I will adjust.

So far this has been the best portable I have used.  I am looking forward to the remainder of the testing season as there are lots of miles to travel and lots of fish to catch yet!

A great question came up this AM on www.lakestatefishing.com that had to do with the depth reading on a flasher unit when comparing narrow beam to wide beam.  Essentially the question was "why does my flasher read deeper on Narrow Beam than it does with the Wide Beam?"

The answer is pretty simple but can be effected by a lot of factors thus complicating the situations some.  For those that are getting lost already certain flashers have what we call a "dual beam" transducer.  Basically you can either choose to view a small area of the water column directly under you or a larger version.  If you look at the picture at the top left you should be able to see what I am talking about.

So, now back to the original question.  When you go from wide beam to narrow beam you are obviously reading a smaller area underneath you. So, on wide beam your display is only going to show the shallowest spot in the cone, thus creating a dead space. In addition, on wide beam you are going to read any weed, rocks etc that may fall in the cone area, basically the shallowest solid point is going to be displayed at bottom on your flasher, even though there may be a deeper point in the cone.

When you change to Narrow Beam you are covering a very small area of the bottom and your unit is only reading what is directly under you. The narrow beam will give you the best picture of what is immediately underneath you and will eliminate and rocks, weeds or humps that may be near but not inside the smaller cone and thus giving you a more accurate depth reading directly underneath you.

When using your narrow beam you may want to increase the gain some. That is typical no matter what flasher unit you are using, you get better performance on narrow beam if you increase the gain some.  Despite increased output on most units at the transducer when the narrow beam is selected increasing your gain does help when using a narrow beam.

When I am fishing open water less than 20 feet I like to use my wide beam. The wider cone angle gives you a bigger window to see and allows you to see fish as they approach your bait from the sides which can be beneficial most of the time.  When I am fishing deep water, near weeds or cover or on deep drops you will want to use your narrow beam.  As mentioned earlier when you use a smaller cone angle you can eliminate all that "stuff" outside the cone that is giving your returns and focus a very small area directly under you.  In addition, you get very little "dead space" while using your narrow beam which is essential on steep drops or uneven bottoms such as large rods.
 

It is very common for ice sonar units or flashers to come with a dual beam transducer now.  In fact, once you get used to using a dual beam transducer it is hard to fish without.  The good news is all the new Humminbird ICE units come with a dual beam transducer so no matter what your price range is, you can enjoy this feature.

This year I have been trying various ice products from Frabill.  For those that don't know Frabill makes just about everything you can use for ice fishing.   Odds are if you fish, you own several Frabill products.  From bait buckets, to landing nets and ice rods, they have it all.  This year I found a product that will be part of my panfish arsenal for a long time.

If, like me, you enjoy fishing panfish I suggest you check out the 27" Quick Tip Rod from Frabill.  I own over 30 ice fishing rod/reel combo's, some left over from my guiding days, but this rod has replaced all other panfish rods in my ice bag.  For the last few years I have been using St. Croix Legend ice rods with the spring bobber system.  Overall this was a good set-up except for the part that made the system work, the spring on the spring bobber.  There is nothing more frustrating than getting your line taggled in that spring and somehow it magically gets tangled all the time.  If you use this rod, you know exactly what I am talking about. Even if you trim the spring, it still happens and it is frustrating.

I would argue that Frabill has eliminated the need for a spring bobber with the 27" Quick Tip Rod as it seems to be the perfect balance of sensativity and strength.  Essentially the tip of the rod is a built in spring bobber without any attachments needed.  The tip is designed to show the slightest bite and it does!

I am very excited about this rod and the fact that my St. Croix rods with those frustrating springs can be left at home now.  Whether you are in the market or not for a new ice rod it is worth your time to check one out.  It is nice to find a product that when you hold in your hand you can say, "great idea" and the design of this rod is certainly a great idea.  If you want to read more about the You can read more about the 27" Quick Tip Rod HERE

I continue to get emails from people that want to know more about the features on the Humminbird ICE 55.  Apparently Santa was good to people and delivered a lot of Hummbird ICE units.  So, here are some features for those of you that are new to the Humminbird ICE family.

First, your unit has a Selectable Dual Frequency which results in a dual beam transducer.  You can select the 240kHz beam for a wider, 19 degree coverage area to detect more fish or choose the narrower, 9 degree 455kHz beam for greater resolution and detail in deeper water.  This same feature is available on the ICE 35, 45 and 55.

The ICE 45 and 55 both have the exclusive back-lit LCD display inside the flasher dial.  This back lit display shows your digital depth in real time.  In addition, you can see your Beam options, your target area, your battery life as well as your scale.  All this is available on the back lit LCD screen which is easy to read in direct light or in a dark portable.

For those of you with the Humminbird ICE 55 you are the Target Line option which is one of my favorite options.  The target line is a purple line that shows up that you can adjust to anywhere in the water column.  This is great for fishing deep water, suspended fish or fish in cover.  I use it all the time to mark the depth that fish are coming in at so I know where to place my bait when I drop it back down.

In addition to Target Line, if you own the ICE 55 you have a 2x Dynamic Zoom that you can change while you view.  This allows you to double your view of a specific depth range.  Essentially you use two brackets to bracket the area you want to zoom in on and it is totally adjustable to anywhere in the water column and can be changed any time, while you are viewing it.

One last feature if you own the the ICE 55 is you have different color palletes available.   There are two different options for 3 colors and one option for 6 colors.  If you are fishing in weeds or around cover the 6 color option is very nice.  It is one of those options that until you use it, you won't know how nice it is to have.

Ok, there is a lot more stuff I could talk about but hopefully that answers a lot of the questions.  I covered mainly stuff with the ICE 55 because it has the most features and that is mainly the questions I get.  Again, congrats to those that have joined the Humminbird ICE family, you are going to love that unit!

As everyone that reads my Blog knows I pride myself in using the best products on the market while on the water.  I spend a lot of time testing products and trying new products until I find one that I am willing to recommend.  I am excited to add www.Frabill.com as a sponsor moving forward.  Just like most of you, I have been using Frabill products for years as they make everything from landing nets and bait containers to ice rods and portable fishhouses.  If you can use it on the water, odds are Frabill has it.

I just got done assembling my new portable, an R2 TEC 7080 ice house that will see several hundred hours of use in the coming months which you can see here http://www.frabill.com/store/portable-ice-shelters/flip-over-shelters/7080.html In addition, I will be using several different ice rod/reel combos this year and will be giving updates on their performance.  As I said earlier, I prefer to put products through the tests before I am willing to recommend then, and these products will get tested.  So far I am very impressed with the overall quality but the real testing begins this weekend.

While I was hunting over the weekend I got a lot of questions by email in regards to ice electronics and I believe I got them all answered.  Once again, if you have question, feel free to email me at steil@meltel.net Thats it for now!  I am looking forward to hitting the ice the next couple days and over the holidays, after all I have A LOT of testing to do and fish to catch.