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Went out to the local reservoir to target kokes and didn't find any love trolling. I did just float and jig for kokanee and happened to get one. Had others hit but this may be my new favorite way to target kokes. No noise of the engine, no hustle and bustle of downrigger lines and whatnot. Without a fancy iPilot or autopilot to hold position I used the electric trolling motor and tried to maintain the jig as vertically down as I could. In a low wind area this seems to work ok. In pretty windy areas this wouldn't work all that well. It's nice to not have to drop an anchor so that the school of fish can be followed. Has anyone heard of a redneck way to hold position without an anchor or autopilot? I'm thinking a semi automated way that is diy. I am out of favors from my engineering buddies to help me build an arduino based autopilot but maybe this is a good kickstarter idea: Come up with an open source arduino autopilot that uses off the shelf rc servos and a regular trolling motor to give you the same functionality as the expensive turn-key systems.
Probably just a crazy idea resulting from sitting in the sun too long but hey, it's entertaining!
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I always like dreaming up new products particularly since it's within my capabilities to design and manufacture them though that should never be done just to save money over just buying what is already mass produced and on the market.
But, if a manufacturer is going to add a feature to their GPS virtual anchor, I would like it to be able to be switched to a preference of automatically holding to the moving school of fish with programmable offsets to account for current and to fine tune your lure being in front of the fish.
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I've wondered about something like that too. Fish finders already convert sound to images, why not be able to to image tracking? It would be interesting to see if it is harder than the optical flow/image recognition that already exists. Somehow you would have to tell the fishfinder to lock onto that particular blob of stuff on the screen and then it would track it. Differentiating between the school when it is large to when it becomes scattered would be hard I think. Unless you could lock onto one particular fish. ???
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Posting live from fishing Flaming Gorge (see specific post subject / update next).
I do design and think of alternatives. If there weren't GPS (but there is), I would use an optical system locked on landmark references as an optical virtual anchor trolling motor controller, but no need for that.
The simple fish finders have no clue on which direction the fish is from the boat, but that fancy and expensive Hummingbird 360° one could be integrated to the trolling motor to do exactly what we want, IF the manufacturer would develop the software to do that.
Someone tell Hummingbird we want that. I'd buy one. They should add that software to give their expensive product an additional desired feature that would increase sales.
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The old school, redneck, hillbilly way of following a school of crappie was to release the first one you caught - with 25' of fishing line and a balloon hooked to it. The "Judas" crappie would go right back to his school and all you had to do was follow that balloon.
Oh, and the boat positioning was equally basic: your buddy on the oars. Every few fish, you'd swap for fairness.
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At the very least maybe a fish direction vector could be integrated into the software to give an idea where the fish on the screen are moving.
RockyRabb - I like the perch idea. Is that legal here in utah and for other species as well?
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I hear the fancy fish finders can give you such precise locations of fish that you can pick out the larger fish and cast that direction and distance, but I've got no experience nor looked into it. Perhaps someone here has one. Seems like a fish finder like that, if a hummingbird,can get a software update designed to integrate that with the trolling motor to follow a fish to jig for it.
(Live from fishing. Just put rods away to drive to Swim Beach seeking clear water.)
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The balloon trick was for crappie, but it might work for other fish that swim in tight schools. I can't speak to the legality, but I will add that a decent person would retrieve that first fish and count it in his limit when done fishing.
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[quote RonPaulFan]I hear the fancy fish finders can give you such precise locations of fish that you can pick out the larger fish and cast that direction and distance, but I've got no experience nor looked into it. Perhaps someone here has one. Seems like a fish finder like that, if a hummingbird,can get a software update designed to integrate that with the trolling motor to follow a fish to jig for it.
(Live from fishing. Just put rods away to drive to Swim Beach seeking clear water.)[/quote]
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I have one of those fishfinders but I like the
balloon Idea and it is a lot cheper.
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[#0000FF]A "redneck way"? Here's an archival pic from the old days of corn-chumming at Strawberry. The fish finder is the guy with his head over the side. The "eye-pilot" is the guy on the oars.
[inline "UTAH FISH FINDER.jpg"]
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That one was a good one. I always enjoy a good laugh. The redneck way I was thinking was using something like a pendulum that could be mounted to the boat. If the boat drifted one way the pendulum would swing connecting micro switches to relays to a corresponding trolling motor that would oppose the drift direction. One motor would be bow mounted. The other would be stern mounted. I imagine there would be a lot of "seeking" but the overall effect would be a semi hands free position hold device. Interesting to think about at least.
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[#0000ff]There is technology to help keep a boat in place...and to help an angler see what is below. But there is nothing to keep roving fish holding in one place in open water. They may stay in a general area but are often constantly on the move to find food or more comfy water conditions.
Always fun to dream of being able to see through walls...or through the depths of the lakes we fish.
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Blast from the past!
Years ago we used to toss the first white bass caught back in with a 10' leader hooked to the dorsal fin and then to a cheap bobber. It really did work. It was so effective that we relied on it when fishing Utah lake during the summer months.
If it were legal, I'm sure that it would really work well for kokanees since they are an poem water school fish too.
Mike
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Another fun thing to do while night fishing is to put a glow stick in a water bottle attached to a carp. A carp is big enough to take it under water at times and it makes the water bottle look like a submarine.
It was also educational, the carp would mellow when all was calm but if you made a noise in the boat it was amazing to see the fish spook.
Clean up was easy once the sun came up, just use an arrow to retrieve the carp.
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I love my new Xi5 connected to the HDS unit, made life pretty easy at the Gorge this weekend, simply plot your route and hit a button. And of course the anchor feature comes in handy too, when you see fish on the monitor you just hit the anchor button and it will bring you back to that spot, jogging in any direction to stay on top of them is a button push away. As for a system that might automatically follow a fish, that would be difficult due to so many things in the water that would give a false positive.
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I was expecting one of the old wooden rental row boats. You know the ones that could withstand a hurricane and also came with a coffe can for a bail bucket. Don't forget the cinder block for a anchor. .
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[#0000FF]Been that...done there...or however that goes.
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