Panoptix use in a fast river?

[Larry3215]

Im hoping to get out on the Columbia river next week for some sturgeon fishing. It will be the fist time Ive had my PS21 in a river and Im very curious to see how it does.

Im a little worried that there will be too much interference from the current/turbulence - especially around seams, rapids, rocks, etc. Things like prop wash - even from my trolling motor - show up very very well on my PS21.

Has anyone tried their Panoptix in a fast moving river yet?

[LWINCHESTER2]

Really looking forward to your report on this Larry. How deep will this moving water be?

[Larry3215]

The river can be up to 150 ft deep but we will be targeting sturgeon mostly in 40-50 ft areas. We will be looking for current seams and also looking for holes or drop offs that could be deeper. We only have about 200 ft of rope on board so we will be limited to anchoring in 50 ft or less depending on how strong the current is. If we find a good hole, the trick is to anchor in shallower water up stream then drop back down so you're over the hole.

If the sturgeon dont cooperate, we will target salmon back trolling along seams or walleye and bass in shallower water. That stretch of the river also holds some nice whitefish, burbot and catfish.

A 25 pound king salmon is a hoot in fast water, but we are mainly hoping for sturgeon. They taste great and are an awesome fighting fish. This is a special season and the keeper range is 38" to 72" fork length.

My PB was a 9 footer that probably weighed in around 400 pounds about 20 years ago. My brother got a 7 footer on the same trip. The over size fish are not that much fun to catch though. They mostly just take a lot of work. They usually only do one or two short runs but sometimes they will just take off and its like fighting a slow moving freight train. Nothing you can do but hold on and follow them as best you can until they get tired or you get spooled.

The ones that fall into the keeper size range are a different story. They love to jump completely out of the water and make multiple fast runs. Its easy to get spooled if your boat driver isnt on the ball. A 72" keeper will be over 100 pounds and we will be fighting them with 40 pound braid! :D

[azbohunter]

Your going to have a ball. I just got home from 4 months in Oregon and I spent a good share of that time on the Columbia fishing walleye and Chinook. I had invites to fish sturgeon while I was there with friends who were hammering them on the Celilo Pool but there was no open season, just catch and release. They had a few over 8' and 2 over 9'.
I enjoy the salmon fishing so much that I never did get in on the sturgeon..but I did catch on a crawler fishing walleye, about 40". A couple years ago I hooked one that I intentionally broke off after 3 hours, I was using 12# mono with a 10# leader. My arm started hurting and I was alone, said enough is enough!
My PS 31 worked awesome in the river....because problem was grass floating down stream would rap around the shaft. Because I like to keep as much stuff off the boat as possible when fishing Chinook, I only used it a couple times. (those 20 pounders can have you all over the boat sometimes in the river)

[sfw1960]

Post some pics!!

[Larry3215]

We has a fun trip but the fishing sucked - we got a few good nibbles that got the blood pumping but landed zero sturgeon and zero salmon. The only thing that made it to the boat were a few dink small mouth we got off some rocks in a small cove.

The PS21 did very well I thought. It was actually a real life saver in navigating through some tricky waters. There is zero charting for the area we were in, so I ran QuickDraw the entire time. However, the first time through an area, you dont know what you getting into until you have already driven over it. Thats where the forward looking sonar helped a bunch.

The Columbia is like many rivers - with hidden sand bars, shallows and tons of rocks. You can be tooling along in 70 feet of fast moving water where the river is 1/4 mile wide and all of a sudden there is an under water vertical sided rock column 20 feet across thats 2 feet below the surface and not a ripple to show for it!

We launched right below Wanapum dam and the river is maybe 300 yards wide there and it looks deep all the way across, but its not. We had been warned that there is a hidden bar running parallel to the shore that starts just up stream of the launch and runs maybe a mile down stream. The only way to get to the dam itself is to launch, then motor down stream until you get to a place you can cross that bar - but the water looks the same everywhere. Most of that bar is 6 inches to 2 feet deep.

The PS21 made crossing a much less stressful thing. I could easily see well ahead of the boat and tell if it was deep enough to cross. It took several tries in different spots, but we finally found a deep enough channel to cross. The next day, we were talking to a local who told us where to cross safely by lining up a rock formation on one side and an electrical tower on the other side. That was the exact spot I found with the PS21.

The PS21 seemed to perform almost as well in the river as it does in a lake. The range did seem to go down some - especially when the water was shallow and had lots of turbulence. White water seems to generate an almost solid return that extends down as much a 3 to 4 feet below the surface sometimes. When we were crossing that bar, I could only see maybe 50 feet ahead until the noise took over, but that was enough to safely ease ahead and look for a crossing. If I saw the bottom rise up into the solid noise, I figured it was too shallow. When we found a place where it was 5 ft plus deep, the PS21 showed the bottom well enough for me to be confident.

Thats twice now the PS21 has helped us when boating in shallow, uncharted, tricky situations.

When we were motoring downstream in deeper water, I was able to set the range to max and see an easy 150+ feet ahead and tell how deep it was and pretty much tell where the main channel was and where it got shallow. We did find one series of 10' to 20' tall under water columns, but the tops were all at least 20-40 ft under water in that area.

As far as spotting fish in the fast water, it seemed to do fairly well. Im pretty sure I was following a sturgeon slowly moving around as far away as 120 feet in 30 feet of moderately fast water while anchored right below the dam. Other times, when we anchored a few miles down stream, I was able to see fish moving up stream past us while we were anchored. Those I was only able to see maybe 40-50 feet away max. They were most likely salmon or steel head.

I dropped the under water camera down several times but only saw one fish and it was moving too fast to tell what it was other than it wasnt a sturgeon. I had to put almost 3 pounds of lead on the camera head to get it to go down in the current. I have several hours of very boring video of rocky murky river bottoms :)

Unfortunately, I got very few screen shots. I didnt feel safe taking the time to do them while we were motoring along in uncharted water and then I was busy not catching fish or playing with the under water cam the rest of the time.

I will post the ones I have and maybe some screen captures from the videos I took later.

[Treeguyus]

Agree hard for me the last couple days to take pics when we the suspended walleyes were crushing our baits........with you

[blueones]

How was your ps21 mounted? Could you tell if a rock was in front of you ... or if it was to the left or right of you ....Garmin reps were uncertain about this when I asked them

[Todd Driscoll]

How was your ps21 mounted? Could you tell if a rock was in front of you ... or if it was to the left or right of you ....Garmin reps were uncertain about this when I asked them

As I stated in the other post, the PS21-TM would be more desirable due to the narrower 20 degree beam relative to avoiding rocks.

[blueones]

As I stated in the other post, the PS21-TM would be more desirable due to the narrower 20 degree beam relative to avoiding rocks.

The only problem is if you have a deep v boat...according to the info from lund ......a deep v hull would oscure a lot of the sonar view...

http://static.garmin.com/pumac/Panop...Install_EN.pdf

[LWINCHESTER2]

The more I use this transducer the more I like it. I use it now much more than the PS31. I have both mounted on the trolling motor but only use one at a time. There are still some very specific areas that the PS31 excels like near rock cliffs with sheer dropoffs. I can set it to 5 degrees and get a real close look and sometimes that means seeing fish otherwise very difficult to detect. Very delicate though when rotating the TM. Have to go real slow. Other than that, I like the 20 degrees on the PS21-TM better than the 45 degrees on the PS21-TR. In fact I've loaned it to a bass fishing friend.

[Larry3215]

How was your ps21 mounted? Could you tell if a rock was in front of you ... or if it was to the left or right of you ....Garmin reps were uncertain about this when I asked them

Mine is mounted on a stick at the side of the boat at the helm position so I can turn it in any direction I want. Search my name for pics of the install.

As far as telling where a rock or fish is in the beam, you can get a good idea of where it is by tuning the transducer back and forth from side to side while you watch the screen. Any target will change color and get brighter/dimmer as it moves from the center of the beam to the edges. Bright red is the strongest return, so when the target gets brighter or redder its more in the center. When it gets dimmer, turns yellow or white, then its off to the side of the beam. A few quick tuns of the stick left and right and you can tell when your pointed right at the target.

That would be more difficult to do accurately with a trolling motor plus it takes you off course. Thats one of several reasons why I dont have mine on the trolling motor.

I keep going back and forth over whether or not the narrower beam would be better or worse. I can see either one being good and/or bad in different situations. For that reason, I would probably prefer a PS-31 for the adjustable beam width, but it is so darn huge! Im too broke to buy the PS21-TM or a PC-31, so it really doesnt matter :)

[blueones]

You guys are great... I get much better info on this website than I do when I call garmin... Thanks everyone for your feedback