Be it Garmin LiveScope, Lowrance Active Target 2 or Humminbird Mega Live 2, live sonar seems to have popped up on bass boats overnight, but saltwater anglers have not adopted it in similar numbers—at least not yet.
Live sonar—perhaps more popularly known as forward-facing sonar, or FFS—shows you what is in the sonar cone in real time, has a near 180-degree coverage, and everything in that arc is instantly painted. Movements of fish are displayed as they occur, much like medical ultrasound imaging.
In shallower water, landscape images offer outstanding situational awareness of all the water in and beyond casting range. Forward-fishing orientation of the transducer is often used in deeper water, and downward-facing sonar is most effective in bottomfishing.
Rich Kale is about as hardcore an angler as can be. Based in Punta Gorda, Florida, he fishes the waters of Charlotte Harbor, Peace River and the Myakka River almost every day. If Kale is spied on the water, anglers get as close to him as they dare. He’s an influential angler and is likely responsible for leading many tarpon fishermen away from casting ladyfish and crabs in favor of DOA Bait Busters. He installed Lowrance’s Active Target sonar last year and found it so incredibly effective, his salty friends began installing live sonar as well.
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Kale counts his tarpon bites and hookups, not his landings. He reports that his bites went up tenfold after he started using Active Target. While the Boca Grande Pass is most famous for its dense tarpon schools and even denser angling fleet, Kale eschews the crowds, using his sonar in the wide-open areas of the harbor and up in the Peace River.
“In open water, I don’t cast until I pick them up on sonar,” he says. “I can count the number of fish in pods, see which way they are moving and how deep they are. It’s easy to put a bait in front of them, and I can see if the fish are interested in it or not. People think it can’t work well in salt water due to the water density, but after using it, if somebody told me I couldn’t have it anymore, I’d take up bowling.”
The density of salt water does reduce the range of FFS by up to 40 percent. Live sonar uses a very high frequency and ping rate to give the instant picture on the screen. The higher the sonar frequency, the more detailed the image, but the saltwater density reduces signal clarity by resisting high-frequency returns.
That’s not a problem in fresh water, and FFS is such an effective tool for bass fishermen that none are competitive without it. It has changed the pace of bass tournament fishing. Anglers don’t waste a cast on waters that aren’t showing fish on FFS. For nationally televised tournaments, the use of live sonar has taken away much of the visual appeal of fishing. The anglers just stare at their sonar displays until they see a fish. Tournament directors have begun to limit the use of FFS, in part because it’s boring to watch.
Another drawback for saltwater anglers is the awkward mounting of the transducer, according to Garmin’s David Dunn. LiveScope XR is Garmin’s most powerful FFS.
Live sonar has to be mounted on a trolling-motor shaft or a stalk attached to the gunwale, and it is difficult to deploy and retract, especially in rough seas. Garmin doesn’t offer mounting stalks and directs its customers to OEM makers—and there are several of them.
“For fresh water, we make our trolling motors capable of having a transducer mounted on the motor shaft, but then the direction of the motor determines what you can see,” Dunn says.
Matthew Laster, integrated systems director, fishing systems for Navico and Lowrance, agrees on the convenience factor but has another spin on slow adoption rates. “Freshwater bass anglers are highly publicized and televised. Saltwater fishing doesn’t have near as much visibility to spread the word.”
Ed Zyack is a Florida charter captain and has been fishing the waters for decades, and doing so as a Humminbird promoter. “Mega Live is a great tool,” he says. “I had several charter guys on the west coast [of Florida] using it, and it was so effective that they wouldn’t talk about it.” It was the antithesis of great sponsorship marketing…until the closely guarded secret got out and spread like wildfire in August.
Hummingbird recently introduced Mega Live 2—an upgraded version with more image clarity in both auto and manual adjustable modes. “It is an enormous improvement in saltwater capability,” Zyack says. “You can just turn it on, and it takes very little adjustment to optimize the image.”
One thing all our experts agreed on is that saltwater anglers are among the fiercest proponents of angling tradition and are highly suspicious of new techniques. But live sonar is changing their minds.
