Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Garmin Castable Sonar

Trying to remove as many LMB, as quickly, & efficiently as possible from an pond severely overpopulated with LMB.

Does anyone have any experience with the Garmin Castable sonar? Would it be a worthwhile investment for locating LMB & locating the better places to fish? If used consistent, seems as if it could give you a ballpark idea on how many fish remain & how successful you have been. If it is reliable & works as advertised?

My progress has been slow the past 4 months. I know they are there, but I can't catch them.

Get the Deeper Pro+. Works great.

Edit: I can see fish with it, structure and the + means that it can map your pond because it works with GPS and sends a Wi-Fi signal to your phone or tablet. I learned that the Deeper units that don't have a + in their name do NOT have the mapping capability.

It may not matter to you, but a neighbor has one and he uses it to mark fish when ice fishing. He loves it for that because there is no attached cable to get in the way when pulling a fish out of the ice. He uses a tablet so he has a bigger screen to look at vs. a smart phone.

I have the garmin sonar, Seems to work well with depth and temperature, fish locating not so much
We totally eradicated the pond this spring and with the fish element on it still showed fish.
It also doesn’t do well with locating any of the cover at the bottom

Esshup,

Thanks for the tips on the Deeper Pro + . I did take a look at all that was available & the specs. Deeper does seem like the best bet for the dollar. some are not much more than toys. I was attracted by the Garmin name. Deeper Pro + 2 is more advanced, found it on sale & for just $50. more it seemed like a good buy.

A word of advice for the Deeper Pro 2.

The Deeper Pro 2+ is only available in the european or asian market. It isn't available in the states (according to Deeper) So, the Deeper Pro 2 does NOT have the mapping capability, although it does have chirp technology.

I just received a Deeper Pro2+ from Japan, I have to go play with it to make sure that it will work with the USA GPS satellites.

Thanks for the heads up.

From all I read it seemed as if it was a world wide device.
I will see if it works as described.

I got the Deeper Pro + 2 at Christmas. It is all I will ever need. Does everything I could want a sonar to do. Easy to use once everything is linked. Confirmed the depth of the pond, shape of the bottom, lack of structure, water temperature, mapped the depth & shape of the pond, confirmed my suspicion that I have some medium size fish with VERY few small & large fish. I have it linked to an almost new iphone 7 that I found on ebay for $45. I would like to figure out how to link it to my tablet. All sorts of different setting to play with. Plenty of online help if you don't understand a feature, also a chat area. GPS works fine.

I saw a price drop $199. to $169. on amazon.

Thanks for everyone's advice & help.

Good write up. I have one I haven't used yet, but looking forward to giving it a whirl.

Omaha, try it ice fishing in place of your flasher unit. No cord hanging in the hole to get tangled on, a neighbor uses a tablet instead of a phone for a screen. He has a battery inside an old army ammo can for the tablet, and can run it all day with no problems.

That Deeper Pro + seems to be exactly what I have been looking for, I thought I was going to spend a couple thousand bucks for a sonar that will help me check out my lake bottom, I have a lot of brush piles and a lot of brush that obviously moved or fell in since the pond has been built, this may be just what I need to accomplish that, thanks everybody for the input! I may be able to catch something ice fishing after all!

So I purchased the Deeper Pro+2 and have not had any luck with it at all, not sure what I am missing or doing wrong.
Ive tried it in a bunch of different ice holes on two different ponds that I know very well. all it will do is show a clean flat bottom and not a single fish, I even drilled holes right directly over a brush pile that was showing thru the ice, that I have caught tons of fish off of over the yrs, I could see brush thru the hole in the ice, it showed a clean flat bottom at 12 ft and not a single thing above that 12' line.
The only thing it seemed to do was give me the depth and water temperature.

Well that sucks!

Sounds like operator error on some thing you don't know about as a new operator, or you just got a lemon electronic device.

Wish I could help you, I was looking forward to your reports!

It could have been operator error, there are minimal instructions that came with the unit, I youtubed different instructions and users to see what I was doing wrong but could not find anything I was not doing like they did, while I cant guarantee there were no fish in the area, I would bet a chunk of change that there were at least a few, and I do know there was a huge brush pile under it and could never get anything bu a clean flat bottom screen out of it, Im not sure what one would have to set on a fish finder to get it to acknowledge brush or some kind of obstruction.

Go on their website and chat with one of the techs there, or call. They are VERY helpful and knowledgeable.

gehajake,

I just went to some reviews to see if I need to put a Deeper Pro+2 on my wish list.

I did see the following information:

"You can choose from 100kHz with a 47° beamscope, 240kHz with 20° and a very high 675kHz frequency with a 7° beamscope."

If you were on the highest frequency setting, then perhaps the beam was so narrow that it was NOT giving you any reflections of fish or your brushpile?

Did you alter the frequency settings during your disappointing experiment?

The literature also said it will return false scans in water of 6' or less. I know you were in 12' water, but a 7 degree beam in that shallow depth is not going to see much.

Good luck getting a good view of your structure and your fish!

I borrowed a neighbors Deeper Pro2+ and had reliable repeatable readings to 2' water depth.

I read the reviews and ended up buying a Deeper Chirp2 +. Still have to play with it to learn it.

What I DID learn is that the + symbol means that it has mapping capability. I also learned that the Chirp2+ is not sold in the United States.................

This was called a Deeper Pro2+, never said anything about chirp, and yes, I chatted with tech help but was kinda hard in the field, going from connected to the unit with my phone, to try to get cell service to chat with the tech expert.
That being said, I tried about everything, this one only showed to options for beam angle, there was a 7 degree and a 20 degree, I went from the lowest resolution setting to the highest resolution setting and every setting in between, I went from a plastic water pitcher in the house for connection and setup reasons to 25' deep water and 12 different depth holes in between, and this was in 2 ponds I am very familiar with, seen the bottom before they filled up, and been fishing them ever since, I know the lay of the land down there, I had no doubts at all about the depth reading and the temp reading.
I drilled a hole right in a brush pile, brush sticking up thru the ice all around the hole and I could see the brush down thru the hole, a pile I put there when I built the pond 5 yrs ago, and it showed a flat bottom at pretty much the exact depth I woulda guessed it to be, turned the resolution up and down and changed the cone pattern from narrow to wide, same smooth flat bottom, als put a hole right beside my buoy marking a pipe fish structure that I added in 2 yrs ago, in ten ft of water, within casting distance of my dock, Ive caught a lot of LMB BC and BG off of it for two yrs, and again, flat bottom, clean screen. I lost faith in it. sent it back, told them to keep it.

gehajake
I think you got the one that i was supposed to get. Out of 24 boxes on the shelf, I can always pick the one with the bum product inside. Talk with tech support further, something does not seem right.


I have spent 5-6 hours with my Deeper. I have been using it to investigate the pond, pond structure & fish population. My Deeper Pro+2 does show brush. It is hard to interpret, looks like static to me. I know there is brush there & the rest of the pond is smooth & flat. Also some spawning disks, hard to interpret but always shows the same way so that is what 36" disks look like. I have it set so that it shifts beams from 20 to 7 when it gets into shallow water. Little icon shows you how much surface area of the bottom you are scanning. No problem in 2-4 feet of water seeing bream. You can use the on board algorithm to interpret fish, Lg, Med, Sm, fish. & distance from surface or bottom. I can NOT interpret fish from just the raw data lines, although the more I use it the more things make sense to me. I still do not understand the return I get from vegetation, spadderdock.

My frustration is the Sm, Med, Lg fish icons. I have gotten Sm & Med returns & never a Lg. So what size fish triggers each size icon. How small does that fish have to be to not trigger a Medium Icon? At what size is a large icon triggered? I understand that the sonar can't be accurate but a ball park would be nice. I know from fishing in an area with a lot of medium icons (i knew exactly at what depth to set the hook & where to drop the line) that a 6-10 inch bream shows as a medium size fish.

If the deeper is working properly from 5-6 hours of playing with it, I know that I have medium size fish, few small perhaps 1 in 20, & No or VERY few large.

Bummer.

J.E. Craig, you might have to contact them for the fish icons. I have seen all 3 sizes in my pond, but I have fish from small to 8-9 pounds. What is what I have no idea because I haven't been able to correlate size to actual fish caught. If I get a chance to use it ice fishing maybe that will allow a size vs. icon correlation to be made.

I have dragged it over a porcupine fish attractor and it shows up as a lump on the bottom coming up to the height that I know the fish attractor is, i.e. 10' diameter it comes up about 9-10 feet off the bottom.

gehajake, I'm sorry that it didn't work for you. I sent my Deeper Pro Chirp 2 back because I couldn't map with it. I didn't know that the + symbol meant it had mapping capability. So now I have the Deeper Pro Chirp 2+ but ice is preventing me from using it.

I think you got the one that i was supposed to get. Out of 24 boxes on the shelf, I can always pick the one with the bum product inside. Talk with tech support further, something does not seem right.


I have spent 5-6 hours with my Deeper. I have been using it to investigate the pond, pond structure & fish population. My Deeper Pro+2 does show brush. It is hard to interpret, looks like static to me. I know there is brush there & the rest of the pond is smooth & flat. Also some spawning disks, hard to interpret but always shows the same way so that is what 36" disks look like. I have it set so that it shifts beams from 20 to 7 when it gets into shallow water. Little icon shows you how much surface area of the bottom you are scanning. No problem in 2-4 feet of water seeing bream. You can use the on board algorithm to interpret fish, Lg, Med, Sm, fish. & distance from surface or bottom. I can NOT interpret fish from just the raw data lines, although the more I use it the more things make sense to me. I still do not understand the return I get from vegetation, spadderdock.

My frustration is the Sm, Med, Lg fish icons. I have gotten Sm & Med returns & never a Lg. So what size fish triggers each size icon. How small does that fish have to be to not trigger a Medium Icon? At what size is a large icon triggered? I understand that the sonar can't be accurate but a ball park would be nice. I know from fishing in an area with a lot of medium icons (i knew exactly at what depth to set the hook & where to drop the line) that a 6-10 inch bream shows as a medium size fish.

If the deeper is working properly from 5-6 hours of playing with it, I know that I have medium size fish, few small perhaps 1 in 20, & No or VERY few large.[/quote]

I have never got any fish icon to show up, the only ones I seen were from watching some instructional youtube videos on it.
I am really familiar with fish finder and the screen displays, as far as making out brush and such but this was a completely clean screen, like there was never anything showing on the screen, I seen the little icon that showed the diameter of the bottom that it was covering at that depth.

Like I say, it may have been some operator error but I was not able to find any setting that made any difference. and they weren't able on chat to find anything that made any difference. these tests were all made thru ice holes but clean holes, no ice shreds to distort anything, and made with all different possible scenarios, except for the depth and display surface, it coulda been the same screen.

I know nothing about the particular sonar devices in this discussion. However, I have done work in grad school identifying objects from reflected energy.

The aspect ratio of the object along the ray path from the object to the energy receiver has a huge impact on identifying the object.

Basically, a 23" long, 8# bass that is facing the receiver will have a much SMALLER reflection than a 10" long, 0.75# bass that is oriented perfectly broadside to the receiver.

That is one reason why it is difficult to correlate the images on the fish finder screen with the actual fish caught.

In thinking about how these sonars work, I had a new thought on gehajake's failure to accurately image his known brush pile.

If a fish sonar is designed to resolve fish in the range of 6" to 24" in length, then the manufacturers presumably chose the frequency/wavelength optimized to that range.

In their promotional videos they may show a beautiful image of a piece of standing timber where you can observe the trunk and the branches. A 24" diameter trunk and 6-12" branches is right in their optimal resolution window.

However, if your brush pile is a big stack of piled cedar trees, then the receiver is getting hundreds of weak reflection returns that are barely separated over the time domain. I would expect something like that to be rendered as "static" on the device screen?

Gehajake, do you have any less dense structure in your pond that your could try and image? For example, a single tree or a single pile of cinder blocks. That might help you calibrate your eye to what the device is reporting?

This wasnt heavy cover like cedar, brushpile, it was white oak tree tops a few stumps and also a man-made fish tree made with poly water pipe half loops stuck into a concrete base.

I think the "echo" off of that fish tree might be pretty confusing.

I do like using your culvert scraps and a little concrete to make your bases!