(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
By the time Ott DeFoe won the 2019 Bassmaster Classic on the Tennessee River, he’d been using Humminbird’s side-imaging technology for over a decade and its 360 features for 6 years. He’s continued to spend many hours dialing in their intricacies, but admitted that he still doesn’t know everything about them. Nevertheless, the more any angler uses them, the more fish you’re likely to catch, if you can bring yourself to make the purchase in the first place.
“They’re a big investment,” he said. Despite that big initial outlay, when you figure out how to use them the ROI can be huge. They’ve enhanced the value of his electronics game in every situation, including in super-shallow water and areas that look from above like they should be barren.
“I’ve seen fish in places I never would have fished before,” he added. “If you see fish, there’s no wrong place to catch ‘em.”
With side imaging, he typically sets the range out to 100 feet, although he’ll occasionally drop them down to 70 or 80 feet, but that’s as low as he’ll ever go. Once you get a preferred range, stick with it. Once you get used to it you’ll understand better exactly what you’re looking at and how far from the boat it is sitting.
He favors Humminbird’s color palette No. 4, which is “like a brown.” He sets his sensitivity to 14 or 15, his contrast to 13, puts sharpness on “low” and turns the contour mode off. All of those settings can be found under the “Enhance” tabs in the easy-to-use menu. When he’s just looking for cover and structure, he may idle as fast as 5 miles per hour, but when he wants to distinguish individual fish, he’ll put the boat in gear and try to just make forward progress.
Because trolling is prohibited in tournaments, DeFoe can’t expect to catch fish from the console of his Nitro, where he has his side-imaging unit mounted. That’s where his 360 abilities on the console come into play. Once again, he’s dialed in his settings to maximize his efficiency.
“My range is usually 80 feet,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll bump it up to a hundred.” He prefers to keep that distance in multiples of four because there are four range rings – no need for heavy-duty math on the water. Because the bow units get a little more sun exposure than his console graphs, he utilizes color palette No. 2, which is a little more amber than the No. 4. Once again, he’ll set his sensitivity to 14 or 15 and his contrast to 13. In water deeper than 30 feet or less than 5 feet he’ll set the frequency to 455hz.
“Hands down the biggest thing I can tell you is to go out and spend time with it,” he explained. It’s exceptional when looking for sparse submerged grass, but it also excels when trying to pinpoint stumps, veins of rock or a fence row. It’ll tell you exactly where to cast.
If you want to get more information about how DeFoe dials in his electronics, including why Humminbird Helixes are his units of choice, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
