FFS

So, I’m seeing reports of someone catching 29 Muskies and other reports of 10+ on the Fox River before daylight on opening day.  Just curious on people’s opinions on this.

Here’s mine:

A:  I feel that it is unethical harassment of fish that would otherwise not be caught.  I’ve not heard of someone catching that many fish in that short of time.

B:  I assure you fish are being snagged.

There are hundreds of YouTube videos on how to set it up and adjust the settings.  It's pretty easy.  
And can you tell the difference between fish types?  I for one, cannot.
I know what is big on the screen relative to what I'm fishing for.  That is about it.

One time last summer it was a tough bite.  My wife and I were going for bass and could not find any.  As we were going in, I put the unit in the water and looked at a rock ledge.  Saw about 7 fish swimming on the rock to sand transition.  6 looked to be deep fish, like stomach to back deep.  I told her I thought that those were sheephead.  One was a longer more narrow fish, told her it was either a walleye or pike.  Made a cast with a jig at the fish, was able to get through the sheepies and it ate.  And?  It was a pike.  24 inch pike or so.  So, if you know how fish look on down imaging or sonar imaging, the thought process is the same.  

Good luck Msky! Would like to hear how ya do with operation of unit(set up, adj, etc) when you get her set up.

I for one, do I need it?....he!! No sure will enjoy playing with it when I finally set it up. Have had it sitting in the box since January.

I doubt it. Maybe if you had a 1000 hours of screen time and you’re a wizard with your settings. Big pike or musky is easy to tell. 

Like I said before, I have not personally used FFS in my time. My question is, Can you tell the difference between a Bass and Walleye at 50’? 100’? Im thinking a Pike or Musky would be easier to identify? But curious about Bass and Walleye. 

FFS would have been 30yrs ago if there was no sell out.

The Bottom Line 360 was an early precursor to today's FFS.  The original Bottom Line "Sidefinder", which came out in the early 1990's, was probably the earliest type of FFS.  It had an extremely crude pixel display.  It would display a fish "x feet" laterally away from the boat.  Again, the pixel display was crude and there was no detail to ID what type of fish it displayed.

Would one conclude that the Bottom Line 360 was precursor to FFS?

Hopefully from some folks from the DNR clicked on this thread and saw all the love for bass fishing, and checked out all the guys holding up big bass in the Personal Best thread.  To put bounties on bass so they can spend $10,000s on any given lake to try to revive dying walleye fishery doesnt make sense.  It they are successful the lake will likely just be overharvested again, bass will fill the void again, and just be a vicious cycle.

Great debates are always entertaining RC! This thread has 11,465 hits in 14 days. That’s about 800+ hits everyday! 🧐🤓💥

I just decided I will hit this thread every day now just for the laughs. 

Man, bringing more technology into this debate and then talking about spearing really goes down a bad rabbit hole.  Vegas OUT!!  :)

Yes, it’s not many.  And they keep dumping them into the main winter spearing lakes.  I believe they have been buying fish older than even the extended growth fish which cost even more but have a better survival rate.  They do 3000 a year normally I think.  

If it is limited to just one strain, and the DNR biologist won't budge on that, then you see how few fish $60,000 actually is in relationship to acreage of those lakes.

I understand what you’re saying Vegas but there are very strict stocking regulations in the area.  They have to be Chippewa River strain and some systems require them to come from the same system they’re going back into.  So I’m not sure you can ​get your own fish to stock.

Absolutely Junkie, it all contributes.

Trolling has really opened up access to otherwise inaccessible fish up here.  It hasn’t been legal for that long on our class A waters but I see quite a bit of it.