This weeks article comes to us from the most recent release of BoatUS magazine with some very good tips on using your electronics to put the most fish in the box. See below…
Catch More Fish With Everyday Electronics
By Lenny Rudow
Sure, you look for fish with your fishfinder, and navigate to the hotspots with your chartplotter. Well, here are 10 tips for utilizing some of your other electronics, too.
Using your autopilot’s cloverleaf mode not only brings you back to the fish but also frees up the captain’s hands so he can assist with things like landing the catch or assisting an angler. (Photo: Lenny Rudow)
If you want to learn how to harness the electronic tools at your helm and use them to take analog angling to the next level, it’s time to tune in. We’re going to serve up 10 simple yet effective ways you can utilize that suite of marine electronics like never before. Try these tricks, and you’re guaranteed to catch more fish.
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Use your autopilot when prospect trolling. And we don’t mean so that it drives you in a straight line. Quite the opposite!
Virtually all modern autopilot systems have a handful of trolling modes programmed in. One that’s vastly underutilized when fishing is the S-turn mode. Most offshore anglers know that fish often strike a lure as it crosses in and out of the propwash or through the boat wake. Savvy captains troll in lazy S shapes. Set your autopilot to S-turn mode when you’re searching for fish, and you’re likely to find them faster. -
Use your autopilot after a strike. When a strike does come, you probably know to stab at the MOB button ASAP to make a waypoint. Good. And after you land the fish, you probably troll right back toward that waypoint. Also good. But what do you do after crossing it? Do you keep going, wondering exactly when you should circle back? That’s what most of us do, and it’s a mistake. You should let go of the wheel and set the autopilot to cloverleaf mode. It’ll circle back over the spot from different directions to create a cloverl