Have you ever been fishing and thought to yourself, “I know that the fish are here. All the signs point to them being here. I can even see them on the screen! Why won’t they bite?” And then other times gone fishing and experienced a lights-out bite where it seems like any color, profile and application can get the job done? Sometimes all of the conditions add up to be those perfect miraculous days but it seems like most trips there are one or two things that add up to making a successful day.
When using forward facing sonar and identifying the target species in front of you, sometimes they don’t bite anything you throw at them. It takes time to take in your surroundings as an angler, pay attention to the forage species, the season, water temp, and any other factors to decide what is the correct bait to throw at these fish. It also takes time on the manufacturing end of these artificial baits working to get them dialed in and as much like the real thing as possible. This summer, Great Days Outdoors sat down with Berkley Lures Senior Project Engineer Dan Spengler to discuss a line of baits specially designed for use alongside forward-facing sonar.
What Is Forward-Facing Sonar?
Forward Facing Sonar (FFS), also referred to as Forward Looking Sonar (FLS) is a marine sonar system designed to provide bottom imaging and detection of underwater structures in real time. These systems use transducers to emit sound waves in a forward-facing direction, hence the name Forward Facing Sonar. These sound waves are then reflected off of the sea floor and any artificial or natural structure that could be sub surface and on bottom. These reflected sound waves, also known as echoes, are captured by the system’s receivers and transmitted onto the screen in real time based on how long it takes the echoes to come back to the receiver, creating an underwater map of the environment facing forward in front of the vessel.
Advantages of Forward-Facing Sonar
This technology has many advantages and can definitely have a use for safety purposes, navigational aid, and surveying, but its application in freshwater and saltwater fisheries is absolutely game changing.
This real time imaging offers an underwater perspective of habitat, bottom changes, bait schools and game fish in view of the front of the boat. When considering how many important factors this technology checks off for being able to find and target fish for commercial, recreational, and tournament fisheries, a fishing trip with FFS will be very different from a fishing trip without it. Not only does this system indicate when the fish are there, it also indicates when they are not there, and that alone changes the game on how much time is spent in the most optimal areas to catch fish. Practical uses are when fishing fish on structures and finding them, scanning areas to see where the best casts can be made, locating bait schools or actual fish schools themselves, scouting for tournament fishing (or actual use in fishing tournaments if rules allow it,) adjustments on techniques in real time, and many, many things can be listed as uses and advantages for FFS.
On the Alabama Freshwater Fishing Report podcast Butch Thierry and Nick Williams spoke to Dan Spengler about FFS in depth on their show in Episode 201 and Dan’s breakdown of Forward Facing Sonar and how he’s used it and seen it shine for him was absolutely incredible. He spoke about changing action of the lure in real time to entice a bite, finding new structures that fish interrelate to that aren’t visible on surface or other map imaging, finding patterns and characteristics about fish that he wasn’t able to pick up on otherwise and even picking up what marks are certain species after doing what he says people refer to as “video game fishing” due to the interactive, on-screen attributes of fishing with FFS. If you’re on the fence or looking for first hand experience from the pros, be sure to listen to Berkley Lures’ Dan Spengler’s full breakdown of FFS and FFS optimized baits.
Forward Facing Sonar Optimized Baits
When referring to Forward Facing Sonar optimized baits there’s a few things that set them apart from just any other bait per se. These baits are designed to be highly visible on screen and are created with specific characteristics that not only attract fish but also stand out on screen as your bait is working through these areas, making it visible to see bites or fish turn away from your lure in real time.
Optimized Baits are jerkbaits, swimbaits, blade baits, jigs with Tungsten or reflective heads, crankbaits, and spinnerbaits. Most of these baits seem to have some key features, one of them is to be made out of highly reflective materials, a second is distinct movements and shapes of the bait, high vibration and sound of the baits, as well as suspension and buoyancy and the sinking rate of a bait. When breaking it all down that can get a little overwhelming and seem like a lot of options so the boys over at Alabama Freshwater Fishing Report broke down what exactly makes a bait FFS Optimized.
What Makes a Bait FFS Optimized?
Seemingly with all the characteristics above, just about any bait is visible on screen but Nick Williams asked Dan Spengler what he thought made a bait an FFS Optimized bait and he broke down his and Berkley’s point of view and some of their approach when designing baits meant for forward facing sonar. What stands out the most to me when hearing Dan talk about these baits is not how well they show up on the screen but how well they work in real time action with the fish and also how they’re able to change retrieval technique, colors or different profiles that they offer to cover water and dial in the fish seen on the screen. Dan goes on to say, “What Berkley did with the PowerBait and Gulp is we ran them through the test in the lab and in the field. And we always say let the fish have the final say. So we’ve optimized these baits to allow the angler when fishing forward facing sonar, to have a lot of different options to allow you to present many different actions to a bait to have the fish basically have the final say and say, ‘Yep, I (the fish) want that particular action, that particular day, or at that moment in time.’”
Dan talks about this time of testing baits in the lab and then in the field and also testing Berkley’s baits alongside competition companies’ baits in the lab and in the field and just how much time and process goes into getting one of these baits on the shelves. Dan details that Berkley, when designing one particular bait for 2-3 years, went through 140 different hand built prototypes just to get four baits on the shelf, with 78 prototypes just for one size of this bait alone! These guys over at Berkley Lures sure are taking their time and effort to make sure things are 100% dialed in.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Forward Facing Sonar Baits
When considering how to get the most out of your baits designed around Forward Facing Sonar you really have to go back to the design and purpose of the bait. For example, Berkley just came out with a lure called the Krej with an upside down jerkbait lip design with a flat bottom that allows the bait to flutter down and then be fished by darting up without a tangle. Unlike a sinking style jerkbait the Krej is designed to be an ascending style jerkbait. This bait is made to have uses throughout the whole entire water column from the top to the bottom. By knowing the design of this bait and knowing that it is designed for FFS technology, an angler is able to know how to go through different cadences and retrieves and different areas of the water column while playing video games and watching those fish come up to hit the lure or turn away from it. When listening to Dan Spengler talk the key to me with these FFS Optimized baits is the versatility that they are designed around to almost be able fish one lure in multiple different ways with multiple different retrieves without having to retie so you can spend as much time working on the fish that you see on the screen without a bait
change.
Conclusion
Just to wind this thing down, Forward Facing Sonar Optimized Baits are extremely cool and have taken a lot of time, effort and lab/field testing for these companies to develop different lures. And then creating different retrieves for the same lures and then creating different applications for those same lures again and figuring out the most versatile way to offer baits to this new generation style of fishing that is taking the Freshwater fishing world by storm and is soon to make its way to the salt in a bigger way. These FFS optimized lures are definitely something to keep your eyes on as lure technologies and sonar technologies advance every day, it sounds like Berkley Lures have their finger on the pulse and stay ahead of the game on what the FFS angler needs at hand.
