11-25-2007, 05:22 PM
A narrow beam is also helpful when you're fishing in weeds or in spots where there are a lot of branches. It cuts down on the interference and such. Another scenario where a narrow beam transducer (NBT) excels is in spots where there are steep drop-offs. It avoids what they call 'dead spots' in the sonar world. Here's an excerpt from the Vexilar site about dead spots:
" DEAD ZONE - Dead Zone is the area within the transducers cone of sound that is blind to you. The wider the beam angle the greater the possible dead zone. The sonar will mark bottom as the nearest distance it sees. If you are fishing over a slope it may see the high side of the slope, at the edge of the cone, and mark that as bottom. The fish that are hanging on the bottom in the center of the cone will be invisible to you because they are actually within the bottom signal on your depth finder. A narrower beam angle will reduce this effect. "
I have a Marcum LX-3 with a 20* xducer and this scenario happened to me last year at Yuba. I was fishing at 40' or so depth (or so I thought) when I noticed that my jig would go past the bottom mark and my line would not get slack. I moved around a little bit and confirmed my suspicions, a dead spot in my LX-3 since I was at a spot where it dropped off from 40' to 50' quickly. I moved back to my original spot and just let my jig drop to the bottom and started catching fish.
If you can get a unit with a dual-beam transducer, I'd go for it.
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" DEAD ZONE - Dead Zone is the area within the transducers cone of sound that is blind to you. The wider the beam angle the greater the possible dead zone. The sonar will mark bottom as the nearest distance it sees. If you are fishing over a slope it may see the high side of the slope, at the edge of the cone, and mark that as bottom. The fish that are hanging on the bottom in the center of the cone will be invisible to you because they are actually within the bottom signal on your depth finder. A narrower beam angle will reduce this effect. "
I have a Marcum LX-3 with a 20* xducer and this scenario happened to me last year at Yuba. I was fishing at 40' or so depth (or so I thought) when I noticed that my jig would go past the bottom mark and my line would not get slack. I moved around a little bit and confirmed my suspicions, a dead spot in my LX-3 since I was at a spot where it dropped off from 40' to 50' quickly. I moved back to my original spot and just let my jig drop to the bottom and started catching fish.
If you can get a unit with a dual-beam transducer, I'd go for it.
[signature]