Ice Flasher Basics

This past weekend while on the road I got a lot of questions in regards to "flasher" or sonar basics.  Several people I talked with wanted to know more about the basics of a flasher.  How do they work?  What are you seeing?  This was a good reminder to myself that I need to take a step back sometimes and cover the basics for those that are just getting into the sport or are new to using electronics on the ice.

First, to get started you have to be able to turn your flasher on.  Basically you power up the unit and drop the transducer down the hole.  I prefer to have the transducer just inside the very bottom of the hole.  This will give you the best return but will keep your line from getting caught on the transducer when you catch a fish.  With the unit on you want to determine the depth you are fishing and set the scale.  On the Humminbird you can see I am fishing 26.5 ft so I am using the 2 setting which covers 0-40 ft of water.

With the bottom set, you need set your Gain now if you haven't already.  Drop your jig down and make sure you can see it fall in the water column.  If you don't see your jig falling or the signal is very faint you need to increase your Gain level.  Basically, Gain is the amount of signal return being displayed on the unit. 

Pictured above is a screen shot of my Humminbird ICE 45.  At 12 o'clock or right above the "MM" in Humminbird you see a red line that represents the top of the water column, wherever your transducer is. From there, as you move clockwise, that is the water column.  At 22ft you can see my split shot and just below it you will see my Demon Jig tipped with a wax worm.  Believe it or not, when the wax worm is gone, the signal will come back green instead of yellow.  But, anyways, we can cover that in the advanced lesson.  As you continue deeper you will see bottom at 26.5ft just as the unit reads on the LCD in the center of the screen.  Anything you see after the "bottom" is not important for right now as we are concerned with the area between the transducer and bottom.

The signal below my jig and split shot is a crappie coming in from outside the cone.  The return signal for this is green.  As the fish moves toward my jig the signal return will get stronger and it will turn from Green to Yellow.  As the fish moves to grab my jig offering, the signal will turn Red.  In order to coax the fish I see to bite I place the deepest or second return slightly above the fish and continue to work them up slowly.  Once the signal of the fish and my jig line up on the flasher and appear on top of each other or as one signal, I stop watching the flasher and watch my rod tip.  If the fish bites, the easiest place to see the bite is a bounce of the rod tip......fish on!

The Humminbird ICE 45 has two beam options and since I was fishing over 20ft I was using my narrow beam transducer so the image (approaching crappie) appears a very faint green.  Because the return is a weak green signal I know the fish is sitting toward the outside of my transducer cone, as I mentioned earlier.  If I were using my wide angle cone, this light green signal would appear as a much stronger return, maybe even Red.  In deep water or when fishing around other people with flasher units I like to use my narrow beam to avoid giving out excess signal or also receiving it, in the form of interference.  When alone and in the absence of thick cover or other fisherman, I do prefer to use my wide angle cone, as you can see fish approaching from farther away.

There are a lot of things that I omitted from this to keep it short and to the point.  There are also many other things that I will be covering in regards to flashers that will go more in depth as far as how to read bottom content, how to determine what type of fish you are looking at, etc.  But, for today we will stick to the basics and save that for another day.