Boat Sound - Raising Fish

[Thom]

The posting questioning if Sonar signals might effect fish got me to thinking about boat sounds in general and I wondered what you guys thought about it. My type of fishing is much different than yours in an awful lot of ways but all fishing is very similar in a lot more ways so we all learn from each other - or at least that's how I see it. Where I fish there are a lot of boats that are much larger than mine. All of those larger boats are diesel powered and they have engines that would pull a train for the most part. Its not at all uncommon for the big boys to have a pair of 1,000 hp engines. My boat is powered by a single 200 hp outboard. Needless to say there is quite a bit of difference in how one of the big boats sounds when trolling at 7 knots and how my little 2-stroke sounds at the same speed. There is great discussion between guys who do the sort of fishing I do about a boat's ability to raise fish. It all centers around the sound of the boat, and there is no doubt at all that some boats really do raise more fish than others. Its also pretty clear that boats like mine do not raise fish, quite the opposite in fact. So while it might be common for the larger boats to pull baits right behind the boat, litterly just feet from the transom, its also generally the rule that us small outboard guys will put the baits way way back there behind the boat. Sometimes I'll troll with my long lines close to 100 yeard behind the boat and my flat lines (the short ones closest to the boat) back 20 or 30 yards. Actually, to add to the misery of a small boater on a big sea, a friend of mine once commented that it could be something to do with the flash of light off of an outboards propeller that scared away fish. I thought that one might be a stretch.

Anyway what I am really interested in is how you all feel about the sound of the boat possibly actually attracting fish. I ask this for more than one reason. It has been suggested to me that the new high-horsepower 4-strokes sound very very much like big smoking inboards at trolling speeds and if that is the case it might just be one more good argument for biteing the bullet for bunches of thousands of dollars for a new engine.

So what do you think? Does the sound of your boat raise fish? How about your buddy's boat? Do you think some boats scare them away and others bring them right up?

Thom

[Homer]

I remember reading an article related to Great Lakes trolling several years ago about the relationship between motor size and the tendency of the motor to spook fish. The conclusion was that smaller motors scared more fish than larger motors. Part of it was related to smaller motors giving off a higher frequency noise. Whether this was based on fact or the author's opinion, who knows.

Funny how perspective changes things. At the time, I was worried about my 7.5 HP kicker scaring more fish than my 50 HP main motor. The 200 HP motor you consider "small" is 4x larger than my old "big" motor.

[RANGER]

I can't answer your question because I just don't know, for sure. However, I will say that ocean fishing charters, especially Marlin charter Captains, refer to their boats as "Part of the presentation" of the baits. I understand that the boat(s) ATTRACT the fish which bring the fish to the trolling baits! These Captains set their boats at certain RPMs for this purpose - Go figure!!

[Jim Ordway]

I recall an article by one of the PWT guys about trolling in rivers and picking up walleyes in the prop wash. Same with muskies in St Clair area. Handling with large weights is as vertical as you can get, but folks in the Trenton area pull fish out like crazy, both in deep and shallow water. Maybe props bother us more than the fish. Maybe the hum of the prop/motor relaxes them. If the props really bugged them, they would never bite with all the boats running around.
Sonar, props, water diplacement by boats, all are conisderations I would suppose, but I am more concerned about getting in their faces and avoiding sudden thumps and bangs in the boat. Those are my obsessions.
So many questions, and so many opinions,
Good luck,

[stewart]

I've run my boat around a weedbed to stir the pike up, and that can work well. As for walleyes there was a 'bits and pieces' in In-Fisherman about waking the walleyes up in river pools with the motor, but it said this worked only in the far north.

I think the walleyes can get wise to boats.One day last year I was fishing a popular spot, but didn't start really catching fish until everyone else had given up and left.At one point the motor accidentally died, and wouldn't you know but the average size of the fish we were catching went up dramatically. This was shallow water though.

[Bob Z]

Salt water guys have some strange ideas about boats raising fish. They actually claim that some boats (theirs or course) are better than others in raising billfish. It is supposed the diesel sound coming through the hull.

Prop wash in salt water is thought to represent to a predator fish another predator fish slashing thru a school of bait fish.

Some of the California salt water guys paste decals to the bottom of the white boat hull. The decals have the outline of bait fish with the theory that a large number of decals on the bottom of the boat looks like a school of bait and raise fish such as tuna and billfish.

Another interesting thing they use in salt water are daisey chains and spreader bars as attractors. The daisey chain may be 6 feet long with many lures on the same leader. Only the last lure has the hook.

On Lake Erie I generally stay away from other boats because it is said that to many boats spook the fish. But I keep wondering what a walleye might think of a daisey chain or spreader bar attractor.