Does anyone have any images of what schooling baitfish look like on side imaging? Not the schools in the water column that are easy to see, but ones off to the sides.

bass boat central has tons of si and di images.

They divide them between lowrance and humminbird so you can look at one which matches what you have.

Crappie and baitfish higher in water column

Sunnies......Larger ones on bottom, smaller ones on top were only about 4-5in long.

The screen captures in this article are primarily perch:

http://www.jasonhalfenoutdoors.com/springperch.html

These are mostly shad with some small sheepies mixed in. The jagged line on the left side represents the edge of an ice sheet that I was able to image beneath.

These are some bunches of YOY shad after transitioning from the shallows to open water. Some are in the water column but if you look off to the sides you'll see the same bunches of dim returns.

Here's the original of that perch image so you can see the SI range....perch schools out to the far edge of the range (100 ft).

thanks, great shots. very helpful!!

mpower

In my opinion, and for the most part, its very difficult to see a high percentage of baitfish and even predator fish out of the water column. It really seems to depend on the bottom content. I have seen where its relatively easy to spot fish and where its next to impossible with a high percentage falling into the "difficult to impossible" category. However, you can see from Jason's and my screenshots that its possible in the right circumstances (bottom content and very high density schooling concentrations. I've said this before but I think it would be great achievement for Side imaging to be able to display suspended soundings in a different color than the bottom. Only then would spotting fish become "easy".

Here would be an example of a bottom content not suitable for reading baitfish outside the water column.

Here are a few more:

Massive school of late fall shad.

I like this one because it's in very shallow water. The school of bait is in the zoom box. The returns are starting to get hard to see but the shadows are really apparent. The other object in that zoom box is a standing tree.

These are a mix of crappies and sheephead. Imaging fish all the way to the edge of the SI range.