I would like to think I would, but probably not. When I got off the bank with a paddle board I caught plenty of fish I never could have gotten from the bank. On the other hand, when I look at the last year overall, I haven't gotten more or bigger fish since I got off the bank. 
 

It’s easy to think if I just had more shiny tools I would do better but experience says reality rarely matches expectation.

I don't own a boat but many of my fishing trips are with my dad who does. I think the difference like you said is WHERE you end up going with a boat. You can explore bigger lakes, go in worse conditions, bring more gear, but at the expense of fishing bigger waters that might take more time to break down, and alongside other anglers that also have boats. 

 

When I'm in my kayak or on the bank I'm pretty selective about where I go. It's just different not necessarily better. Small ponds can hold monsters and there's something special about fishing those hidden spots. I've had some of my best days from my yak, but I don't miss battling the wind lol. 

I went from Kayak with spotlock to kayak with spotlock and FFS, and now to boat with FFS and spotlock. have i caught more fish year on year?  Probably not/maybe.  Am i catching fish more consistently?  For sure.  I've given up some smaller waters that were kayak only in favor of a couple bigger ones that are too big to kayak efficiently.  The lakes that I've fished in both are certainly much easier to fish from a boat.  FFS has given me some more options at times on tough days and certainly my non-bass catches show that with the stripers, catfish, and crappie all caught on FFS.  It's added a new dimension to bass fishing and I've caught fish with it that I'd never have caught or even fished for in the past.  I haven't had any big numbers days this year (weather and my availability play a part there) but my 'normal' evening trip in the past would have been 2-5 bass with an occasional skunk thrown in.  This year my normal trip would be 5-10 bass and I don't recall the last time I skunked unless it was April 5th when I was breaking in the motor on an awful cold spring day on a new lake (I still caught crappie that day via FFS).  I'll echo others and say that spot lock isthe more critical of the two.  I don't have a shallow water anchor and I'm not convinced it will help me in my lakes (most of which are more than 10' deep where the boat is when I'm fishing) but I am considering one.  FFS is a nice to have and I'm glad I have it.

 

And I have yet to have a bag of chips in the boat.  Jerky, cinnamon buns, candy bars, and barbeque have all made an appearance this year, but never a bag of chips.  I'll take golden sriracha doritos next time. 

No. 

• I live in Massachusetts and am very limited in the number of lakes that allow my RT178 w/70HP Yammy and Ghost TM on it.
• I have FFS on it, which is cool to see my bait and 'fish' live, but FFS only helps locate fish.  It doesn't make them want my bait any more/less.
• FFS pulls ones' attention away from everything around them.  I'd rather see live, active nature around me.
• Yes, I can carry a lot more gear in my boat, but often times that gets me overthinking EVERYTHING.
• My kayak is easily loaded in my truck and there are 50 places I can launch it within an hour of home.
• The bag of chips is irrelevant.  I can scoff them down anywhere.

 

1 hour ago, casts_by_fly said:

my 'normal' evening trip in the past would have been 2-5 bass with an occasional skunk thrown in.

 

You, like many of us, have to move to Maine and enjoy some of @Swamp Girl's success.

35 minutes ago, DogBone_384 said:

You, like many of us, have to move to invade Maine

I tried to do that in the Air Force - signed up to be stationed at Loring, which is way NE corner, almost into New Brunswick, CA. They sent me to Omaha, NE

If I still had a boat and was seriously bass fishing I would have all the goodies.

Our lakes are deep rock structure with sparse cover plus highly pressured fisheries. With electronics you can locate the bait, structure elements and fish. Without electronics it’s all trail and error wasting precious time eliminating fish less water.

FFS is a game changer because in lieu of a narrow live display with the sonar screen all history, FFS live scope displays the entire screen with real time view under water. You can see what is going on real time.

Call it what you want but it isn’t going away!

 Today I go fishing as a back seater and enjoy fishing old school and catch a few bass using BFS tackle.

Tom

 

I have a 14 ft boat with FFS (LVS32) but no SpotLock. 

 

I do believe upgrading the boat, FFS system, and adding SpotLock would help ME catch more. A bigger, better boat would allow me to travel further, get places faster, and handle worse weather. Yes, there would be times I'd catch less not being able to access some hard-to-reach water I like to fish, but overall I think the pros outweigh the cons. Upgrading the transducer and screens would enhance the skills I've already developed with it. Not drifting off a spot while I rerig or weigh fish would obviously help.

 

I adamantly believe that FFS will NOT help someone catch more fish who has no experience with it. In fact, they'll catch fewer because they don't know what they're doing and will just get distracted by it. I've had it for a year and a half now and have used it every time I've fished. I can think of one day where I can honestly say I caught significantly more fish because of it- fishing in 2 ft of water, perspective mode allowed me to see fish swimming between cypress trees and cover more water not flipping every tree. More often than not, I hurt myself by getting distracted by something on the scope when I'm fishing traditionally, and 95 times out of 100 I just waste time messing with it. It doesn't help me catch more fish because I have not dedicated enough time to practicing with it. And by that I mean going out with no other objective than to practice scope/fishing for fish I see on scope.

 

We see these pros who dominate with it, but forget they spent tens of thousands of hours practicing with it to get that good. It's like saying "I could remove someone's gallbladder if I had one of those fancy surgery robots" but never having gone to med school. Can scope help people catch more fish? 1000%, but not until they've done the work to master it. 

 

Honestly, if someone on here believes they'd just hop on a boat with scope and instantly be able to catch fish with it, come down and fish with me. I'll sit in the back while you use it as long as you don't mind the smug, "I was right" grin on my face. 

53 minutes ago, DogBone_384 said:

You, like many of us, have to move to invade Maine and enjoy some of @Swamp Girl's success.

 

To live in Maine, you must be a Maniac and considering the goofy fun quite of few of you are having with "a bag of chips," some of you already qualify. 

 

2 minutes ago, JHoss said:

Can scope help people catch more fish? 1000%, but not until they've done the work to master it. 

 

 

I've seen where Tom @WRB-2.0 fishes and I think those California lakes are perfect for FFS.  

 

17 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I've seen where Tom @WRB-2.0 fishes and I think those California lakes are perfect for FFS.  

 

Probably so. And his existing knowledge of where to find them would help tremendously. But, some well respected anglers out there in CA are reporting the fish getting wise to it in certain lakes. They say they either have to stay much farther away than usual or turn the beam off entirely. 

 

 

11 minutes ago, JHoss said:

They say they either have to stay much farther away than usual or turn the beam off entirely. 

 

Fascinating.

 

5 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

If I had a bass boat, FFS, SpotLock, and a bag chips, do I think I'd catch more?

I don't have a bass boat, just a multi species boat, or FFS. I do have spotlock and that definitely helps me catch more fish. As for bag chips? It's been my experience bass don't like chips, maybe if I tried the more salty ones?😉 Then again maybe not, getting chips to stay on a hook can be a pain.

@JHoss- I'll echo what you said about learning it and getting good with it.  It takes putting in the hours.  The first year I had it in the kayak I mostly used it to build a mental map of the underwater around me in live time.  I rarely 'scoped' fish.  The second year in the kayak was better in that regard because I'd gotten a ton of practice with it.  I still mostly used it for underwater terrain but occasionally, in the right conditions and circumstances, I would venture out into the barren lands of a ditch and target fish.  The kayak made it tougher though since you were moving, the fish were moving, and your bait was moving so all of that made it hard to really scope fish.  Moving to the boat helped immensely as I've got the transducer on the foot pedal now and the boat is a lot less prone to blow around (I can only imagine it in a 21' glass boat).  But none of that helps in understanding what you're looking at or adjusting the view for the conditions and fish.  And none of that helps you find the fish in the first place.  If you know that there are (or should be) fish in a given place then it will help confirm that and if they will bite what you have.  It's great if you know a lake.  I imagine that the western rocks lakes that Tom is fishing on with his knowledge of them would be one.  AJay's big clear lakes up north with his knowledge would be another.  If you can find the fish, it will help you catch them.  But it won't help you find them.  

 

And if your lakes are very weedy then just forget it.  There are some lakes here where I don't even bother turning it on.

13 minutes ago, casts_by_fly said:

 

And if your lakes are very weedy then just forget it. 

 

I can't even cast a crankbait that runs 2'-3' deep because I hook weeds, so it wouldn't work in my pond because there are weeds everywhere.  

I have a boat, FFS, spot lock, and several bags of chips (although not all together). I believe I catch more fish because of the spot lock than I do the FFS. I thought the FFS was cheating, until I got it and actually had to use it. No doubt it's a great tool, but I've yet to find the fish that simply give themselves up because I have it. I use it more as an aimable sonar to find offshore cover and it's proven very useful for that. The spot lock allowing me to concentrate on fishing an area instead of fighting the wind has been a much bigger deal in my fish catching. 

I’ve had all the above for some time now. I’ve had days when ffs helped and other days that I’ve spent too much time on it. As for spot lock, power poles I wouldn’t leave home without them. There’s plenty of lakes I fish where poles are useless and other 

lakes where spot lock is useless. When I’m fishing smaller lakes that I know like the back of my hand I don’t even turn on the ffs. Now where Katie @Swamp Girl fishes there’s no way I would use any of it.

 

 

 

 

44 minutes ago, casts_by_fly said:

If you know that there are (or should be) fish in a given place then it will help confirm that and if they will bite what you have. 

I think this is the first thing I "learned" with my scope. I could compare how much life was in one area vs another relatively quickly and eliminate water quickly. But that's also very easily doable with traditional down or side imaging, so not like it gives some crazy advantage there. 

 

21 minutes ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I thought the FFS was cheating, until I got it and actually had to use it. 

100% agree. Then I got it and was humbled in a hurry.

 

31 minutes ago, GaryH said:

Now where Katie @Swamp Girl fishes there’s no way I would use any of it.

 

I have no aversion to fishing with technology and if Lockheed Martin ever builds a canoe with their F-35 stealth tech, I'm buying it! 

Well for me I would say probably it would increase my catches.

I fish close to 100% in my kayak, and it is a paddle only yak.

The biggest thing to me would be spot lock, between the wind in lakes, and the wind and current in rivers it's a royal pia to hold position, paddling with one arm and fishing with the other is quite the chore.

The reservoirs I fish are deep and clear, not at all like the "ponds" our esteemed queen of Maine fishes  

5 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I have no aversion to fishing with technology and if Lockheed Martin ever builds a canoe with their F-35 stealth tech, I'm buying it! 

I thought they got the stealth idea from you?

 

The way I fish, it won’t do me much good. If I’m cruising the shore line and carpeting the cover with soft plastics or shallow running crank baits.

If I’m hunting the big ones, I turn off all electronics and lift the trolling motor and push pole in. Even my shallow water anchors are fiberglass tree stakes. So I fish shallow most of the time.

That gear is very cool though, would be nice, but bag of chips is the deal sealer.

Power poles are hilarious here in my waters. Just about everyone has them but I’ve never seen anyone deploy them. The one exception was Jason Christie in the 2021 elite series tournament, it was windy and he was working docks in a shallow tributary. The thousands of other power poles I’ve seen are for decoration. Most of the water here is 20 ft deep one step off dry land, sometimes 100 ft deep in that distance 

I'm sure I'd catch more with electronics. I'll find out next year when I put a mega SI humminbird on my yak...

 

 

59 minutes ago, herder said:

The biggest thing to me would be spot lock, between the wind in lakes, and the wind and current in rivers it's a royal pia to hold position, paddling with one arm and fishing with the other is quite the chore.

 

I agree. SpotLock is what I crave. I know what it is to paddle with one arm and play a bass with the other. It's like trying to text with one hand while you have a lunging Bernese Mt. dog leashed to the other wrist.

 

56 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

I thought they got the stealth idea from you?

 

 

Ha-ha! I have worked with Lockheed Martin, but not as an engineer. 

 

True story: Every story I wrote about one of their people, I requested an F-22 on a weekend loan. They always laughed. 

 

46 minutes ago, GRiver said:

 

That gear is very cool though, would be nice, but bag of chips is the deal sealer.

 

Who knew you guys could squeeze so many laughs out of chips!?!

 

 

Thanks, guys, for all good conversation. I'm out of reactions, but I appreciate all your replies.

If I had a bass boat, I'd would catch a bunch more, as I'd be able to access spots I can't access, since I'm bank bound currently.

 

Now.. if I had any boat, that'd get me on some new water. But having spot lock sure would make it easier to deal with current or wind. Yeah, that'd save a ton of time and aggravation in boat positioning.

 

If I had FFS, it'd put me on more fish because I could use that to learn about where fish are, and what they do, not necessarily targeting fish. I could use it to learn where baitfish are. So yep, It'd help me to up my game a bunch.

 

If I had a bag of chips, I'd bring a couple sammiches, waters, and a coke, and I'd be ready to fish from my new boat all day. Where do I sign up for this GAW?

1 hour ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I have no aversion to fishing with technology and if Lockheed Martin ever builds a canoe with their F-35 stealth tech, I'm buying it! 

We have a large Lockheed Martin plant here in Owego NY. My brother owns a precision machine shop, and doe some one-off work for them, Maybe I can get him to put in a good word for you (G).