Friday Dec 9, 2022. The day almost was cancelled on Wednesday when rain was predicted all day. I wanted to take Dan out again to give him another shot at those video game stripers now that he had the right flies and lines dialed in from last week. The more you fish with someone, the better catching odds go up since it take team work to make things work especially site fishing with a Panoptixs Livescope for two anglers. Its always a pleasure for me fishing with skilled flyfisherman. Especially when fishing mainly on one side of the boat all day. Last time out with Dan, I fished two Livescope units out the same side of the boat. This trip. I mirrored my LV34 to an iPad so that we were looking at the same screen from the bow and stern. This is only a great way to fish a panoptix for two anglers if the bow angler can cast over the boat or backhand cast at least 80 feet accurately.
The last couple days, reports from the forebay were slow- 4 to 5 fish per boat on Wednesday and Thursday. It would be a test of the ‘Video Game Striper ” fishing method for me. With two good anglers in the boat, I set a goal to catch a dozen fish today between the two of us to convince myself that a Livescope can turn a crap day into gold. The weather turned out to be perfect with no wind. not too cold and no rain. Even though birds were not working bait, we did find some fish around circling birds We found roaming schools of fish in shallow flats and under sitting and circling birds. We caught fish steadily all day hooking about 30 fish and landing at least 20 according to Dan’s clicker. It was fun watching Dan tease and lure fish to the fly on the sonar. He has a great retrieve. I saw many of the fish we caught today actually hit the flies we were casting as they retrieved back through the sonar. More often that not, I thought I was working my fly on the scope to a following fish only to find out after it was hooked, that it was Dan’s fly and not mine that I was watching. In fact we were able to anticipate a strike and set at the exact moment a fish would hit Dan’s fly on three separate occasions. It was a hoot to tell Dan that a fish was accelerating towards his fly and to get ready and call the strike like Babe Ruth pointing to left field. Today we were also able to predict, before casting, two double hook ups because the screen just looked perfect with the right distribution of fish . What a great and memorable day fishing with Dan.
As we came in, a bass boat with three gear fishermen were also pulling out at 4:30pm. I talked to them for awhile about there cool bow mount LV34 transducer mount. They only managed a few fish even with the Panoptix. Perhaps the the Panoptix in perspective mode is more productive for fly fishermen who can hover flies at the right level in front of fish that are 40 feet out. A 30 fish day when average boats with good fishermen are landing 4-5 is a testament to how deadly fishing can be when optimally using a Panoptix to site fish and cast.
Great writing Meng – a fun read for sure even if it was about you and me. I really enjoyed fishing with you in your boat and receiving a tutorial on how the LiveScope Lv34 works and how to effectively use it – ‘chasing’ those schools and pods of fish, then positioning the boat for perfect presentations is the ticket for sure. It won’t be the same for me in my own skiff with just a 2D finder – that said, I’ve always managed to get a share of the fly bites using my Humminbird Helix 10 2D sounder; but it sure won’t be the same from here on.
Again, thanks for taking me out. I truly appreciate being able to fish with you in your boat and drooling on the screen of you spare LiveScope Lv34.
Dan Blanton
It was a true pleasure fishing with you again, Meng. We caught lots of fish and best of all I got a valued lesson on how to use the Panoptix LiveScope Lv34 sonar unit. It was AMAZING!