Fishing Victoria Forum

Or not.

I am pretty new to fishing PPB and had a fair few trips over last 2 seasons
I have read all there is to read on the subject and have been out and sounding for hrs in season in depths where reports coming from.
I have yet to see a decent fish arch.
Found little lumps and flare ups , plenty of bait.
Caught tons of small flathead and rock cod and pinkies.
Sounding speed is good. sounder settings are good.
I just havent driven over a fish basically .
Dunno what the odds are of that but there you go
I cant bring myself to anchor and fish on nothing structure wise, or fish near other boats either.
Have had a few trips without even wetting a line. (need a facepalm)
Was going to go against grain and start drift fishing the place .
Any tips gratefully accepted

Hey Graham, welcome. I spend more time on the water looking for them than fishing! Although I'm a yak fisho, so I'm limited to 3-4km.
I believe PPB is mostly flat / sand bottom, so I'm looking for structures, variations on the bottom - drop offs, elevations - any changes and just drift over these areas flicking SP's (I gave up on bait sometime ago). Although when I do get strikers (mostly pinkies) there are no hints of arches on the screen.
Which part of PPB do you fish?

Transducer placement is imperative if you want to see good marks on the sounder.
Make sure you have yours set-up right.
Post and pic of how its set-up and someone her should be able to help you.
Apart from that keep sounding on known marks to see if you can spot fish.
The fish are a bit dead atm but pinkies are plenty, they will show up as small squiggly lines depending on your sounder settings.

Similar experience here but I've found a few arches recently. They have all shown up early in the morning, don't know if that makes a difference but I never sound up much in the middle of the day.

You just need one solid arch. Berley after finding a mark usually brings more after anchoring.

It's pretty dead at the moment.

having a similar issue now, i feel like i've seen a few good arches but nothing has come of it but then when there are fish right under the boat (ik bc i can catch them instantly) they don't show up. Next time i see an arch on my old 300 watt garmin i'll send a flick and i hope someone can tell me it's a genuine mark.

What is the transduce beam width in degrees.

Depending on the beam width some transducers will show snapper as arches whilst others will show blobs.

frozenpod wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 12, 2023 10:29 pm

What is the transduce beam width in degrees.

Depending on the beam width some transducers will show snapper as arches whilst others will show blobs.

It says beam width up to 120 degrees. Regardless i've not been seeing much of blobs or arches and i mainly want to know who really sounds up for snapper.

120 deg is huge, 25 deg is normal for salt water with upto 60 deg.

That will show massive arches.

I sound for them in PPB I wouldn't stop to fish unless I found a school of snapper with my sounder in November.

I understand your keen to get into some snapper.
May I suggest you do a search on this forum first and have a good read of previous posts many of us have made regarding sounding for snapper . This will give you a good idea for somewhere to start.
Its not easy when your starting out, but if you keep perceivering you will eventually start to sound them, and also catch them.

No matter how expensive your sounder is, you will not sound fish unless your transducer is setup properly and settings are dialled in and you actually know how to read what's on your screen.

There are subscription based sites that will get you started with some info if you want to go down that way, rember these aRe just guides and theres no gurantee of fish, Theres also sounder setup and tuitions from few people who will get it up and running for you. These all cost money ofcourse..

Finding them on the sounder is one thing, getting them to bite is another thing.
I'm a yak fisho and sometimes I do see big arches (bigger fish), and often just lumps or dots (around the bottom usually pinkies).
These were taken last year around the same time of year, and early this year.