Tips and Techniques: How to Use Your Fish Finder Radar

If you want to catch fish, you must know how to find them.

A quick way to find fish is to locate birds, the undeniable masterminds of fish-finding technology. But pros target birds using radar, a tool normally reserved for collision avoidance.

We’ll discuss targeting birds with your fish finder radar here.

Understand Your Radar

A radar picture is a diagram. It shows the range and bearing of echoes.

At first sight, a radar picture looks like a mass of blobs. The coastlines’ general shapes are usually easy to pick out, but some details — and objects like ships, boats, and buoys — are more challenging to identify. 

Radar vs. Echo Sounder

Radar works just like an echo sounder. It transmits short pulses of energy and listens for the echoes it produces when it reflects off an object in its path.

Of course, a radar and echo sounder have a few significant differences:

1. A radar sweeps its pulses around the horizon like the beam of a lighthouse while an echo sounder sends them all downward.
2. Radars use high-frequency radio waves — microwaves — rather than sound waves.

Radar Beam Width

Your radar’s beam width plays a big part in its ability to track feeding birds effectively.

The narrower the beam width, the greater target discrimination you have. As the antenna radiator’s length increases, the beam width becomes narrower. So, a larger antenna invariably offers better target identification.

For this reason, dome antennas are less effective at tracking birds than open-array antennas.

How to Target Birds With Your Fish Finder Radar

Experience and practice are key to becoming a skilled fish finder radar operator. Build your knowledge by starting with the basics.

Follow these tips to target birds:

• If possible, visually locate a flock of birds you want to target.
• Set your radar to a mid- or long-range.
• Increase the gain control until you see “noise” on the display. Noise appears as a blanket of specks.
• Leave the gain turned up, setting the receiver for maximum sensitivity to detect birds.
• Resist the temptation to turn up the AC/Sea or AC/Rain to drop out the noise. Flocks of birds may look like dense, recurring noise rather than a solid target, but you’ll see them.
• Select the True Motion setting if your radar supports it. True Motion stabilizes the display and helps you identify whether the flock is traveling in a straight line looking for bait pods or has found its target school and started to feed.
• When operating in True Motion, turn on your target trail function and set it for long trails to help track traveling flocks.

Go Pro With a Captain’s License

Practice these techniques with your fish finder radar on a clear day with calm seas for the best results. Soon, you’ll scout your fishing spots like the pros.

Earn your captain’s license to become a real fishing professional. Mariners Learning System offers easy-to-access courses for boaters and fishers of all levels. Check out our captain’s license courses today to get started.