Anglers scope out hi-tech helper but no substitute for knowledge

Love 'em or hate 'em live scopes are changing fishing as we know it.

For those that don't know what they are, they're a standard fish finder on steroids.

Live scopers have the ability to point their transducer in whichever direction they like, see a fish, in the shape of a fish, determine its size, the direction its swimming, its depth, the speed its travelling, then cast a lure in front of it and watch it come to your lure and eat it.

A bit like watching a TV really.

Now that's simplifying it a lot, and that's what happens on occasions. BUT, and that's a BIG but, there are also many occasions where, just like normal fishing, they refuse to eat your lure for no apparent reason.

There's no doubt though these scopes can be deadly in the hands of fishos switched on to technology, and there's no denying there's never been so many big cod caught since their introduction.

Many fishos have nicknamed them "Cheat Scopes" (particularly those that don't have one), and in a competition setting, it would definitely be a massive advantage.

It simply can't be a level playing field if one team is fishing with a live scope and the other isn't.

That's definitely something competition organisers will have to address at some stage.

Simply owning a live scope is not the guarantee to catch fish a lot of fishos think it might be though - you've still got to have fishing knowledge to get the best out of one.

One surprising behavioural observation that has come about from users of live scopes, is their stories of how much cod move around.

It would appear the entrenched theory of big cod laying under a log all day, only coming out occasionally to grab a feed is simply not true.

All the live scope users I talk to say when they come across big fish, they're more often than not moving around, and are also often surprised at the pace at which those fish are cruising.

As I say, this is a very common story, and comes as a bit of a shock to most fishos.

Another one is that they often see big cod mid-water.

You can be in eight metres, and they can be cruising about in one to two metres.

I always pictured them hugging the bottom for most of their lives, only coming up during peak feeding times.

You pay big bickies for a setup, ballpark five to seven grand, but like all technology, it'll probably keep improving and dropping in price.

It'll certainly be interesting to see where it's all at in a couple of years.

Dartmouth (65.4%) - fished well again last week and same story as the week before, they were caught at a variety of depths.

There still seems to be quite a few smaller fish but enough in the 40s to keep everyone pretty happy.

Streams - are closed but have been copping a great dose of rain over the past few days. Those spawning fish love higher river levels.

Hume Dam (53%) - fished well last weekend and the weather was certainly conducive to getting a few fishos out there.

Reddies are still on the chew, with many reports of good bags of solid fish. They have slowed a little though and, as we mentioned last week, the lack of actively feeding birds has also made it a tad harder to locate the schools.

The 10- to 15-metre mark seems to be popular among reddie fishos at the minute.

I must admit to getting a little more excited about this year's trout season.

We've been anticipating a good one due to so much tucker in the dam all year and the very early signs indicate we could be right.

There was a reasonable number of good to very good trout caught in the past week, with quite a few fishos picking at least one fish up.

I've also heard of a few boats landing two and saw another crew on social had landed three rippers in a session.

Now I've seen enough crap trout seasons out there not to get too excited and start waffling on about how great it's going to be but, it's very early days and the signs are very promising.

I know that not every boat that put in caught one last weekend but, there were more caught last weekend than there were for the whole of June last year, and yes, we'd just come out of lockdown and were able to fish.

I'm trying very hard not to get too pumped up with my expectations.