Forward-facing sonar (FFS) is the cutting edge of fishing electronics. Garmin offers LiveScope, Lowrance has Active Target and Humminbird features MEGA Live Imaging. The technology shoots sonar to the side of the boat, showing fish location in real time. On the screen, you not only can watch a fish as it swims, but also watch your lure and how the fish reacts to it.

I experienced it firsthand for the first time in September when I attended “Fish Camp” on central Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks. I was lucky enough to fish with three different crappie anglers: one from Mississippi, one from Oklahoma and one from Missouri over the course of two days.

The three guys all had Garmin LiveScope units that helped find individual crappies and schools of crappies in front of and to the sides of their boats.

Charlie Bunting, a pro crappie angler since 1997, took me on a 12-mile run up the lake to some docks where Charlie had seen fish. And big schools of crappies were still hanging around two of the floating docks.

I’d heard plenty about forward-facing sonar (FFS), but I’d never been aboard a boat that had it. Watching Garmin LiveScope at work is basically like looking at a two-dimensional, monochrome aquarium. You can watch actual fish shapes swim around on the screen. You can see your lure sinking down to the fish level and you can watch fish swim up and eat it—or swim up and shy away. The screen also shows you how far away the fish are from the boat. When crappies are stacked amidst floating docks, you can easily drop a lure or bait right on their noses.

And that pretty much sums up our presentation.

Charlie gave me a 14-foot-long baitcasting rod. Already tied on was a small, long-shank hook with a 1/4-ounce bullet sinker pegged about a foot above it with a neoprene bobber stop. While Charlie cast a small, colorful jig without additional bait towards the school, I baited with a live fathead minnow and dunked it straight below the rod tip. We both caught crappie after crappie, releasing many that were short of Lake of the Ozarks’ 9-inch size limit.

On the sonar display, I could see the fish, but had a hard time seeing my bait and sinker.

“You’re just above them,” Charlie would say. “Lower it a couple feet.” Or, “You are right in the middle of the school. Raise your bait a little bit.”

I would do as instructed, and before long, the rod tip would dip, and I’d swing a crappie into the boat. They had to be 9 inches to keep on Lake of the Ozarks, and some had to be measured. Others were obviously keepers—a few were 12 inches and bigger. We also landed lots of smaller fish that we quickly released.

When I fished the day before with Oklahoma’s Anthony Owens, I could see my jig much more clearly on his LiveScope screen—I think because we got closer to the fish.

Anthony and I fished the same kinds of floating docks in a different part of the lake. He had a couple of 7-foot rods designed specifically for “shooting,” which means grabbing the jig by its head, pulling to bend the short rod, and letting go of the jig and, milliseconds later, letting go of the line from the spinning reel. The rod springing straight flings the jig forward and, ideally, under the dock.

I need a lot more practice. Most of my “shots” ended with the jig plunking into the water well in front of the docks with a loud splash, not coming close to getting underneath.

So, we just dropped the jigs pretty much straight down, right next to docks where the LiveScope showed us fish. And we caught lots of them. “You have to slowly lift the jig to get bites,” Anthony instructed. “If you pause it, they’ll just swim back down.”

The screen showed that he knew what he was talking about. It was amazing to see a crappie blob merge with the jig and then feel the bite. It occurred to me that we don’t really feel the bite in most cases, but rather the fish turning back to go rejoin the rest of the school.

I also fished with Jason Clements and his wife Renee, who traveled from Mississippi to join the Fish Camp. Jason had a “tournament” approach to crappies, spurning the docks that were loaded with mostly smaller fish, and hunting for individual, larger fish around brush piles.

While Charlie had had 10-pound test K9 brand fluorocarbon, and Anthony had spooled the shooter rods with 6-pound, the Clements’ 14-foot rods had baitcast reels filled with 20-pound test.

“I just kept them rigged how we use them in Mississippi,” Jason explained, noting that most of their crappie lakes have stained water with very low visibility. They also fish a lot of snaggy brush piles where heavy fluorocarbon allows them to pull jigs free without breaking off, saving valuable tournament time.

Like Charlie, Jason had rigged a bullet weight above the unbaited jig, held in place top and bottom with neoprene bobber stops. The weight got the jig down quickly and helped hold it in front of fish.

As soon as we began fishing, he spotted a blob that, from its shape and how it was acting, he identified as a crappie. He dropped his jig down and immediately pulled a fat 12-incher into the boat. We didn’t catch a lot of fish, but the average size was indeed bigger than the fish hanging under docks. Clements ties up his own jigs, taking a kit with him to tournament venues. He buys bulk numbers of unpainted, tungsten heads, painting and adorning the jigs with colorful materials. Both his jig head and his bullet weight are made of tungsten, which he said shows up on FFS more clearly than softer lead does.

Right now, complete setups of FFS cost more than $1,500 new. If competition amongst the electronics companies brings the price down to where everyday anglers can add it to their boats, lots more fish will get caught—at least for a while. All three of the anglers I fished with said that crappies are already getting conditioned to hearing the louder clicks from the side-facing transducers and sometimes shy away from baits. Bass anglers say the same about their targets.

So, I doubt that states will be lowering creel limits because of FFS.

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