ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a freelance writer and photographer , Rob Newell has been reporting on fishing tournaments for more than 20 years , finding the stories between fish and angler to be a stretched line of triumph , heartache , torture and inspiration . forward-facing sonar is ruining my life
… or at least turning my world upside down
D oes that title sound best suited for a YouTube video ? Now I just need a thumbnail of me kneeling in the bow of a bass boat with my head in my hands , with a big red arrow pointing to four graphs . Throw in few thought bubbles that read : It ’ s too expensive ! It ’ s unfair ! High fence fishing ! You ready to click on it ? Well , don ’ t bother . The truth is , forward-facing sonar is not ruining my life . What live beaming technology is doing to my life , though , is overturning , debunking and contradicting so much of bass fishing ’ s traditional body of knowledge that I ’ ve studied and written about for years . Yes , it ’ s uncomfortable because I now question everything I ’ ve learned about fishing over the last 25 years , but at the same time , it ’ s an extraordinary discovery process . Every time I have an indepth talk with some of the top beamers in our game , my mind is blown in terms of what they tell me about true bass behavior . In many cases , it ’ s not what we think . It ’ s quite amazing just how much we still don ’ t know about bass , and a lot of what we thought we knew about them is simply not true .
Pretty bold statements , I know , but as they say in the courtroom , nothing beats live testimony . And that ’ s where live beaming comes in . Pro anglers who spend eight to 10 hours a day , for days on end , watching fish movements on a
18 MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM | APRIL-MAY 2023