Today's Spatially Aware Angler

On long drive camping trips when I was a kid, with my parents and sister, often meant sitting in the passenger seat beside dad who’s driving, with the Ontario road map partly unfolded on my lap.

I suppose I was the navigator since my sister in the back suffering from car sickness and my mom at her side. I didn't mind it at all, I enjoyed the job. Maps to me read easier than words in a novel. I was never good in English in school, but geography was my calling.

Today we have GPS which has turned the Spatially Aware Navigator into a redundant skill replaced by your cell phone or dashboard mounted GPS. Now in my older years I sometimes like to explore without my electronics. Resort to a paper map or use my sense of direction to weave my way across the Lots and Concessions of the back-roads. I fear being Spatially Aware is becoming a skill lost on younger generations.

Electronics for fishing has become heavily leaned on for navigator, but unlike a haphazard car trip across the countryside, decisive navigation on the water is as important as your car seat belt. In fact, as a captain of your vessel, it is by law you know where you are at all times even when the electronics clearly show it digitally. Marine Law enforcers pull over boaters and check for safety gear. On that list for a larger vessel is a Magnetic Compass and an updated paper navigation chart. Your electronics already shows your location and with accurate cartography to help your navigational needs. Truly what is desired is that (as a captain) you are spatially aware of your boat’s position and direction. It’s like a sixth sense for seasoned mariners.

It has been said by many of professional anglers that fishing success is like real-estate success. It’s all about Location, Location, Location. Today’s technology has given anglers the tools to efficiently narrow down the best location to catch fish.

The number one question I get from those at the dock ready to go out fishing is “what depth of water were you in?” So many concentrate on how deep the fish are, but rarely consider where on the lake the fish are located. Which way out of port are you fishing? As the morning went on, where did you find fish migrate too? Information to provide your location, it is often using a visual location on land or on a map and rarely coupled by the depth of water fishing. Spatial awareness of your surroundings means understanding… x,y (location on a map) and z (depth of water).

Spatial awareness allows the opportunity to justify how and where you fish, judge your fishing situation with other locations. They say 90% of the fish are in 10 % of the water, but I believe the Great Lakes is an even greater percentage of fish in smaller percentage of water, and unlike structure oriented fish like bass, pelagic fish are nomad. If a seasoned Mariner has a Spatial Awareness like having a sixth sense, wouldn’t you think as a Great Lakes Troller, would it not help you put more fish in the boat? With today’s electronics and technology, when used effectively, provides the information to become spatially aware.

Future Great Lakes Fishing Technology prediction.

In 2000 I did a seminar at the Strait Line Anglers Club after finishing my schooling in Geographic Information Systems. My main topic was how GPS works. At that time it was expanding rapidly and the US government stopped Selective Availability to enhance GPS locational accuracy for civilian use. I said in the seminar that in the future, our GPS units will not only have our bathymetric charting and our location on the map, but also correct the data in the map collected by SONAR. 15 years later we have SONAR Charts Live updates from Navionics.

So what is next for our future of fishing electronics… I believe we will see strides in wigitization of apps that would not only display on the hardware we mount on the helm, but also on mobile devises like our phones or tablets. Use of cloud storage of things like saved routes, Trails and Waypoints to be shared to other devices and other users. They will design electronics with emphasis on app integration between electronics like your SONAR/GPS plotter display and Down-speed display via added widgets and easy plug and play apps. Mobile devices like our phones will allow easy saving of Waypoints and control of the electronics and apps from anywhere in the boat by Bluetooth on mobile devises.

I believe our electronics will have greater insights into our use of the electronics. For an example, it might generate hotspot maps of areas that are seeing greater waypoints saved via crowd source cloud storage sharing. Not unlike Waze for driving, you will have Waze of fish catching activity. This will open up the familiarity of your success measured by your location and the location of others. Are you fishing where more fish are being caught? There was a time when SONAR was said to be “cheating” because you see the fish. Then we saw the introduction of GPS technology viewed as a tool to uncover secret fishing spots. The next evolution in trolling technology will include information sharing and insights into that information.


All the best electronics in the world will not make you a better angler. They provide you information so you can be more spatially aware as a troller. Spatial awareness aids decision making on the water. Making the right decisions will catch you more fish.

Shane Thombs
FINtastic Sportfishing