I could do it with photoshop and point out the fish with arrows but since this is Salsa's property he may want to do it himself. It's easy to see them though .. those little white returns on the screen are the fish and the tiny ones bunched up together and all ragged looking are shad. you can see a big log right near the channel bank on the left side. Lots of average sized fish are using that log as something to relate to but most of the fish are all scattered out amidst the shad feeding on them. they're down in the channel and lots up on the left side outside the channel too. you can also see the shadows the fish create on the screen too. the closer the shadow to the fish then the closer that fish is to bottom. The dark area in the center is where the side imaging transducer pucks is going down parallel to each other to make contact with bottom. It gives the appearance that it's a cone shape but it's not because if you seen half a tire on the right side you'd see the other half on the left side just to the outside of the dark. The dark area is what I use to throw for shad too. I throw for shad on the left side of my boat so I want to see the shad on the left side in the dark where it meets the bottom too you can see the shad schools in the dark on Salsa's screen here and other schools out away from the dark area too .. those clusters of little blips in the dark area on the right and left of center are shad.... the larger blips are fish and it looks like there's scaley fish mixed in there with the catfish too as they give a brighter blips but it looks like salsa's settings are a little different than mine or he's got a newer unit than I have .. mine is the first one out and it doesn't have as good of a resolution as salsa's and it looks like the closer the fish is to his transducer the brighter the blips are but as it reaches out further it looks more like mine where the catfish are duller looking than the scaley fish. On mine the catfish look like that biggest blip on the upper left side of salsas screenshot and the scaley fish look like those thin bright blips. ;you can see the tree stump by the river bank on the left side as it's that blip right to the left of that dark shadow that's going straight away from the transducer ... you can't see the tree stump very good but you can see it's shadow real good and it looks like that's it's top laying down just down from it a few feet.

Salsa what model of finder you have for that image?

BigPoppa if you can view that screen shot on a iPad or some device so you can enlarge the photo and pan around it makes it very easy to see most of the fish and their shadow. You can also see the Shad and other details in this shot.
It's a great tool to do screenshots on the water and bring them home to enlarge and study in front of the fire with an adult beverage.

If you do this type of fishing enough you can't help but spend a bit on the toys that go with it.

Great info!

ain't that the truth!

Here is a good example of deep water winter time Sandbass / hybrids...

Scaley fish mark much brighter white...good to know. Nothing worse than anchoring up on the wrong fish, lol

That's it I'm selling the falcon for some toy money!!!!

Salsa, would you mind if I edited your screenshot to point out lots of the stuff on it? Or at least my interpretation of what it'd look like if I were looking at my screen ... there's not much difference in mine and your's but your resolution is better but you've got it set out 35 ft more than I do so that makes it off for me some. I think I might be able to help a lot of folks with the learning curve doing that with photoshop and explaining in more detail ... if you don't want me to divulge info using your photo then I completely understand. This could be objective to some folks as a deal about adding to the competition but I don't see that being a big problem as most of these texicans seem to be conservation minded and won't abuse the information shared. Or at least I hope they wouldn't slaughter big fish just because they've acquired the knowledge to do so

Salsa, you can see what looks like catfish in those schools of sandbass/hybrids also if they're close to bottom as you go by because when they take off abruptly they'll stir up the mud from the bottom leaving a see thru type mark that looks a lot like a catfish... if you look closely though at these mud marks you'll see that they don't leave a shadow. they'll also look different if they're moving when the transducer picks them up but a scaley fish that's not moving at all and facing the same direction your boat is going will leave a nice little dandy bright white blip. That's what I was noticing also about your fish finder as youj've got it set in a way or it just does this and what looks like big catfish close to your boat are pretty daggum bright unless those are giant largemouth buffalo or some other great big fat scaley fish but their shape looks like catfish so that's what I'd say they were ... my unit woulda shown them as a lot duller but I've got mine set to show the catfish duller ... even the close-up ones. only time the catfish look brite like a scaley fish on mine is after I fillet them and then they look a lot like scaley fish but that's because the unit is picking up the bone a lot better.

Another deal that lots of folks don't know about side imaging is that when you set them out to say 100 ft they're not showing you perzactically 100 ft of the bottom on both sides ... you have to subtract the depth from that and that tells you how much of the bottom you're actually seeing. For instance .. set out to 100 ft and you're in 34 ft of water so all you're seeing is 66 ft of the bottom on both sides. The reason I say that is because if you're in 41 ft of water and you've got your unit set out to 40 ft you won't see any of the bottom at all ... if you changed it to 45 ft reach then you'd see 4 ft of the bottom on both sides so this allows you to get a better idea of how far things are away from you when you're using side imaging. That's a little bit important

wow ... I just opened that latest screenshot in my photoshop editor to get a better look at it and there at the bottom that looks like the bank of a channel or something that's nothing but catfish piled up there so thick that it's hard to make out individual fish ... I've seen that up here right after a thaw and I threw my net and pulled up over 200 lbs of catfish between 18 and 3 lbs ... average was about 7 or 8 lbs. I think Salsa should go back to that area and look for that same type reading and throw hit thrownet hahaha ... if you've got a taped net you could catch a truckload of fish but it'd ruin your net most likely. You could use my other fish identification method too if it's not illegal to do it and that's tying on a treble hook with a sinker on bottom and jigging/snagging some. Snagging is legal in OK and I'd use it way back when to identify fish that I was seeing on my old Garmin monochrome fish finder. Worked really good too... just sharpen that treble hook up so sharp that it won't slide across your thumbnail and fish identification is super easy and fun too. hahaha

Have at it tiny!

Great info guys! We need a sticky thread at the top just like the crappie guys.

Okay. Here goes. on the top photo i've just got random fish marked with arrows.


on this photo it's pretty self explanatory with everything labeled and pointed out with arrows. The shad pointed out in the dark area with arrows parallel to each other is the same school of shad that's showing up on both sides .. you can see that they're similar in shape too and that's because both tranny pucks are going straight down parallel to one another to make contact with bottom. The bigguns I've got marked is just what I'm guessing to be over 20 lbs and a few as big as 60 ... there's lots of nice fish on the right side of the side image also just to the left of the end of the photo all scattered out ... maybe the best one is right on the opposite bank near the outer edge on the right side .. I don't have it marked but it's pretty clearly visible. Lots of those bigguns I've got marked in the top photo on the lower right side of the screen. On Salsa's screen the further away from the boat the duller the images get on the catfish ... that's what all of them look like on my screen. Hard for me to guestimate with any accuracy as to how big each individual biggun is but I'd guess around 30 lb average on the ones over 20 lbs ... marked and unmarked

Very Nice tiny!

Wow thanks tiny!