Ice Fishing Lures Resonates with Sonar
Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by ttnewsNo single tool has been more instrumental in creating a new generation of highly skilled ice anglers than the portable flasher-sonar unit. Ice fishing with a flasher remains the ultimate in visual, hands-on fishing. You see the depth along with the lake bottom; you see your lure in context; and eventually, you see the fish as they respond to your presentation— like a sight-fishing video game.
Like any pursuit, however, advancing the skill level of ice fishing’s practitioners requires new technologies—better tools for improving efficiency in the field. Thanks to industry-leading sonar engineers, such a technology has emerged. 
Last winter, a core group of ice insiders were chosen to quietly test the final versions of a truly unique new category of ice lure. The results were groundbreaking. The concept— a true first for the fishing industry— is a lure specifically engineered to be fished in tandem with a sonar unit; a “sonar-friendly” ice fishing jig that bounces back a solid, well-defined signal to the transducer.
Fittingly, as it turned out, the concept for the new Northland Fishing Tackle Hexi Fly had long resided within the minds of two of North America’s brightest sonar designers. Duane Cummings and Ray Marzean, military trained engineers who developed flasher-sonar products for MarCum Technologies, began cultivating their lure idea over three years ago.
“When engineers designed the first concave satellite dishes,” explains Cummings, “They drew on the precepts of antenna theory to build a reflective surface that most efficiently gathered electromagnetic waves. Essentially, we used these same concepts while engineering the Hexi Fly.
“Using a design model called Quarter Wave Technology, we knew that to get maximum target return from a small ice jig, we’d need to give it a reflective surface that matched the transmit frequency of most flasher-sonar units. Anglers who used the Hexi Fly last winter immediately noticed its flat, slightly concave body, which resembled a satellite dish. This was, of course, no accident. We created the lure with a reflective surface and shape that sonar really likes—it actually pings the transducer with twice the signal strength of similar sized jigs.”
Benefits for the angler, MarCum engineer Cummings reports, include the ability to maximize flasher performance on ice, or other vertical fishing situations. “Because this jig bounces back such a strong return signal, you’re able to tune down the gain on a unit like a MarCum LX-5 and still clearly read the bait,” he says. “A reduced gain setting yields better target separation, improved IR (interference rejection) performance, and the ability to filter out dense vegetation or other cover without losing sight of your jig within a cluster of signals.
Beyond its practical applications with sonar, however, the most important question remained: What do the fish think?
“The special body shape of the Hexi Fly also yielded an appealing swimming action,” Cummings adds. “It really flutters on the fall, and wobbles and glides off to the side of the hole when it’s jigged. And when you dress it with a small softbait, and give it tiny rodtip quivers, it’s got this sweet-looking cam-rocking action. It’s a remarkable combination in a lure—something quite unique in the fishing world. Used with a well-tuned sonar-unit, like the MarCum LX-5, I think fishermen are going to like what they see.”
