A recent article in Sport Fishing Magazine addresses the pros and cons of using drones to spot fish from above. They ask seven pro fishermen and photographers to share their tips for finding more fish, enticing more bites, and capturing better images using the drone’s-eye view.
Here are some of their responses:
I’ll put the drone up about 100 feet from the kite and a little above it, and point the camera down toward the baits,” says Capt. Mike Weinhofer, a Key West fishing guide. “I can see sailfish a minute or more before the bite, 15 or 20 feet underwater, just swimming circles around the bait. But drone battery life limits such views to brief glimpses."
“I’m old-school. I like to hunt. I like to use my skills to figure it out,” says Capt. Rob Fordyce, an Islamorada guide, and host of the Outdoor Channel’s The Seahunter. “But if I fly the drone over a half-mile of flat that I just fished, there are often a lot more fish there that I saw with the drone, but not while I was fishing. They’re either deeper or shallower than I thought they should have been for the conditions that day.”
“I have use of half a dozen drones at any given time, but I’ve yet to use one to find fish or make my day easier, because I enjoy the hunt,” he says. Fordyce feels drones can diminish the inshore-fishing experience. “It’s like the days before GPS. I learned the Everglades, hundreds of bays and shorelines, by going slow. I learned more about the fish. I learned where the little-bit-deeper spots were with a push pole. With the drone, you might see where the fish are on one particular day, but you’re not learning about that topography, the intricacies of the flat [that] you learn if you pole it or go slow with a trolling motor.”
“It can take many fishing trips to know the lay of the land,” says Capt. Chris Valaskatgis, a Massachusetts fishing guide. “But throw a drone up, and you see the whole thing laid out.”
What's your take, readers? Do you think drones are a way of cheating the learning process, or could they be a great way to get a better lay of the land? Make sure to read the rest of the article in Sport Fishing Magazine to hear from more fishing pros and read up on valuable tips for flying drones over the water. For more information on the types of drones that could be used for fishing, check out rcjudge.com. The video below, posted by Jaden Maclein, shows a drone actually placing bait 400 yards off an Australian beach where the tuna are. Then it films anglers catching some of those tuna. The video has been viewed more than 2 million times.