Question – How much does Outboard Motor Noise affect fishing?

[bfishn]

My anecdotal 2 cents...

Chasing down jug-hooked catfish is way easier with a gas motor than an electric troller. Something about that electric motor gives 'em second wind and they flee in panic.

On the other hand, I've electric-trolled for shallow 'eyes, just 5' over one on the graph, thrown out behind the boat without changing course, and catch the very fish I'd just driven over.

Armed with that experience I've concluded that dropping a 2 oz sinker in an aluminum boat definitely scares the fish away.

[snagged in outlet 3]

7 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Yeah but nothing gives guys like me wood better than a LOUD motor with 3 times more power than you need. 

WAAAAAP WAAAAP WAAAAAAAAAAP !!!!!!

😎

Cross carts. 

[jdmidwest]

10 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

Yeah but nothing gives guys like me wood better than a LOUD motor with 3 times more power than you need. 

WAAAAAP WAAAAP WAAAAAAAAAAP !!!!!!

😎

But the mud motors put out 3 times more noise with lower power at prop from what I see.

[Champ188]

17 hours ago, Bill Babler said:

On bass, Bill Beck would never either run or idle down a shoreline and then fish it.  He always wanted to come in at the start or the finish without cruising it.  I asked him about it several times and he always said it was just more of a feeling to him that running down a bank with the motor on was not as good as fishing from a straight in approach on point A to point B without disturbing the water.

Hard to go against arguably the best there's ever been on Table Rock. I've always felt the same where shallow fish are concerned. Come in quietly and make super-accurate casts with as little splashdown as possible. If possible, I will throw up on the bank and drag my lure back into the water Little things make a big difference with shallow fish.  

[Bill Babler]

What he just said

[Old plug]

I do not think it makes much differance with us Wrench. I think they all are deaf from the 600 to 1000 hp motors.  

[tjm]

Interesting stuff.  As I think about this with no first hand sonar knowledge, it occurs to me that the motor noise is in the air above the water and probably doesn't have much effect below the surface,  the boat is making all kinds contact noise in the water and directly transmitting any bangs you make so it would transmit the vibration of the motor. I think prop cavitation  would be most of the noise felt by fish.

 

[Devan S.]

First of all sound underwater vs. sound we hear are vastly different. Sound is basically just energy travelling through a medium(air or water) and how our receptors(ears) react to that. These waves move much faster underwater. For a human it sounds completely different than it probably does to a fish(especially since they don't technically have ears). It also doesn't help that the human body uses bones to pick up the energy.  How a fish hears will likely be entirely different than how we perceive just based on this alone. 

None-the-less I always think of it like living right next to the airport or train tracks. Provided your not directly next to the plane or train and your remotely close you eventually live to deal with it. You eat, sleep, play with your kids in the yard, heck you even learn to watch TV differently when the train or plane goes by. This is probably seasonal to some degree for a fish as well. Sure in a 8' deep river or lake and you run right over him he might spook but at the end of the day it happens fairly often from May-October. Its an inconvenience probably sure but not the end of the world.  He may have a different reaction in December though.

The other is the duration of sound.  A plane taking off is high energy long duration like a boat travelling overhead. A gunshot is a similar level of amplitude of the noise but its relatively a short duration like stomping in a boat or dropping something in a boat. Different expectation, different response. 

Does it really matter...maybe or maybe not....does it hurt to be cautious....not one bit. 

[liphunter]

That's a good point Devan. I didn't even think about what a fish perceives as a sound compared to us. 

[tjm]

so does sound in the air above the water trans late to sound in the water?