It came to me in the middle of the night… from the astrolabe’s, sextants and sinker lines that were used 300 years ago for navigation of ancient wind driven and oar driven vessels to the GPS units, digital mapping software, fluxgate compasses and gyroscopes, radar, sonar and depth sounders of today, boating and fishing have taken technological leaps and bounds!

Right now we use fish finders and depth sounders to find fish and keep us safely off the rocks and the bottom and GPS units to mark our fishing spots and guide us back to the dock. We now fish with graphite rods high tech reels and high strength lines where we once used wooden rods and hand lined the fish in…. but what if in the future….

Those depth sounders could be fine tuned with different frequencies to not only tell us where the bottom was, but to give us range and bearing and be able to sweep 360 degrees around the boat like radar does and side scan to not only locate the schools of fish we are after, but also to have the ability to identify the species for fish on our scope using recognition technology. What if the unit could also approximate the size of the fish and be sensitive enough to be able to identify the feed the fish are after, and also be able to warn us of before we are on top of it when there are under water dangers. What if a duel sensor system could be set up that would be able to also provide us a virtual 3D colour picture of things under the water as well! What if all of this could be integrated with our GPS units and new information automatically be added to our navigation suite software…

Though some of the technology is peaking out from commercially available devices such as forward scanning sonar and colour radar along with GPS positioning overlays for currently available navigation software and integrated underwater camera units … but what if it could be small and accessible and sent wirelessly to a smart phone or tablet…. What if… a mini waterproof camera, powered by its movement through the ocean as you trolled along could be attached to your weight that would wirelessly transmit a picture of your hook and bait to your on board viewing unit, tablet or smart phone so you could film catching your fish as it happened…