Andy Parr Shares His Experience With The Deeper Chirp+

Location, whether that’s the fish whereabouts or the most likely areas and spots in your swim to do a bite, it is one of, if not the most important elements of your fishing and it’s about to get a whole lot easier.

Deeper have recently released the Chirp+ a more advanced castable sonar that will not only give you greater detail when reading the lake bed but also allow you to map the swim depths with more accuracy, both the Chirp+ and Pro+ work off WIFI and you must turn off all mobile data when its in use otherwise it will disconnect after a 40 yard range.

The Chirp+ really does excel when fishing extremely weedy or deep waters with its triple beam frequency allowing you to change between 7,16 & 47 degree cones for excellent clarity, also the Chirp+ will scan depths from 6 inches of water allowing you now to map the shallowest of lakes.

Deeper have also updated the depth scan to an impressive 100 meters and included a fast charge capability for those on the go anglers who like to move swims frequently or like mapping rivers and canals trying to find those elusive jewels. The updated charge times are 80% in 45 minutes and 100% in 75 minutes.

The Chirp+ is also slightly lighter than the Pro+ weighing in at 3.2oz compared to the 3.5oz of the Pro+, while both still offer a casting range over over 100 meters 330ft. The Chirp+ is not a replacement for the Pro+ and Deeper will continue to grow the features on the Pro+ and push regular LakeBook and software updates to its users.

Now if you listen to what people have to say on social media about anglers using deeper products its “cheating” ok so lets set the record straight, anglers have been using sonars for a number of years worldwide weather it be attached to a boat or castable on a rivers or the mighty rainbow they’ve been used far and wide so what is the difference, there isn’t one so just go fishing and enjoy it, technology will only advance in the world we live in so embrace it, we all go fishing to catch fish not blank.

When turning up at day ticket water you sometimes cannot get in the swims where the fish are showing but you can map out a swim effectively with 2-3 casts allowing you to map the water in front of you and be effectively fishing with minimal disturbance allowing the fish to potentially drift into your swim, I feel you could not achieve this with a marker float setup. Now I do believe a marker float still has its place in our armoury but for quick and easy depth finding the deeper is so much more effective than spending 2 hours + thrashing the water with a marker setup and scaring any fish that were in the area away.

A good 70% of my fishing is done on day ticket waters around the UK and when I’m using the Chirp+ I like to have it set to onshore GPS allowing all mapping to be uploaded to LakeBook, I also set the sensitivity to around 80% with a mid beam this is a good starting point and can be tweaked accordingly to the angling situation, when I move onto my syndicate which is quite weedy water I change the setting to 100% sensitivity and a narrow beam to find the clear spots. I always recommend to people to play around with the sensitivity and find what works best for you, with using the onshore GPS mode you can view all the history from previous sessions allowing you to drop back into the same swim and be fishing effectively without having to remap the swim. I always edit the data with the fishery name, peg and wraps I was fishing at to allow me to get back onto the same spot when I return.

On a session in January I turned up to a lake to be greeted with -1 conditions and not one fish show in the first 3 hours, I opted to cast the deeper around with 100% sensitivity and with the fish icons turned on to see if I could find the fish held up in a certain area, much to my surprise on my 3^rd cast I was retrieving the Chirp+ from the far margin with a reading of 6ft the lake depth dropped by ½ ft and the Chirp+ went into meltdown, I had found them held up in a 10ft square in ½ ft depth difference to anywhere else on the lake. I introduced a little boilie crumb and 2 rods into the area with high attract pop ups and the session turned into me contemplating going home to banking 8 fish to 19lb in 12 hours, without a doubt I would have never found this spot with a maker float.

On a recent session at the start of July I knew I was on fish after seen a few show but with the temperatures been above 25 degrees there would be no point fishing on the bottom and I knew zigs would be more effective, I flicked the deeper past the showing fish and drew it over where I thought they would be, using the fish icon the app showed me the fish were around 2-3ft off the bottom in 7ft of water which I never expected with those temperatures, I tied up two zigs one at 2ft and the other at 3ft both using black foam, the 3ft zig was the first to go out and within 5 minutes it ripped off rewarding me with a nice scaly double, not long after I changed the 2ft zig to match the other and totalled 6 fish that session all on 3ft zigs. Now if I had not used the deeper and I had used a marker float to show me I would be fishing in 7ft of water I would have gone in with 5-6ft zigs and probably sat there all day scratching my head on why I wasn’t catching.

In the majority of my fishing I use the Chirp+ as a depth finder, I do agree with using your eyes and locating the fish but at times especially in the winter months and for zig fishing the fish icon is a brilliant addition and can turn a blank into multiple fish session so give it ago.