Finding Fish with Remote Control Assistance

March 27, 2014

Question: I’ve seen several remote fish finders that I’m interested in and I’m curious as to whether they’re legal in California. I read the regulations about computer assisted fishing, but it talks about using weapons/aiming systems to harm/kill fish. I have four questions to run by you:

1.   The fish finder I’m interested in is the Humminbird RF15. It basically is a bobber that doubles as a sonar and transmits wirelessly back to your receiver. It has two holes … one for the line leading to your rod, and another for your hook. Is this legal in California?

2.   Can I attach this sonar to an electric remote-controlled (RC) boat and use the RC boat for positioning the sonar? In this configuration, no hook/rod/reel would be used – it would strictly be used as a fish finder.

3.   Can I use an RC boat to carry my lure to deeper water (about 300 feet from shore), then once in position, drop the lure and reel it in as normal with a rod/reel? The only thing the boat is doing in this scenario is taking the lure out, then dropping it. In this configuration the lure would be out of the water until it’s dropped. I would then bring the boat in and repeat the process.

4.   With the exact setup as described in No. 3 above, can I have the sonar attached to the RC boat?

In all the questions above, the RC boat will never troll – once the hook/bait/lure is released, the RC boat would no longer have any control of the fishing line/hook/bait. (Chris H.)

Answer: Well, I hope you have a patent on these ideas and/or are selling these contraptions because they sound promising and all of the configurations you present appear to be legal.

I'm guessing that these guys must have lobbied to get that clarification:  http://rcfishingworld.com

I'm totally going to get one of these for the AI someday! 

But why isn't this legal????   

Awesome skills!

But why isn't this legal????   

I guess that pretty much kills the "Be quiet or you'll scare the fish" myth.