Dial In Your Creek Setup with Wicked Marine Electronics
Ready to stop fishing blind? This guide was built using the crisp target separation and expert rigging from Wicked Marine Electronics. Experience real-time clarity, eliminate the guesswork in the mangroves, and locate active barramundi instantly.
For decades, targeting barramundi in the tight mangrove creeks of Townsville meant relying on a mix of local knowledge, tide charts, and traditional sonar. You’d cruise over a snag, spot a few arches on the down-image, drop the electric motor, and cast away. We assumed those fish stayed tucked tightly into the timber, waiting for a lure to cross their noses.
Then came live sonar
I have been running the Garmin GPSMAP 8412 paired with the LiveScope Plus LVS34 transducer for a while now. To say it has been an eye-opener is a massive understatement. It completely changes how you fish the creeks—but it also comes with a hefty dose of controversy, a steep learning curve, and a serious price tag.
Let’s dive into how this system actually works in our local waters and break down the real advantages and disadvantages of dropping ten grand on live sonar.
The Hardware and How the Beam Works
The setup I run relies on the incredibly crisp 12-inch display of the GPSMAP 8412, driven by the LVS34 transducer. The GPSMAP units offer some big advantages over the cheaper Gamin Echomap, including a full HD 1080p display, compared to just 720p. More pixels means more resolution and detail, critical for live scope viewing.
To use live scope effectively, you have to understand how the sonar beam cuts through the water column. The LVS34 uses a 20-degree wide cone by a 135-degree deep segment.
Depending on how you twist and orientate the transducer on your pole, you utilise this beam in two primary configurations:
Forward Mode and Perspective Mode. There is a third Down Mode that I am yet to explore. The addition of a dominator mount by Transducer Poles Australia has made changing the transducer between these two orientations fast and easy.
Rock-Solid LiveScope Scanning in the Creeks
Hunting barra in tight mangrove bends requires precise transducer alignment. This guide was built utilising a heavy-duty, Australian-made pole system designed to handle tidal currents without flexing. Spin from Forward to Perspective mode seamlessly and keep your beam locked onto the fish.
Garmin LiveScope Plus LVS34 Beam Coverage Matrix
The following reference table breaks down exactly how the LVS34 beam coverage translates to the water column in both modes at key casting distances. Notice how perspective mode loses its advantage in deeper water. It is not until you are at 10m from the boat that you are seeing the full water column in 3m.
| Distance from Transducer | Forward Mode: Horizontal Width (20° Cone) | Forward Mode: Vertical Depth (135° Segment) | Perspective Mode: Horizontal Width (135° Segment) | Perspective Mode: Vertical Depth (20° Cone) |
| 3 metres | ~1.0 m wide | Surface to bottom (Full column) | ~7.2 m wide footprint | ~1.0 m depth window |
| 5 metres | ~1.7 m wide | Surface to bottom (Full column) | ~12.0 m wide footprint | ~1.7 m depth window |
| 8 metres | ~2.8 m wide | Surface to bottom (Full column) | ~19.3 m wide footprint | ~2.8 m depth window |
| 10 metres | ~3.5 m wide | Surface to bottom (Full column) | ~24.1 m wide footprint | ~3.5 m depth window |
| 15 metres | ~5.3 m wide | Surface to bottom (Full column) | ~36.2 m wide footprint | ~5.3 m depth window |
Forward Mode vs. Perspective Mode in the Creeks
Understanding how to switch between these modes is the key to hunting creek barra. Both have distinct advantages, but they also have clear limitations.
1. Forward Mode (The Sniper Setup)
In Forward Mode, the transducer is oriented vertically. The 20° width is your horizontal view (left to right), while the 135° angle shoots from the surface all the way to the bottom.
- The Advantage: It allows you to pinpoint the exact depth a barra is sitting and watch your lure track directly to it. Once located, casting straight down the line of the transducer beam is super easy. This is my preferred setup when working water depths around 3 to 5 metres—perfect for deeper creek bends, rock bars, deep mangrove edges, and deeper timbers.
- The Catch: Your horizontal view is narrow. If a barra moves slightly to the left or right, it vanishes from the screen unless you physically rotate the transducer pole to follow it. And there is no real way of telling in which direction it went, other than hunting with the pole.
2. Perspective Mode (The Birds-Eye View)
In Perspective Mode, you twist the transducer horizontally. Now, the 135° angle is spread out wide across the surface of the water, and the narrow 20° angle becomes your vertical depth profile.
- The Advantage: It gives you an excellent, sweeping, wide-angle view of a shallow flat or a massive bank of snags. You can see exactly where the fish are patrolling and where to cast without spinning the pole constantly. It shines brightest in shallower water.
- The Catch: Because the vertical beam is so narrow (20°), it is incredibly difficult to judge exact depth. Fish can easily move up or down in the water column to enter and leave the beam. Because the bean starts at the transducer and spread out from there, the effect of this is greatest close to the boat. In 2m of water the beam will not see the full water column until about 8m in front of the boat.
The Dual Transducer Setup: Some anglers have seen the clear advantages of each of these modes and attached two transducers to their boats so they can watch both perspectives at the exact same time. It’s the ultimate viewing experience, but keep in mind—it requires another screen and increases on the cost considerably.
Dispelling the Myths: Is It “Cheating”?
The biggest argument at the boat ramp right now is that LiveScope is “cheating.” People often look at live sonar as “playing a computer game,” and it’s true—you do have to stare at the screen for a majority of the time. If you are not looking, you will miss what is happening down there.
The reason people see this as cheating is simply because you can see the fish and cast directly at them. However, what they forget is the hard part: you still need to trick a notoriously fickle fish into taking a lure, and then you still have to land it. A screen won’t make a shut-down barra eat, and it won’t stop a massive chrome fish from jumping and throwing your lure back at you.
What LiveScope Taught Me About Barramundi
The absolute biggest advantage of LiveScope isn’t just catching fish; it’s the sheer volume of education you get on every trip. Every experience angler will tell you nothing beats time on the water when it comes to getting better at catching Barramundi. But lets face it, we can’t all spend 250 days a year on the water.
Going over a spot with traditional side-imaging or down-imaging gives you a false indication that the fish are static in the timber. They are not. LiveScope has shown me just how incredibly active barramundi actually are. They are constantly moving in and out of structure, transitioning up and down banks, and shifting depth profiles all the time.
Watching how they respond to the environment—and more importantly, to your lures—is fascinating. Knowing that a fish has followed your lure for five metres but not touched it might seem frustrating at the moment, but it is key information about the fish’s mood that you would otherwise never know. It tells you they are there, they are interested, but your presentation is just slightly off. Without live sonar, you’d just assume the snag was empty and move on.
The Reality Check: Price vs. Value
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the cost. The LiveScope system is universally seen as being very expensive. And it is. At an entry price of about $10,000 for everything you need (screen, transducer, specialised poles, and sometimes dedicated battery power), it’s definitely not cheap.
But let’s put it into historical perspective. I distinctly remember paying roughly $4,500 for my first side-imaging Humminbird 997 back in 2006. If you factor in twenty years of inflation, that financial hit is incredibly similar in today’s money for a technology that is lightyears ahead of what we had back then.
Final Verdict
If you love the mystery of blind casting and don’t want to spend your day on the water looking at a digital display, LiveScope probably isn’t for you. And that is just fine, you fish how you like to fish.
But me personally? I love it. I love seeing all the activity that is taking place beneath the surface. It’s alive down there, and there is so much more going on than people give it credit for. You wouldn’t know it without looking, but once you’ve pulled back the curtain, it’s very hard to go back to fishing blind.
Want to see the live scope system in action? Check out our latest YouTube video below.
