Thread: depth finder question

my goal this winter is to become a lot better with my depth finder. i read some tips and tried a few things while i was dropping brush this evening. i set my sensitivity to 80%, turned of my fish i.d., took it out of auto mode, put my grayline on 50%, the surface clarity was on high and for a while the unit did fine. i was sitting in 10 ft of water and there was a black cloud from 10-7 ft deep that looked like the bottom. any idea what i'm doing wrong? i have an eagle accura 240

A school of shad or bait fish will look like a cloud.

a 3ft tall brush pile, or tree top, rock pile, or ball of baitfish
Pretty hard to tell if it was "anything' .... unless you moved away from the spot, and the dark spot stayed on your screen. Then it would have to be electronic clutter, from too much sensitivity on one of your settings, maybe ??

10ft of water is not really deep enough to make settings over, IMHO. Anytime I've ever made manual settings on a DF, I've been in at least 20ft of water. A 20deg cone transducer will only show a 3ft wide circle of bottom, in 10ft of water ... so I usually don't trust too much of what I see on the screen, except for bottom depth/contour. Suspended junk, in the water column, will show up as clutter or fish ... just because the sensitivity is so high in that water depth (distance from transducer). I think that's right, anyway ... and that's what I generally go by (right or wrong ). But, most places I fish, I already know most of what's down there, and I'm just looking for the "magic depth" contour ... so I can present my bait to the most productive portion of the cover, in that depth range.

... cp

Originally Posted by crappiepappy

a 3ft tall brush pile, or tree top, rock pile, or ball of baitfish
Pretty hard to tell if it was "anything' .... unless you moved away from the spot, and the dark spot stayed on your screen. Then it would have to be electronic clutter, from too much sensitivity on one of your settings, maybe ??

10ft of water is not really deep enough to make settings over, IMHO. Anytime I've ever made manual settings on a DF, I've been in at least 20ft of water. A 20deg cone transducer will only show a 3ft wide circle of bottom, in 10ft of water ... so I usually don't trust too much of what I see on the screen, except for bottom depth/contour. Suspended junk, in the water column, will show up as clutter or fish ... just because the sensitivity is so high in that water depth (distance from transducer). I think that's right, anyway ... and that's what I generally go by (right or wrong ). But, most places I fish, I already know most of what's down there, and I'm just looking for the "magic depth" contour ... so I can present my bait to the most productive portion of the cover, in that depth range.

... cp

makes sense. it was almost like a black out. i dont think i was over brush, or maybe i was. maybe it was just suspened trash or something.