Humminbird 997 Question

[sea-sons]

My fishing partner has a 997 and we can't quite fiqure out the side imaging feature on it. You can usually see a wall or bridge pilling when you go by but we hardly ever see bushpiles with it and we know they're there because we're looking at them on the other sonar. Maybe we don't have the settings set right. I don't know. Some help from you guys would be greatly appeciated.

[TapOut64]

What is your side imaging distance set to? If its set to high it is very difficult to see. I had a submerged tree that I caught over 100 crappie on one day and even it was hard to see with side imaging. Glare from the sun makes it extra tough to see as well.

[CRAPPIEHUNTER68]

What Tapout said with the range. Run it in to 50 feet to start with. Confirm the speed you are moving. Needs to be approx 5 mph.
Also small brush piles seldom look like brush piles sometimes do not look exactly like a brush pile but more like a strange blob. Remember at 7 foot Christmas tree will be about the size of the end of your finger on the display when set to 50 feet. If you make adjustments to the conditions you can make them look right but it is easier to just get used to seeing them.
So in brief to get started because i have no idea what your setting currently are:
(1) Reset to factory default
(2) set range to 50 feet
(3) pass by a know brush pile at 5 mph
(4) Travel in a straight line at least till you get used to what things look like.

After this report back and let us know how you did.

[blairarnold]

What is your side imaging distance set to? If its set to high it is very difficult to see. I had a submerged tree that I caught over 100 crappie on one day and even it was hard to see with side imaging. Glare from the sun makes it extra tough to see as well.

That was one sweet tree.

[rnvinc]

As others have already said..start at 50 ft each side until you learn what you are actually seeing.....

A couple of other ideas you may try....

Set your Si sonar to 800 kHz for sharper pictures.....

Set the Sensitivity up from default (10) until the picture brightens up to your liking...be advised this setting is greatly affected by depth ....I'm constantly changing the sensitivity as my depth changes because deeper will darken the image ..needing more sensitivity.....and shallower will brighten the image.. needing less sensitivity....

Set your chart speed close to same as your forward speed.....example..chart speed 1 to forward speed 1mph....chart speed 2 to forward speed 2mph...etc..

Play with the color pallettes....different colors work better in different water conditions.....

Make recordings...so you can play with the settings at home while you have time to really study what the settings do to change the image...