Thread: How to read garmin echo 100 fishfinder

Originally Posted by fastfish

I just got a 12 ft jon boat last month with a 7,5 gamefisher engine(86 model) . It came with an Garmin echo 100 . I finally got an atv battery last week just to run it. I have a pull start motor and no trolling motor..yet! Some of what is on it is obvious. I can tell what the depth is . Ican see dips on the bottom or what looks like grass. The brush is kind of hinted at ..haven't seen any big piles yet or maybe they just don't seem obvious on this model. It's the fish images I'm not sure about. what I wonder about is...are the images on that screen representing one fish or schools(the big fish)??..Really small ones I'd guess are bait fish. But are the images accurate as to numbers of fish in the area? This doesn't have arcs and no color. I also wonder how far around the boat it scans? It's mounted on the left side of the boat so if I see a possible brush pile.. How far out from the boat would it be? Thanks for any help given! This is my first time using a fishfinder and it may be some time before I can get something that's more advanced.

Fastfish, I have no experience with the Garmin Echo 100, but basically a blob on the screen could be bait fish. It could be a school of larger fish staging on a drop off. Only trial and attempts will tell you what it is . Some schools will look like scrambled eggs. Don't expect to see fish arches unless your boat is moving over a fish. That unit probably has a 200 htz transducer which would show about a third of the water depth, so if you saw a brush pile it was directly under your boat, If the bottom coverage was 6' that is in diameter since the cone angle is circular. I hope this gives you a quick start........Good Luck....crappie1133

Originally Posted by crappie1133

Fastfish, I have no experience with the Garmin Echo 100, but basically a blob on the screen could be bait fish. It could be a school of larger fish staging on a drop off. Only trial and attempts will tell you what it is . Some schools will look like scrambled eggs. Don't expect to see fish arches unless your boat is moving over a fish. That unit probably has a 200 htz transducer which would show about a third of the water depth, so if you saw a brush pile it was directly under your boat, If the bottom coverage was 6' that is in diameter since the cone angle is circular. I hope this gives you a quick start........Good Luck....crappie1133

thanks for the reply..gives me lot more info than I had before ..There are like four sizes of fish that show up..and there is one drop from 2 feet to about 10 between two parts of Lake Josephine where I fished recently. In that pass,there were probably 20 fish images. That would more than likely be a place I should anchor?. If it were showing me nine feet and it just covers a third of the water, should I just be fishing three to four feet deep ? The images do go by at different levels. If for instance four or five were in the lower portion,would that mean I should be fishing at perhaps seven feet? I haven't seen an arch of any kind so far with it! I guess I should have two or three poles at different depths .