Thread: What am I seeing

your trolling motor running??

It can't be the trolling motor because I didn't have it on at the time. I had just switched it to the 83 Hertz and put it on clear mode and this is the picture I was getting. I wasn't quite sure if that was grass on the bottom or not?

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I'm going to take a wild guess and say that's the bottom.

And I say that because 83kHz is a strong signal meant for deep water, and you're in 4' of water, so you're getting ping rebound (double image overlap) from the shallow bottom. Remember ... any image or colors BELOW the onscreen depth mark are NOT what's on the bottom !! The only thing that means anything is the image/colors ABOVE the line of actual depth. In your case, the 4.5' line (or actually just slightly above that line, since your finder reads the actual depth at 3.9ft) ... and everything below that is ping echos.

Either that or you were in 10' of water and some really TALL & THICK grass (and the grass is so thick the unit thinks the top of them is the bottom)

Just one of the reasons I never looked back or missed 2d sonar, once I got a Down Image unit.

I’m with CPappy, put that unit on DI and don’t look back. It’s an 859, DI is what it’s built for.


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Ok so it was just the bottom. The water where I was is only 3-4' deep. And as to the DI this one only has sonar. Now to the 83. I had it on that setting to try to get a better image of fish that were shallow in the water column. To see fish shallow even though i may be in 10'+ of water what settings should I have it on? 83 or 200? Clear mode or switch fire?

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arent you just going to scare any fish away at that depth anyway?

I wouldnt count on anything but sidevision from 20ft out to see what might be there.

Originally Posted by Nutbush

Ok so it was just the bottom. The water where I was is only 3-4' deep. And as to the DI this one only has sonar. Now to the 83. I had it on that setting to try to get a better image of fish that were shallow in the water column. To see fish shallow even though i may be in 10'+ of water what settings should I have it on? 83 or 200? Clear mode or switch fire?

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I'd put it on 200 myself, for anything less than 30' of water. As far as clear mode or switchfire I have a Lowrance

But, what you could do ... is find a stump or brushpile and sit on it and change the settings (83 to 200 & clear to switchfire) and see which one gives you the best image. That's kinda what I did on my previous DI unit ... 455 & 800kHz settings. Settled on 800kHz because it gave a better image (to my eyes, anyway).



Broke one of the power pins on that unit (Lowrance Elite 5 DSI) and now have a Hook 7 to mount in its place. It has 2d sonar, but it's not likely to ever be turned on. Went from a ink pen sized transducer on the DSI to a fist sized one with the Hook .... all because of the 2d sonar (sorry about the rant, my apologies )

Use Switchfire Clear in shallow water because it has some auto settings that try to paint a clear picture ...

200kHz is a 20° cone = better detail with less coverage ...

83kHz is a 60° cone = more coverage with less detail ...

Use each determined by whether you want detail or coverage ... Then adjust Sensitivity for each independently ...

Adjust Surface Clutter only if there's a wide dark band at the top of the 2d display that bothers what you want to see ...

Rickie