Pics of last night's arches!!

[TheGreatestGoat]

Nah just kidding, no arches, no fish. We did debate in depth whether the recipe for the Turkish Delight chocolate bar has changed to kill the time. We decided it has and is not as good.

But on the topic of sounders, and I know it's been done to death so forgive me. But I've read 3 books of depth sounders and just about every thread on the internet and I'm still confused as hell. Thought i'd share some images and see if anyone could help decode them for me.

So I've got an Lowrance Elite 5 (old one i think 2011-12).

Generally, the settings I run are as follows:

Manual Mode
Colourline: 72%
Sensitivity: 80-90% based on depth
Noise Reduction: Off
Surface Clarity: Off
Ping Speed: Fastest

What I find is that 80% of the time I get these yellow lines and splotches which clutters up half the screen. It doesn't appear to be 'noise' because as you can see in the below images I've turned the sensitivity right down and still present. I'm thinking maybe it is weed?

But I was under the impression that weed was meant to return 'softer' colour readings, but they look pretty bright yellow to me which is a strong reading, i think? There doesn't seem to be much colour differential in anything I see, it's all yellow.





These were taken about 50 metres from the inner artificial reef at night.

Most of the pictures I see of "arches" are against a pretty clear screen and do not generally exhibit all that other stuff in above photos. So wondering what I am doing wrong.

As a side note, will be upgrading to a Furuno FCV-628 soon, not because I think it will solve my fishing woes, but because I find split screen on a 5 inch monitor a massive pain in the proverbial and using the menu for adjustments is cumbersome. But wouldn't mind getting the hang of this unit in the mean time.

Sorry for the rant.

Cheers,
Goat

[purple5ive]

Turn your surface clarity ON
then adjust your sensitivity
and id leave the setting on auto, so it picks up depth automatically.

there seem to be a few fish on the bottom in the pics.

and yes bigger screen the better you can read the sounder.

[TheGreatestGoat]

Turn your surface clarity ON
then adjust your sensitivity
and id leave the setting on auto, so it picks up depth automatically.

there seem to be a few fish on the bottom in the pics.

and yes bigger screen the better you can read the sounder.

Hey purple, whenever I set the sensitivity to auto mode it just automatically sets it at 100% no matter what the depth is?

[Wolly Bugger]

I am still learning, but like you the sounder is in
manual mode,
ping fastest,
the sensitivity I alter,
I now have two lowrance, a 5 that I bought and a 7 that came with the boat, and I am thinking of using the 5 as my gps.
the depth is in auto, and I zoom down.

If your screen clears up and is blank ie no marks on it, then it is working fine and you picked up a school of something, sometimes your sinker will register if it is in the cone area.

[Sinsemilla]

Try putting the ping speed down a bit if you are going slower and try zooming in on the bottom 5m if you can. Everything else seems to look okay. You just aren't running over fish to get arches is what it looks like to me..

[laneends]

If the "arches" match the bumps on the bottom, then the arches are caused by the bobbing of the boat by wave motion. They could be any bit of weed in the water

Serious fish typically have varying shades of colour density, whereas weed is a constant colour

[purple5ive]

Turn your surface clarity ON
then adjust your sensitivity
and id leave the setting on auto, so it picks up depth automatically.

there seem to be a few fish on the bottom in the pics.

and yes bigger screen the better you can read the sounder.

Hey purple, whenever I set the sensitivity to auto mode it just automatically sets it at 100% no matter what the depth is?

i was talking about setting the depth to auto.
with the sensitivity on auto, you can then adjust it after that to suit your preference.

[skronkman]

You're running 200khz, you won't get arches, you'll get lines and blobs. 50/83khz will give arches. I don't know what colour scheme you're running but something doesn't look right as its all in only 2 colours. When at anchor you probably could slow down your ping speed a bit. It is possible that your transducer is looking too far forward or backward (angle). One tip for getting the gain setup correctly as a starting point is to set your depth to at least double the actual depth, then turn up the gain till you see a double bottom ( this happens because the sonar bounces of the bottom, then off the water surface then off the bottom again and hits your transducer. Once you can see a double bottom you are in the right territory. If you get a hard signal on the double bottom then your gain is too high, if you can't see the double bottom then your gain is too low. Find the double bottom, set your depth back to to auto or whatever depth you're in and then turn it up till you just get a bit of clutter on screen, then drop it back one or 2%. As for colour line, you want a thin line 5-10mm of hard return colour as your bottom contour. This will give you close to good settings, then you can just play with the adjustments a bit till you like what you see.

Often when you get a solid line on the sounder half way or near the bottom, its weed caught around the anchor rope, burely cage rope or your fishing line and your sounder is seeing it. Maybe your transducer is pointing too far forward.

You could also start by setting your sounder back to factory defaults, be sure your correct transducer is setup in the settings and double check that your transducer is parrallel with the waterline when at rest, or ever so slightly facing forward. Also be sure it's fully submerged. All the best mate, good luck.

[cobby]

There's definitely fish in there. I'd hazard a guess and say that they're moving in/out and within the tranny beam, especially with superfast ping speed in shallow. You only get solid arches when a fish goes in and out of the beam fairly linear.

Change the colour scheme for a black back with multiple colours on the details. Slow ping speed slightly and see how it goes

[TheGreatestGoat]

There's definitely fish in there. I'd hazard a guess and say that they're moving in/out and within the tranny beam, especially with superfast ping speed in shallow. You only get solid arches when a fish goes in and out of the beam fairly linear.

Change the colour scheme for a black back with multiple colours on the details. Slow ping speed slightly and see how it goes

They must not have been hungry despite the delectable piscatorial smorgasbord i had on offer.

Awesome info guys, cheers! Will give these suggestions a crack.

Got a bit antsy at work and bought a FCV-628 with a P66 ducer. Are the transducers easy enough to install by yourself or should I employ a professional?

Keeping in mind that I'm a pencil pusher and my skills as a handyman extend to changing a light globe