Raymarine are a very good unit and with all sounders they are best to set manually, that way you get it all right, especially gain, i know i prefer to adjust mine manually, find i can get a more accurate and clearer picture that having it in auto mode

its all about experimenting and making small adjustments until you get it right, once you have it right then your laughing, sounds like you need to play with the gain more

so should i play with it while driving or while im drifting all new to me

more so driving, thats when your actually searching 4 new ground

sounds like you need to tweck sounder speed.

ie, when you are moving fast set the speed to fast say 15 out of 20 for example. when you anchor drop it to say 5. the sounder speed is the speed it reads across the screen. do this throught the menu on the sounder

check your noise setting. this is the setting for the surface water noise, you can reduce/increase this.

sensitivity controls the sonar screen, tweck this to define your screen. increasing the sensativity shows more sonar but to much and it will clutter the screen. when operating in very clear water or greater depths, increased sensitivity shows weaker returns. decreasing sensitivity elimenates the clutter from the display that sometimes occurs in dirty/murky water. if adjusted to low you wont see stuff all.  

never use the fish ID, pretty much useless feature. use your flashgraph or the Real Time Sonar (RTS) screen to pick up fish. use your colour options. remember red is strong blue is a weak signal.

best to use manual settings

(just re-edited some words)......old keypad gets stuck...ha ha

thanks again mako and cheers damo.just waiting for some good weather so I can get back out there this weekend is shitttt again grrrrr

Fish ID is as Damo says useless.  A fish has to be in the centre of the beam or close to it to be displayed as a fish and you can miss many which may be on the edge of the beam.  Keep in mind a large fish on the edge of the beam may only show as one or two pixels.

Have your sensitivity as high as possible without cluttering the screen too much (if targeting bottom fish some clutter near the surface is OK and tells you your around the mark)

The other key to using your sounder the best way is to utilise as many pixels as you can.

I.e run a fairly high chart speed.  The info won't stay on the screen long and you have to keep a constant eye on it but this  alocates more pixels (horizontally) to the same area and allows the screen to show more.  The same can be done vertically ie if fishing for snapper or bottom fish use your menu and show say only the bottom 20 metres if in 60 metres of water etc. - again more pixels used to show where you are targeting.  If the bottom is near the centre of the screen adjust your depth settings so the bottom is at the bottom of the screen - if not the pixels below the bottom reading are being wasted.

Not sure if I am making sense but the next time your on the water make a couple of runs over the same ground first in auto and then with settings adjusted as above and you will see the difference.

I have a book which explains it better but don't have it here.  I think it is titled "understanding your sounder" and the name rick huckstep (or similar) comes to mind.

Cheers

Paul

Takes time to learn how to read sounders well mate!

thanks paul and wade some really helpfull info might be a while before i get 2 put it to practice with the shit weather cheers