Check your transducer cable for the transducer model... then press menu, menu, sonar, installation, and select the correct transducer model....then select the water type your fishing... this basic setting make a huge difference....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-GITsqthFo

good link, sounds like that shallow water setting is good up to 150 feet which would be better suited for me in the 30-40m mark

definately put you bottom lock on don. I prefer my colourline in the low 70's

the issue your having with your bottom lock is probably the range, in settings go to range and select customize .  if your in say 20m of water  put your upper range at 15 and your lower at 25 and you can fine tune from there

 thanks john and rig for ur imput.. i will give that a go.

 What sensitively do you have it on and what percent colour line? 

 great thanks troy..i am on the number 1 pallet is that wat u on?

 I leave mine on auto when fishing 30 to 40ms and zoom into the bottom 10m or so- biggest focus I have is understanding what it is showing, agree with troys advice on Ids eg bottom vs fish. Few things Ithat may help your thinking- sounders can't see fish under ledges no matter how good they are, fish won't always look like arches as it depends on where they pass under the sounder cone and wether you are moving or no. My advice red and yellow is good especially if just off the bottom- blobs, arches doesn't matter just fish that area hard and you will catch. That's all I do now and have had some really good catches . Remember you wont always mark and then catch larger fish as you are only looking at a very small piece of ocean. Blue dots tend to be smaller bait fish, don't be afraid to explore these areas as there are often big fish near by. Simply spend time fishing where you are getting marks, wether you catch and what you catch is just fishing. If you see nothing- move!

Useful topic for me....

My HDS 5 loses depth reading when travelling at higher speeds and I lose detailed bottom imaging.

Currently I just have it on the auto setting with the "general" fishing mode

Any tips ?

Cheers

Joycey

Joycey that sounds more like your transducer position.

I can run my little quintrex at its top speed which is just over 20 knots and still get a good picture.  mind you I think everyone misses alot of detail at that speed but I never lose depth reading.  I have had mine set on the slow trolling mode for some time but in light of that lionk I will change it to shallow water.  If I have my colourline set the same as troy/ron's I have alot of clutter on my screen but this may change between modes

your transducer might need to be repositioned lower or angled differently

try a slight angle on transducer towards front I get a fairly good reading at speed (back of transducer slightly down)

Thanks Steve , will try altering angle but not to sure what you mean.
Do you mean point transducer down or up?
Cheers

angle transducer so bottom of transducer is pointing slightly forward

Front edge of tranny should be 5-10 mm higher than the trailing edge to stop cavitation on the face. This is THE most important factor in getting good sounder operation at speed for a transom mount tranny.

Just of late my new HD5X sounders haz been spazzing out!

Travelling along at speed 20 - 25kts I lose a bit of clarity on the screen, but can still read the depth then all of a sudden I lose all info and the shallow water alarm comes on and the the sounder reads nothing. Just get a depth of 0.4????

I have tried turning the unit off, isolating the battery, checked the transducer is still there lol and when I turn it back on it still reads nothing..........

Any ideas?

I did find in the menus that all alarms are recorded and I deleted all the info that was stored and that seemed to work, but every now and then it still goes mad.

Only real fix is to reset factory settings, but thats a pain in the a$$ to set it all back up again especially when there is fish around!!

 I would be going back to the dealer or lowrance in that one ian.

Other than that check your connections from the transducer plug onto the unit slight corrosion could cause that

does it have current model software? mine used to do that about once every 2 or 3 trips before the last update

Yup an upate is available, I'll try that cheers spanishmackeral if no good its going back to the dealer!

Cheers!

 Mine did the same...downloaded the upgrade but didn't help...now just use it for a gps..not impresses with it at all

 Silly question I know but how do you go about checking if your software is up to date and how do you update it

 Ahh ok cool so I need to go buy meself a spare sd card and use that jat for the updates. How often are these updates available. 

Just check the Lowerance site now and again to see what software version is available for your unit, and mabe do a search on line to see if there are any bugs in the update you are about to download.

I was running software 1.1.39.39 on my HDS5x Gen2 bought in Nov 2012

Here is the latest version 1.1.39.43 released 06-November-12:

http://www.lowrance.com/en-au/Software-Updates/HDS-Gen2/

 Cheers Ian I will download that and update it now. 

 I guess the best way to explain colouring is intensity.  On a high setting it will pick up lots of noise and there will be alot of clutter on your screen.  To low and you will lack the detail your looking for.  I fend low 70s works best for me.  There is heaps of info online about this