Great deep water shots you have on the 585! What tranny are you running?

justin

i notice not alot of ppl dont have fish ID on there sounder shots lately, im still pretty new to the sounders but is it better to turn fish ID off?

i can basically see what you are looking at in the shots - but would you please be able to explain in a little more detail?

thanks Dan

are you able to tell us what fish you got from those shot?

Just looking at those pics has gotten me excited about dropping a jig

there Cahal, looks like some very fishy ground.

Must say i'm impressed with those chirp readings. What setup is that? Simrad?

Always so exiting to see the sounder like that....awesome!

Always so exiting to see the sounder like that....awesome!

Just curious, would shot 2 be a school of fish or some broken up / hollow reef ?

Also the last 2 shots, would they be big schools of bait with a few bigger fish surrounding them ?

Always keen to learn about reading sounders...

jng: im pretty sure we are running the tm 260 1KW

Dant: not to sure what your saying, but what you are ment to look for is big red blobs/ticks, the more the darker the colour is the more dense the subject is (bigger fish)

JoRn: in the 40s mostly dhuies and baldies, the last 3 shots is of school of bonito, with sambos around it, and the deeper stuff you get bass grouper, blue eye, grey band cod, harpuka.

Matt: yeah chirp is pretty cool! don't think it is at its best yet still, need alot more work but would be great to have. Its a 14'' touch raymarine

Apologies if i wasnt clear still learning to read my GPS, i have fish ID on to assist me  - i see you dont use this, is it better to switch it off.

Like Francis - im very interested in learning how to properly read sounders.

Dant

- a lot better to turn fish ID off and learn to read what the sounder is showing you,  there are a few good books and plenty of info on the internet if your interested to look, googling 'Sonar doctor' or 'understanding your sonar' would be a good start

hope that helps

Cheers

Thanks Paul - appreciate the reply, will look into.

thanks Paul,
its also good to turn it off to get a better idea of whats down there, there could be heaps of bait fish down there and your sounder might be showing 1 million fish icons making you think theres lots of fish down there. (11th photo, right handside off the lump is bait)
also you might see one fish on the sounder and it could be a 20kg dhuie and think "oh only one fish down there not worth a drop" wheres if you had it turned off it would show as a big red blob, knowing it would be a decent fish. (16th photo, good fish siting about 2-4m off the bottom)

Had something to do hence the short reply above. 

Longer reply is in basic terms a sounder sends out a number of pulses per second each pulse travels down and bounces back off various objects including fish and the bottom and them returns back to the top and is read by the sounder.  The sounder then interprets the strength of the signal and with fish ID off displays this as a colour at the appropriate depth (time taken by the pulse to go down and back determines depth/distance from the tranny). 

Each colur represents the strength of the returned signal (the colour showing the stronger signals depends on the pallette or colour scheme you have selected.  In the above pics the stronger signals are red on the furno or brown on the lowrance pics (fair to assume this given the bottom - generally the hardest- is displayed in this colour).

Problem with Fish ID is even though it has improved greatly in recent years is its is hard to determine what is a fish and what may be something such as a chuck of kelp or other thick seaweed and the sounder can display this as a fish when its not.  Also as Cahal said FIsh ID's just clutter the screen when thick.

Sounder myth - big fish will always be displayed as an arch - incorrect. -

Truth - the sounder beam is cone shaped (think upside down icecream cone). as such a fish at 10m from the "surface" and directly under the tranny will be 10 metres from the tranny.  The same fish 10m from the "surface" and on the edge of the signal cone will be say 10.5 metres from the tranny as it is slightly further from the tranny even though its still 10m from the surface.  hence an object such as a fish at 10m will display as slightly deeper on the edge of the cone and shallower (closer) when in the centre or directly underneath.

a proper arch is basically an object or fish that passes through the transducer beam coming in from the egde (slightly further away and thus dislayed at say 10.5m) - passing through the centre of the beam (closer to the tranny and the line is now at say 10m) and then going back out of the other edge (again now back at 10.5m hence the arch). 

A fish sitting continuously in the transducer beam will display as a line or lines if more than one, such as the fishys in the 12th pic down, (thats if I counted properly as I ran out of fingers - then one with 39.5m depth in the bottom left corner).  A fish (even a large one) which just flicks the edge of the beam can be displayed as just a single pixel or two. 

As such a big fish such as a large tuna may only show as a dot or two if it only flicks through the edge and doesn't fully enter the beam however it "should" show as a more solid colour (red/yellow rather than a blue/green a single small fish would show - again depending on your pallette selected) . 

"another tip - watch what the baitballs are doing"   The above means even big fish are sometimes hard to see /pick if they don't fully enter the beam.  Bait spread out is feeling cosy and not being harrassed.  If its bunched up tight its feeling threatened and generally because something is looking to eat it.  If you ever see a solid ball of bait on your sounder and it has a chunk missing as if someone took a bite out of it and then there is one dot where the bite is, I would be assuming the dot is a large fish (which just caught the edge of the beam) and the bait is trying to get away from it. in other words lines in...

Hope that helps more - I'll stop now or I'll just confuse everyone (if I haven't already) including myself.

Cheers Paul

Kudos on a top reply Paul H, awesome response, and the clearest explanation I've ever heard! :)

Will be harder to find fish now, there'll be less of 'em!

Again, great informative response.

Cheers,

Joe

Cheers I'm just glad someone understood that

don't want to sound like a dummy but what are the advantages of a colour sounder over black and white I have only ever used b&w sounders but are thinking of going colour I have a budget of $700 what would you recommend keeping in mind I would like a dedicated sounder as I already have a good gps

hi Paul is it a dedicated sounder, also after reading your longer post as to how a sounder works have you ever thought about applying for a job with NASA or writing a short hand book called sounders for dummies you explanation cleared up a lot of dark areas I didn't know about with sounders

Another tip

Say your sounder 'screen' has 1000 pixels vertically and 1000 pixels horizontally    -If your in 100 metres of water and looking for bottom fish (dhu, snapper, whitingetc ) adjust your upper and lower range so you are only showing the bottom 50 metres or of water above the bottom.  This means the bottom 50 metres your looking in is spread out over the 1000 (verticle) pixels rather than only half of this (500 pixels) in the lower part of the screen if you were showing the whole surface to the bottom.  This effectively means your screen will be able to display more info on the screen whereas it would have otherwise had to compress it into half the amount of pixels  (ie a fish may be displayed with 10 rather than 5 pixels on the screen).

The same works horizontally but here you increase your scroll speed.  A slow scroll speed will compress the picture horizontally where as a faster scroll speed with spread it out over more pixels and you will get more info on the screen.  The downside here is the info will be displayed (run off the screen) for a shorter time and you will have to pay more attention or potentially miss something (its a bit of a compromise). 

Zooming the picture doesn't work quite the same - it just stretches the picture You'll get better results if you adjust the upper/lower range.

your need to write a book I will buy a copie

See above Peter

get your hands on Rick Huckstepp's "Depth Sounder Secrets"

Big thanks to Paul H for the best explanation of what you are looking at on the screen that I have read. It is very much appreciated. It would be great if one of the big tackle stores would run a night/day session on how to set up your new sounder a read what it is showing. Hint Hint.

strongly agree if your going to spend big bucks on a sounder I would happily pay to do course on how to use it

 I have a furuno fcv 585 with a 1 kw trans and still wanting to learn to understand it ,demo nites would be great ive caught dhus, baldys and didnt show any thing on the sounder cheers Daniel 

 Cahal-dahm, and good to read peoples views and experience on whats going on!.

 Looking forward to hooking the new FCV 627 up next week!! Which assist with fish id and bottom discrimmination.

 I don't even own a boat or a sounder and that was an interesting read!

Yep, love looking at those shots.  Anyone got some red emperor schools to show?