How to Read Less Expensive Fish Finders

http://youtu.be/ZPmzLRcA7Z8

I wonder;; what NEW changes;; or models;; will be in for next year!!

I have a  Humminbird 598 CI SI HD combo trying to understand it as to can I get fish symbols on this like I did on my old fish finder .also trying to understand the flasher as when a fish is near , any info would be great Thanks Mark 

Thanks for the invite and I will chime in later. I will only say this I have been using electronics for decades. They are fun and frustrating at times. Any knowledge is good and the #1 for me is know the bottom you are setting the sensitivity with(sand gravel, clay etc) and you can know what you are looking at after that. In Short I rarely run on auto. I learned a lot (10% retention brain, lost 90%)  at a BASS sponsored school in DFW UT Arlington TX. seminar in the 80's. But it helped me understand a lot more. Thanks again for the invite Dick.

  As an Idea, I would bet there are a lot of you tube videos on this subject and maybe a page added here, with clickable links, to the videos would be great. I may as time permits offer a few up when I get a chance to do some research.

Mark, what's your Humminbird 589 combo? 589+589?

As for the flasher, it's a fun little option to play with. Once I find the school, I go crazy with the flasher doing vertical jigging. This will explain it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMehhwgoRw

Instead of colors, grey scale will display similar color scheme in darker/lighter shades of grey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcJE0fEsicI

        A quick link on sensitivity. I figured there was a bunch. I do not have time to filter through any more right now, but I will a little later, if you want me to put up a few dick?

Hey guys, I just flipped through the nine pages and I am behind the curve. I'll be back when I have time to read more posts and then maybe I won't put my foot in my mouth.This should be a great disscussion area

Mark I posted this awhile back but the most important thing is set up. Let me know if this helps. I helped me but my biggest problem is I don;t get out to use my units so what I learned I quickly forget. Getting use to you unit is important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV-Rh8wXTY0

Mike please feel free to chime in anytime.

thanks for the info Dick,  and Leo its a 598

Mark, wow, dual 598ci HD SI combo? Very nice! What's your upgrade for parts? QuadBeam? Mapping?

Let's make a different discussion for your Humminbird unit once I got the upgrade parts, if any. Your questions will be answered through options, and I'll rip the manual apart including instructional video as well. It's pretty simple by optional selections by design.

I just put in my Lund ssv 16 trying to get use to it went into shallow  water with it it showed sand bars it was unreal haven't up graded it yet  

Got it Mark. I'll pull the manual out for you, and post some video segments for tutorial instructions on how to use the settings. Among that is switch between arches, and old Fish ID+ for you. The reason I ask about the Quadbeam is because you can use the left-right identification function as well. Really powerful method of detecting things.

Thanks Leo

Thanks for sharing Ken. I personally have humminbirds but I guess they all have there plus and minuses but bottom line is they all help to locate fish. Now a days they have so many features I know  you need to use them and get comfortable with them and the features they possess to be really proficient with the units. Thanks Ken for sharing.

Hi ALL, Since I am old school plus only have two gray scale FF, both non GPS/Non Memory. SO, with that in mind I will go back in time to the "GOOD OLD DAYS" of the 80's and discuss my understanding and practiced use of gray scale FF and how to make them perform at their peak and that involves going to a manual setting and adjust your sensitivity to a KNOWN bottom.  The reason for knowing the bottom type,sand, clay, gravel, rock etc is the echo and what most of us call "The second echo" is different with bottom type. For those who run on Auto,you may have never seen it before but it simply is when one hits the + sign in manual mode on sensitivity screen until a second bottom is seen. Then you can hit the minus until the second bottom will disappear. Now for the reason for knowing the BOW bottom type.. In the bottom is rock or clay the echo return will be stronger and the second echo will disappear with a lower signal strength. On a mucky or very soft bottom the signal will be stronger but you would most likely get a second echo on a sandy bottom and a very wide and most likely confusing second bottom when one crossed a gravel/rock bottom. Is this clear as MUD?!

  As an example and one I had seen on you tube with a color graph in auto, the guy was explaining the bottom that was on the screen and he said look at the red "It is clay or maybe rock", well there is my point color or gray scale in a manual setting with proper sensitivity one can determine what the bottom for sure, why you may ask. Most people that fish lakes know places on the BOW that is rocky, sandy, trees, clay, bushy, grassy. If one looks at those known bottoms at a same setting of sensitivity you will then know what you are really looking at.  If one set sensitivity on a sandy bottom which is most lakes highest percentage, IN GENERAL, then you would have a wide band on muck and the double echo on rock. Why such a high setting, you will see a lot more stuff with a higher setting.  on auto the sensitivity is compromised to some degree due to electronic filtering. In manual I let my eyes filter and my brain compute the bottom type but I know I am seeing everything that can be reproduced by said device, at a specific Hz, with a certain cone angle.

  All that stuff said, I just like taking whatever FF to the point where I decide what I want to view and just show me everything. One can get used to reading that kind of graph just like one can get used to reading an FF on auto graph. 

  I know this is very basic for most here but there are people out there who just did not know or are not comfortable with changing settings very much. 

  It may be too that I am so old school and FF today are so much better even in auto that my style of setting up a FF is no longer needed. I have not used any of the last 10+ year FF. So there we have it, IMHO. I hope it even helped one person to experiment and get a better read, so to speak.

  Maybe some one will try it in color and find the same results, it would be interesting to know.

thanks mike for chiming in,thats about as far advanced as ever got.all i ever use them for is temp and depth.mostly to see if a topo map is accurate.i see guys spending more time messing with electronics and blasting from spot to spot than fishing and trying to figure out a pattern.had a lot of fun with my first fish finder as i fished some old strip pits that were hard to fish and found some deep water features i never would have.most BOWs i fish now i pretty much have mapped in my head and any new fallen trees etc are pretty obvious

Very interest stuff Mike. That's the first thing I was told  not to run in auto. It will run in auto and if you don't care about running your machine to it's full potential and feel comfortable then auto is were you need to be. If you want to open it up learn the features and potentials take it out of auto and play around and learn the machine.

Mike, you're not old school at all. Rather, you're dead-on in the needed schooling. We're so hung up with high tech to do the work for us that we're not utilizing the old techniques to give us the understanding of the based layers of knowledge where the new techs came from.

Surveying is part of my job in life, and utilizing every old tech method to see beyond what's below, rather than just the surfaces using down imaging or video recording equipment, we need to know the thickness of the water's bottom (soft sand-silt-clay/dead vegetation/accumulation of bio-degraded matters), and performed required dredging to sustain habitats.

We all need a lesson in old schooling. Until we understand the basic fundamentals, that's when we need to go up on the higher techs. Of course, pairing old tech with high tech will yield massive results. This is why all new techs in fishfinders have both. Higher sonar yields-returns (360°) in delayed realtime, advantage of surfaces definition compilation, and best of all, infrared detection of schools and the fish densities. Pretty damn neat stuffs.

adding to what mike said even on the old gray lcd screens you could find the thermocline on deeper lakes.so you could rule out that most fish would be above the thermocline and not wasting time fishing below a certain depth.an old school way of mapping the bottom of a river or stream would be to hike along it during low water and drought conditions.as much as a drought sucks it gives a unique glimpse of what is underwater most times.

Great point Jim.

Dicky;; this is how I have my sonar set up right now;; fish symbols showing as white fishies..  its just easier for me to see

I've always used my units that way. There would be times I would read fish and no fish there. I was told to use the arch's and every since I just have better luck like that. I may or may not be nothing to it but I feel I have more confidants with the arches so that's what I use now.

Dick, you're dead on about deciphering info. Fish ID and Fish ID+ allow units to turn the supposed arches into Fish ID icons, even when the arches may be a flat line as a structure/weed. Learning how to read arches allow you to quickly identify the size of the fish, whether or not the fish lingers, and when you master the arch identification, you can also decipher what kind of species it may be. But when you have too much noises, and tired of reading arches, it's better to just toss the deciphering to the unit.

Carl, stop showing off your units. You're making us grey scaled technogeek look bad ;-)

Ken;; you have a real good unit for graphing .

thanks Carl... its running fine now but when Lowrance first put it on the market every chart log file i produced wouldn't produce a map. errors... they eventually fixed the bugs with a few updates. now its very reliable. just think how frustrating it could be spending time mapping a lake for hours then they tell you the log files are corrupt. frustrating i couldn't be more satisfied now with this product.

Justin I would assume you want a smaller unit I'm sure any brand would fill your needs so I guess we have to find which brand you like the most.

I have a humminbird unit out in the barn for my float tube when I get it done. Works off of D batteries

few years ago I had a pirana 170;; never did get it to work!!  guys at ufalla Alabama tried all kinds of things to help.  wound up throwing it away;; got a lowrance .   lowrance does what I want it to;; real good unit!!!

loved my Humminbird Piranha Max 170 had for about 2 complete season and it put me on the fish. Lowrance has brought a new model out in the Elite series the elite 3x with the 83/200 transducer for around the 100.00 dollar mark

http://lr.factoryoutletstore.com/details/55912-112671/lowrance-elit...

I lied I thought it was a humminbird but it is in fact a fish eagle. Self contained unit which I have had for awhile just never used it so I will go on my float tube. Looks to be a 6volt unit uses 4 D cell batteries. Called an Eagle Easy....

Nothing great but should work good on my float tube.

How to read less expensive finders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPmzLRcA7Z8

I am so dumb on angling electronics, as 95% of my fishing is shoreline efforts. I need this group! Thanks for the invite, Dick!

Jim, if you're dumb with fishing electronics, but master the art of fish whispering, I believe you all have us licked. We should be the one saying we're dumb for not able to find the fishes, with high techs.

Leo...just blessed to have so many fine , smaller waters close by that I can fish for a variety of species.

I have heard it said many times  fish gather in 10 percent of the water; most times.  and 10 percent of the fishermen- find them!!

i think they adjusted those figures recently Carl too.... 10% of BOW holds 90% of the fish... and now 50% of the fisherman catch 90% of the fish. they upped to 50% from 10% because of the tremendous advances in the electronics and the knowledge base here on BIGBLUEGILL.COM. ;)

Carl I don't know if that is a true statement but I think It has some merit to it. When I say that I meant I believe that they do congregate it may be 10 percent or even more. It all means its a deduction game or addition. 1st in my thoughts being oxygen concentration. Then the  thermocline as they adjust to that proper temperature. Then we have cover which will bring around the last fulfillment food. So if all the needs are there indeed that may be in 20 percent of the water but we do know the the fish are not in all the body of water all of the time.

Also would add now is a good time for them deeper weed beds because as they die off they will consume the oxygen instead of making it and that spot will be almost void of fish. It A good idea to fish deep green weeds if you can find them they give off oxygen.

The statement has been around a long time “10 percent of the lake holds 90 percent of the fish and 10 percent of the anglers catch 90 percent of the fish” ive been quoting this statement ever since the days of carrying a rolled up copy of fishing facts magazine or in fisherman in my back pocket wandering through the halls of high school. I’ve quoted that statement a lot.  How many times back in the day have you rowed out to your favorite spot cast your favorite lures and came back skunked or empty handed? Many times for me back in the eightys and 90s. you said “they were not biting today”… well how did you know you weren’t on the fish . Were they there in the first place? For all you know you were fishing the 90% void. Things have changed that 10% we accepted as a given of anglers catching 90 % of the fish has grown … by how much? Don’t know but I believe it is significant. Today’s electronics puts you on the fish … not in the ball park… but in the hall closet. It is that precise. Don’t see fish at the favorite spot… don’t waste a lot of time fishing there.  The longer the time you are fishing “on the Fish” the better chance of you producing. These electronics are available to everyone at very reasonable cash outlay.  To go along with these fancy gadgets just requires a little knowledge behind their use.