Reading older fish finder.

[Lively1]

I have a couple of older fish finders. A Hummingbird WideEye and a Lowrance X47 (?). Both have black and white low-res screens. If I use the Fish ID setting they show fish everywhere. If I turn it off I see lots of dots, blobs, lines, not much of what i would call "arches" which is how others describe what fish marks look like. Any advice on what settings might work best for jigging lake trout on Keuka? If I turn the Fish ID off, what do fish marks look like? All the You Tubes I found are for the news color hi res units. I have fiddled with sensitivity and depth range but still not sure if what I see are fish. If i believe the sonar there are schools of fish at 14, 25, 55, 75, 95, and bottom.. does that sound reasonable?

[Jammin]

Humming bird doesn't show arches like the better ones do try going into menu turn down power on transducer if I turn it up to much it'll show a zillion fish usually run on 0 or+1 and reads fairly accurately only put it on five to find thermal and that's not always right depends on separation of degrees not sure but I think lowerance has flasher mode that'll show hooks

[Bellis Program]

I have the Lawrence and it's all about getting your settings dialed in such as surface chatter and your sensitivity and grayline

[Sk8man]

Using Fish ID is usually less accurate on most finders and often identifies irrelevant objects debris or anything with a detectable signal as fish. On the Lowrance it should be displaying fish as "arches" or if fish are moving "lines". If the fish are at the outer edges of the cone angle they may appear as partial "arches" or lines. When jigging and boat is relatively stationary arches may change to diagonal lines going after your jig. In the pic below there was a significant chop on the water at the extreme top of it shown as turbulence, the massive blob is bait, the "arches at bottom and in top portion are fish. The dark lines going through are downriggers.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Sk8man

[Lively1]

Sk8man - that screenshot helps a lot, thanks.  I've been setting sensitivity at 94-96% based on another post somewhere.. does it matter?  Would even lower help?

[Lively1]

Found a Lowrance manual online, and it says "if you are stationary, fish will display as lines, not arches"! Who knew?

 

Also have to make sure the transducer surface is clean and level. Mine sits in the water constantly.

[Great Lakes Lure Maker]

Sk8man - that screenshot helps a lot, thanks.  I've been setting sensitivity at 94-96% based on another post somewhere.. does it matter?  Would even lower help?

I generally run my sensitivity at 60-65%, to avoid clutter, rigger ball "echo"  and other un-wanted marks. If i'm looking for thermocline, I will sometimes need to raise the sensitivity into the 70's, but I always go back to mid 60's as a rule. I don't use any noise reduction at this setting either. I find mine is always correcting sens with reduction on. Proper greyline will separate bait and bottom, when bait piles on the bottom. The picture Sk8man posted was about as good as you could expect to get. It can be frustrating to dial one in if you don't have fish to mark. I would start with less sens and increase till you get a good picture with as little sens as needed.