Fishfinder trouble

[jimmy]

I own a 2013 1650 lund rebel xl. I just installed a hummingbird 999 fishfinder on the boat. When I troll with the current the fishfinder goes crazy.Yhe depth and temp. indicators read all over the place. When I troll against the current it works just fine. I have lowered the transducer down below the recommended height to no avail. I have tried calling humminbird twice daily for two weeks and I get a busy signal each time. I sent them an email 2 weeks ago about this problem and they have not responded. The fishfinder is attached to it's own battery which is new. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem? thanks..Jim

[Fishstix]

Just A thought but Is your transducer mounted on the correct side of the motor ? I know the propwash hitting it will cause all kinds of weird readings.  You want to be sure to mount on the downstroke side of the prop and away from any humps or bumps on the bottom of the boat. You want a smooth stream of water .I try to run my transducers way out to the side of the boat  otherwise I get bubbles and all kinds of weird stuff from the prop.  Im no expert ,but it would seem to me that if it works in one direction and not the other its probably there is probably no problem with the fishfinder .  Good luck.

[Sanitarium]

i have an 898 h bird( i think thats the model) and have had similar issues but inconsistent. i have had the unit for around 5 years. try manually setting the bottom depth rather than having on autodepth. That seemed to help the most. aside from that fiddle w sensitivity settings. does it happen more when there are waves hitting the transom? thats when mine gets screwy.

[jimmy]

Thank you so much for the assistance. I have tried numerous times to contact humminbird customer service with no results. I tried emails and phone call. they have never responded to either one. I have since returned the finder to amazon and got my money back. I don't understand why hummingbird has no customer service. Does anyone have any opinions about lowrance? thanks Jim

[Sk8man]

I think you'll probably encounter opinions about Lowrance just as you would with the Birds. I can tell you that after years of Lowrance's (and currently have the Elite 7 HDI) the owner manuals and website "resources" totally suck and are a sad joke and the techies at Navico ( they now own Lowrance) have not been all that great or helpful from my perspective. The units themselves are acceptable. If you can afford it I'd say get a Furuno together with an Airmar transducer as they are a higher quality unit than most of the others and are highly reliable over time.  They are by far the major choice of the commercial fishermen and that in itself says something.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Sk8man