Lowrance elite 4

[Ddolan]

Any help would be appreciated.

Why can I sometimes see my diwnrigger balls and sometimes not ?

Does current effect performance ?

When I use deep water setting and range of 80 ft so I can see fish able water I lose the actual depth reading ?

What adjustments should I be tweaking ?

83 or 200 ?

Slow or fast pings ?

Deep water setting or trolling mode ?

One day screen looks great -- see everything and next day very fuzzy ?? Current/ direction/ trolling plate ??

[Steve.e]

You can just set to auto if it has that feature. Should be good .

[Nautitroller]

The dual beam 83/200 has somewhat of a narrow cone. If you slow down the rigger balls will come into view. Blowback and cone of the sonar are why you won't see them. Remember that they really aren't as deep as shown on the graph when they blow back they loose depth. experiment in shallow water 50-100' run em into the bottom and take notes if you want true depths at your typical trolling speeds. Hope that makes sense.

as for the different results most likely current especially in lake O

Sent from my C771 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Edited July 18, 2015 by Nautitroller

[Sk8man]

The main factors have been mentioned e.g. cone angle of selected setting, speed of boat, and blow back, and water currents. Some of these things you can control to some degree and other not (e.g. currents).  The 200hkz setting is good for most stuff within a 100 ft or so but I know with my 10 lb weights I sometimes "lose" my weight furthest from the transducer location especially if running fairly fast.  You'll probably pickup; both of them quite well in that range if your speed is "normal" with the 83 khz setting on auto sensitivity and auto range. I usually use the 200 khz setting for most situations because I'm mainly interested in fish near my immediate path or near it rather than things that may be outside  where my lines are running as I seem to mark fish with better detail but since i closely monitor where my riggers are approximately running I don't need to see the weight on that one just where the fish are showing up and adjust accordingly. If fishing Lake O and fishing real deep I may use the setting that uses both frequencies.  I use often fast pings/chart speed. I leave mine on Fresh water setting most of the time and it seems to work fine (although I know others with other units may use salt water setting etc,.) I don't use the riggers real deep (more than 100 -125 ft) either much of the time so that is a consideration too.  If you mean the stuff that looks like static it may be that water is racing past the transducer face either because of boat speed or exact transducer placement, strong water currents, or it could relate to electrical interference of some sort  either from your own boat or another(e.g. even someone on a boat close by especially if running a similar unit.) The settings on these units are almost always a compromise in effect enhancing something perhaps at the expense of something else so you have to experiment with your own unit and even then different conditions on different days or in different bodies of water may dictate changes. Water densities temps and submerged debris or algae etc. may also contribute to your frustrations out there.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Sk8man

[Ddolan]

Thank you so much fir taking the time to write such a complete and thoughtful answer. I appreciate your time.

I will experiment a bit more next time out.

[monkeyman2269]

We were losing 10 pound balls the other day the current must have been ripping