Need some help reading my fish finder (pics included)

[mbweimar]

Ok, I know this sounds silly. I've had my Lowrance Elite-7 HDI for going on 2 years now. I've logged many many hours at the helm staring at the screen, but I'm still confused about some things. First is the quality of my downscan imaging. It's not always this grainy, but while I'm anchored or slowly drifting I frequently get images like this:


Another thing is with broadband sonar, I never see arches that indicate fish. I've seen a few youtube videos of people using the same unit on the water and no shortage of arches when on top of fish. The pic below was taken last night under a bridge in the intracoastal waterway. Im fairly certain the blob on the bottom is a mom-calf pair of dolphins that I see feeding on ladyfish and mullet every night when I fish this spot. Anyway, note the blobs suspended off the bottom and the smaller returns above them. Looks like a school of fish, But no returns on the broadband. Here's an example:


Another shot taken a few hours later shows similar results. Big blob on downscan, big blob on broadband, with smaller blobs on broadband (I would assume are fish) not shown as arches. The interference you see is because the trolling motor was on. This also confuses me because I have only seen this interference a couple other times. My trolling motor is on a completely separate battery from the sonar.

 

[user 13737]

1st one, adjust your screen scroll to match your boat speed...you wont get decent imaging of structure under about 2-3mph
2nd one, you wont see arches when sitting nearly stationary (speed was .1X mph) unless a fish is swimming pretty quickly through the sonar beam. The streaks on the 200khz are caused by your bait and the fish near it.

 

[crappie1133]

Ok, I know this sounds silly. I've had my Lowrance Elite-7 HDI for going on 2 years now. I've logged many many hours at the helm staring at the screen, but I'm still confused about some things. First is the quality of my downscan imaging. It's not always this grainy, but while I'm anchored or slowly drifting I frequently get images like this:


Another thing is with broadband sonar, I never see arches that indicate fish. I've seen a few youtube videos of people using the same unit on the water and no shortage of arches when on top of fish. The pic below was taken last night under a bridge in the intracoastal waterway. Im fairly certain the blob on the bottom is a mom-calf pair of dolphins that I see feeding on ladyfish and mullet every night when I fish this spot. Anyway, note the blobs suspended off the bottom and the smaller returns above them. Looks like a school of fish, But no returns on the broadband. Here's an example:


Another shot taken a few hours later shows similar results. Big blob on downscan, big blob on broadband, with smaller blobs on broadband (I would assume are fish) not shown as arches. The interference you see is because the trolling motor was on. This also confuses me because I have only seen this interference a couple other times. My trolling motor is on a completely separate battery from the sonar.

mbweimer,A stationary boat will only show lines unless the beam can move over the fish. Downscan is almost usless unless there is boat movement. I noticed there is almost no movement in your screen shots. There is a moving pictorial on either Lowerance or Humminbirds web sites that shows what happens when the boat is moving....good luck....crappie1133

 

[mbweimar]

Thanks fellas, I'll take that advice and put it to use this weekend and report back!