Do you use Fish Symbols on your Fishfinder?

Do you use the fish symbols on your fishfinder, why or why not?

I'll start by saying, I guess I like that it beeps at me when it sees a fish on it, gets my attention and reminds me there might be fish in the water even if I'm not catching them.

BUT, I've seen LARGE arches that obvioulsy looked like a fish and didn't have any fish symbol on it. Then I've had to go bezerk on a buch of 5inch perch. It seems to be only half right?! :roll:

Most FF have the auto setting with the symbols and beeps - if you are looking for fish you DO NOT want to be in that setting it is not showing anyhting other then depth.


Turn up your gain until you start to fuzz out then back off to get a good reading and are then able to see fish, structure and thermocline

You should also be able to tell a hard bottom from a soft bottom and some other things (like size and density of fish)

There was a really good article on here about how to tune in your FF - guys used balloons to show how false reading work and some other stuff

No, seems like a false signal almost 90% of the time, regardless of the model. My old Eagle used to mark the top of weedbeds as fish all the way across. So essentially instead of showing the top of the weeds, it made a curve all the way across the screen with fish.


My humminbird seems to distinguish a little bit better, but I still prefer to see arches.

I am a relative newbie with my finder. I haven't used the fish i.d. feature yet because I haven't been looking for actual fish so far - just structure on my side scan (the fish i.d. only works on traditional sonar). I'm gonna give it a try and see how it works though.

I use my fish finder to check the depth mostly. I am not too thrilled with chasing a blip across a screen.

Like ahab said use your gain to fine tune the unit. it is much better than the auto setting

When I first got my first FF I used the ID feature a lot, but as dyeguy said, it gives a lot of false readings. Way better to spend the time and do what Capt suggested.

I was told earlier this year by a Lowrance rep that any time you have your FF set to show fish, it cuts your sonar power way down and is not nearly as accurate. He said to learn how to read the arches. I don't know how true this is, but I like to read the arches. The fish are hardly ever right.

I have mine set to show the fish icons, but actually just use the FF for the depth readings.

I own a fish finder...but it's not mounted to my boat-I own no trailer, so I'm worried about putting anything on the transom that would get bounced around as badly as my boat does now. My plan is to have a trailer within a few weeks to get this problem solved.

Water surface temperature, depth, and telling hard or soft bottom are the only things I really use it for.

nope.in the river or other bodies of water with debris it goes ape turds with the icon.

anyone got a link/thread for "tuning your FF"

I use the fish ID function but don't have the beep on. I realize it is not as accurate, been working on tuning it but can't get it right.

Arches are the best overall. Fish ids are useless because the ff determines what's a fish and what's not. FF is like an old annoying computer. It does whatever it wants and anything like trash weeds bait fish get mistaken as a fish symbol. Arches show fish because it is displaying the echo bouncing off and around the fish forming an arch. Small arches and long horizontal arches mean the fish are suspended in the water and are actually there. Half arches and large vertical wise arches mean the fish were moving and are probibly not in that area. Hopefully this will help people understand the arches much better.

Doesnt the unit use the same signal for show arches of fish icons? The only difference is you select with symbol you want to see. If its a false fish icon, its also a false arch. Teh puter is interpting the same signal. Least that is the way I understood it.

No not the same. The fish ID does use the echo information but the area that causes the problem is the FF components inside have to determine what exactly something is. This is where you get false fish ID compared to the arches. The arches are what usually just show exactly what the echo return looks like where the fish ID has like a chip that has to try and read the echo information and determine where to place the fish ID. This is where you get the False reading because that chip or processor that determines the fish ID misreads the echoes. The arch mode doesn't have to determine anything. It just has to display the readout unlike the fish ID. This is why you here people complain that they dont catch many fish with the fish ID because it a hit or miss mode lol. Trust me on this, stick with the arches and you can understand what the fish is doing and if it is suspended there or if it has moved out of the area.

Wow, 26 votes and it's basically a 3 way tie. I thought for sure one way or the other would be the clear preference. Thanks for the input. I've read online about tuning my specific unit and it is the same as suggested above. You turn up the sensativity till it is too cluttered then go down from there. Then you have all the information available to you to interpret.

Yep sensitivity is big because that will help show more that is needed. Also a trick if you got a colored unit is changing the palettes to a color that will help you better also. The sea blue background can help you turn your sensitivity up all the way and still gets rid of alot of the extra noise that you would see on a white screen.