Help Me "See" The Fish (sounder issues)

Rain City

Rain City

Crew Member
Ok. I've been fishing on this boat now for four years and I'm always posting like I'm hot ****. The reality is though that, other than for depth, I've never had a working sounder. I have a Lowrance Elite 5 and one of the first repairs I did on the boat was to replace the transducer that ripped off the back of the boat. I installed it in the bilge with a **** ton of epoxy and used the water bag trick to make sure it was reading properly where I placed it. I have no idea what type it is I just went to some store in Granville island and told him I needed to see the bottom. Now I can see bottom up to about 400' but I don't really get any detail at all. I've never seen an arch. The best I get is a black line or a blob when there's bait but I'm always having to adjust the range and sensitivity to get anything at all. I did read a thread about setting your depth at a range to avoid surface debris but that got annoying.

Please help.
 
Your transducer is your “eye” to your head unit. the better the transducer, the better detail you are going to see. your post says you installed it in the bilge; is it a thru hull transducer or the stock transom mount type? Any pics? The fact it was torn off your boat, did it sustain any damage?

Anyways, if it’s the transom mounted transducer that comes with the Elite 5, it is nothing short of hot, hot garbage. Need a bit more info as to your current setup but i would recommend punting the stock unit and buying an Airmar P66 transducer for that unit. couple hundred bucks and you will see way more, and you will hold bottom better when travelling with speed. My old boat had an Elite 5 with the stock transducer and i too was never happy with what i was ( or wasn’t ) seeing; although it at least would pick up bait.

When you are on the sonar screen try toggling down to Menu, then Settings, then Select General Use. Then go back to the Sonar menu and deselect ( no x in box ) Auto Sensitivity.Then play around with the sensitivity a bit. Don’t forget to look over your shoulder and check your rods because this is always when i get a bite, when i’m screwing around with my sounder!

If your sensitivity is too low you will lose bottom and fish targets; if it’s too high, your screen will be too cluttered.
it also made a difference what khz i was on depending on water depth etc. for example on that particular unit i was told to run the 83khz setting on water over 100’, but that’s a hot topic! do some searches in this forum there is some guys who are geniuses with their finders and settings.
 
RiverBoy said:
Your transducer is your “eye” to your head unit. the better the transducer, the better detail you are going to see. your post says you installed it in the bilge; is it a thru hull transducer or the stock transom mount type? Any pics? The fact it was torn off your boat, did it sustain any damage?

Anyways, if it’s the transom mounted transducer that comes with the Elite 5, it is nothing short of hot, hot garbage. Need a bit more info as to your current setup but i would recommend punting the stock unit and buying an Airmar P66 transducer for that unit. couple hundred bucks and you will see way more, and you will hold bottom better when travelling with speed. My old boat had an Elite 5 with the stock transducer and i too was never happy with what i was ( or wasn’t ) seeing; although it at least would pick up bait.

When you are on the sonar screen try toggling down to Menu, then Settings, then Select General Use. Then go back to the Sonar menu and deselect ( no x in box ) Auto Sensitivity.Then play around with the sensitivity a bit. Don’t forget to look over your shoulder and check your rods because this is always when i get a bite, when i’m screwing around with my sounder!

If your sensitivity is too low you will lose bottom and fish targets; if it’s too high, your screen will be too cluttered.
it also made a difference what khz i was on depending on water depth etc. for example on that particular unit i was told to run the 83khz setting on water over 100’, but that’s a hot topic! do some searches in this forum there is some guys who are geniuses with their finders and settings.
Click to expand...
Not sure the brand of the replacement one I bought but the guy said it was better than the stock one. I think it cost around $150. It's a through hull for sure and about 1-3/4" round. I've definitely tried messing with the auto sensitivity, for the most part it just makes more or less dots on the screen. And man, yes, I have reas through the other threads on this topic and geeze do the opinions vary. I was hoping someone could say specifically for that unit:
1. Settings
- general use
- auto sensitivity off
- 83khz
- x
- y
- z

Or maybe deep down inside I wanted someone to say "garbage unit, go buy x"

Thanks for help though.
 
sounds like a quick run with an old
deck hand is in order...could be settings.
sounds like hardware but only one
way to know for sure...get a second
first hand opinion.

cheers
 
Not sure if this helps as I have a Lowrance HDS 10 but on mine in the menu you have to go in to the settings and pick the transducer you have from the menu to make it work properly.
 
Turn off surface clarity or noise rejection. Adjust sensitivity until you get static then back off slightly. Better if you manually adjust range but I keep mine on auto for most part. Turn ping speed to max. You should also go into settings and tell it what transducer you have. There will be a list. There should be a silver tag near the blue plug that will tell you what transducer it is. Your hull could be to thick for the epoxy method you used to install it. If you try all of these and it's still the ***** I'd reccomend upgrading to the largest hds you can afford and use a transom mount p66. Pay the time for dry dock and I'll come help you install the p66
 
I'll add a bit more here. I've had an elite series before as a second screen at the same time as an HDS. Side by side comparison the elite sucks as a sonar unit. Now I have hds12, hds7, and hds5 and the hds12 makes the 7 look like a toy compared to it. The 12 has way more power and gets better returns using the same transducer (p66) which is why I say get the biggest hds screen you can afford.
 
The type of transducer you are using gives the worst performance. Even to get this inferior performance, the hull MUST be solid fiberglass without ant core material like wood. The P66 is OK but a CHIRP system will blow it outta the water.
Google p66 versus chirp to see some video's.
 
Go into your settings menu and under installation select pdt-wsu as the transducer and see what happens

Also if it's a 83kh/200kh dual beam select 200kh and it should work better than 83. 83 sucks for the type of fishing we do. It's for lakes in like 15 ft of water
 
SteelyDan said:
Go into your settings menu and under installation select pdt-wsu as the transducer and see what happens

Also if it's a 83kh/200kh dual beam select 200kh and it should work better than 83. 83 sucks for the type of fishing we do. It's for lakes in like 15 ft of water
Click to expand...
There's nowhere at all that I can find somewhere to select a transducer.
 
 
I think it's the mount style. I have a stock transom mount.
My elite 5 can see salmon, bait, my jig going up and down in 100 ft, weeds sliding down my cable etc... 83 seems to show more for trolling, 200 for running and seeing bottom. Yes, I'd rather have chirp and something better.
General use, Auto sensitivity (adjusted to +2), manual depth is what I've been using mostly.
 
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