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Help reading my sounder images


YZ250

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Hi All, I have attached some screen shots from my first trip out with my new sounder.  Its a Lowrance Hook2 7x, and its the first sounder I have ever owned.  The shots were from a trip to lake Gininnderra which is an ornamental lake in Canberra which is full of carp and redfin and also stocked with Golden Perch and Murray Cod.  I have marked up some questions on the screenshots regarding what the sounder is picking up.  I installed it myself, and followed Lowrance's instructions. 

Grateful for any assistance and advice re what I am seeing and tuning or adjustment if you think its required.

Brendan

 

Sounder 1.jpg

Sounder 2.jpg

Sounder 3.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Brendan,

I'm far from a sounder expert but here is how I'd interpret what you're seeing.

1st image I'd call that clutter or potentially a bait school but very hard to tell from that screenshot.

2nd image possibly bubbles, they will generally start at bottom and you'll see them rising through the water.

The down scan on the 2nd and the 3rd image I'd say that would be the thermocline. No surprise to see the fish holding in that area.

Hopefully this helps and someone can shed some more light on it for you cheers,

Trav.

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Firstly these screen shots are in extremely shallow water, couldn't you simply  look over the side of the boat and see any of those markings.

Totally agree with above, first looks like small bait fish with potentially a bigger fish cruising around them.

2nd looks like thermo cline ( cold water at the bottom) with a couple of arches of fish that have passed under the transducer and the other lines possibly fish at the sides of the transducer.

3rd I would guess as thermocline again. 

It can be hard to truly interpret because most of us are normally used working deeper water, when I have mine running in the shallows like yours I tend to see so much on the screen I know as small fish that I simply ignore it. Few decent big fish are going to stay under the boat in such shallow conditions. We do river surveys where we drift tidal runs documenting fish species, most of which are small undersized bream, blackfish, stripies etc, we do see bigger bream and blackfish which are most likely the bigger strong aches on your screen.

When we dive into thermoclies we instantly feel the temp change even wearing good wetsuits, also this water can be harder to see in, like looking through glass with water being pored over it. These cooler thermo clines normally have very few fish in them, in saying that we don't stay in them long either as they are often very cold.

The good news is your sounder looks to be very well setup to be giving all that detail, at first I thought it was in demo mode the imaging looked so good. There are lots of really helpful Lowrance tutorials on YouTube that should also help you with understanding what you are seeing. For me the only way I can guarantee knowing what I'm seeing is by getting in the water and from that I've learnt underwater is many fish species all look the same on screen.

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As far as settings I agree with JonD it looks pretty good. 

Only thing I would adjust is your side scan settings. I generally run the distance 3-4 times the depth of water you are in. So from your picture where you are in 5m I’d set side scan to roughly 15-20 otherwise you lose detail as sounder is trying to gather too much information. 

Cod and yellowbelly will definitely sit around the thermocline especially as the water heats up in summer. 

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As above 3-4 times wider than the depth but also use a different page setup to give wider images of sidescan, like this. You can also overlay the downscanover your charts with different levels of transparency like in the bottom image. The red circles were just to show the schools of small fish ( often damsel fish).

 

IMG_0157.JPG.4934f128e7d362cd543e397b259126f6.JPG

 

IMG_0160.JPG.b0e1c5b735987ee5625de91850b99b08.JPG

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Gents,

Apologies for the delay in responding - I missed then notification on this thread.

Thanks very much for the suggestions re sidescan settings - i'll definitely take a look at those.  Re looking out the side to see fish - Lake Gininderra is a bit of a swamp and on a good day the vis might be 50cms.  On most days its actually much less!  So I couldn't see anything except the green murky depths. 

I have been out with the sounder a few times since.  I grabbed this shot of something big in the same lake a month ago, consensus around here is it was probably a large cod.

I did notice on the weekend when using my sounder with a petrol motor for the first time that I am losing the bottom when up on the plane.  I think its because the transducers coming out of the water so i'll have to take a look at that.

Thanks again.

 

Cod.jpg

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