Sounder Reading

[Shazbanger]

Thanks for that article made alot of sense! 8)

[Render]

Heath, mate...

Brace yourself for what I am about to tell you.

Some plagiarizing toe-rag has taken your posts and pics from this thread and sold them to B&B magazine!

As if that wasn't enough, he's also stolen your first name and added an obviously-fake, unfeasibly complicated surname beginning with 'Z'. I reckon he came up with it by running his finger across the bottom row of his keyboard, meself.

If you decide to have this shady character up before the courts, you can count on me to stand witness for you, mate.

Honestly, society these days!

Cheers,

r

[ballast]

Thanks for all the info guys. This is an excellent post.
I have just bought a second hand boat which has a Lowerance X75, this is a bit of a step up from my HB wide one hundred on my old c,console. I am really enjoying all the features and am looking forward to playing with the settings after the info from this post. However the sounder is doing something strange and I was wondering if anyone might have any clues as to why.
The screen tends to fade out almost so much as to be unreadable. At first i thought it may be a contrast thing, but when I was looking for the contrast setting I found the DIGI screen which shows a display of volts. The fadeing seems to be related to a drop in volts whether the moter is running or not does not seem to matter. I have cleaned and tightened the battery terminals, but is no better.
I was hoping some one else may have seen the same problem and have some advice.
Again thanks for the post, Keep them coming.
Cheers, Brad.

[Leo_N.]

I had a similar problem a while back. Re-wired just about everything before realising that my battery was on it's way out. My advice is to try it with another battery. If that doesn't help then it is likely to be your wiring itself. If your outboard has an alternator connected to the battery (as your post indicates), and there is no difference between running or not, then maybe it is more likely the wiring. A multimeter would help - checking the voltage coming out of your battery and then at every other point that you can will identify the problem quite quickly.

[ballast]

Thanks Leo_N.
I will try your advice. Very frustrating as it seems to be able to tell when I just about to where that secret bombie I was told about when it fades out. Other than that it certainly is an advantage to have a decent sounder, albeit an older one. Makes me wish I had upgraded ages ago.
Cheers, Brad.

[Heath]

Heath, mate...

Brace yourself for what I am about to tell you.

Some plagiarizing toe-rag has taken your posts and pics from this thread and sold them to B&B magazine! # #

As if that wasn't enough, he's also stolen your first name and added an obviously-fake, unfeasibly complicated surname beginning with 'Z'. I reckon he came up with it by running his finger across the bottom row of his keyboard, meself.

If you decide to have this shady character up before the courts, you can count on me to stand witness for you, mate.

Honestly, society these days!

Cheers,

r

WHAT!!!! The bastard!!!!!
Damn good looking bloke in real life though

I get some of my ideas for article content from this site. Especially when a topic such as sounders gets huge interest, makes sence that the readers would most likely be finding the same difficulties as us here on the site. I like to throw something different in, especially when the fishing has been slow.
The pictures and comments contained in this thread beats hands down what any book or manual tries to tell you.

[Burley_Boy]

Yep Heath that the pickies and comments here beats any manual is a sure thing. I gave my new Matrix 37 a run last weekend offshore onthe 24's and 36's. What an eye opener compared to my old SX100!
Still heaps to learn and I came back and read through all these posts again. Used the whiteline function but it seemed to make the unit less sensitive but I'll have to check that again. That there were peaks of 10M just a few K's out of the seaway was news to me and to see fish sitting over the edges of the ledges was fantastic. Now I just have to work on my anchoring technique to spot target where I want to fish

[wessel]

This may sound a bit stupid, but here goes???

The sonar pics up the airsac in the fish - which gives you the return. As far as I know, and forgive me for being wrong if I am, but tuna do not have airsacs.

So where does the return come from then that you see on the sounder - just the size of the buggers or what?

Never too old to learn something new

Wessel

PS: Very frustrating day when you stand on shore and can see the tuna feeding in massive schools of sardines not even a kilometer offshore and the boss decides to have a meeting that will last till after dark - work sucks on ocasions like this. No wind, 30 deg C weather , sea swell less than 1 foot high, water temp at 27 deg C and three more days before the weekend.

[littlejim]

Ballast,

you might have done this already, but just in case. Check the power plug where it goes into the sounder. Mine corrodes readily, and if the corrosion builds up produces problems similar to yours. WD40 plus a few push-ons pull-offs seems to fix it till next time. Periodic WD and vaseline helps keep the corosion at bay.

[Leo_N.]

Wessel,
Depth sounders work on the rebounding of sound waves. Many things will rebound sound waves to some degree, but a change in density (from low density to higher density) will return some of the sound wave energy in terms of a rebound sound wave. This is what your reciever recieves and conveys to the sounder for interpretation. For example, thermoclines often exist in lakes where there is little mixing of water - the lower layer is colder and therefore more dense. The transition between the two layers represents a rapid change in density and will therefore show up on your sounder (if sensitivity is high enough). Likewise, swim bladders are filled with air and therefore represent a large contrast in density to the fish tissue. Fish with large swim bladders are therefore more likely to show up more clearly on a sounder. However there is also a difference in density between the water and the fish tissue, so fish without swim bladders will still show up, but may have different type of "show" than those with swim bladders.

If anyone doubts this, try dropping a metal jig down to the bottom near the transducer (definately no swim bladder) - you should be able to see it sinking on the sounder.

[ballast]

Cheers Littlejim.
I will give that a go as well. I called in to Super Cheap and bought a super cheap and nasty multimeter as per Leo_N's advice,so I will give it a check over tomorrow arvo. Thanks again for the replies,I'll let you know what I discover.
Cheers, Brad.

[Burley_Boy]

I'm with Leo on that swim bladder stuff.

[adrian]

Heath, mate...

Brace yourself for what I am about to tell you.

Some plagiarizing toe-rag has taken your posts and pics from this thread and sold them to B&B magazine!

As if that wasn't enough, he's also stolen your first name and added an obviously-fake, unfeasibly complicated surname beginning with 'Z'. I reckon he came up with it by running his finger across the bottom row of his keyboard, meself.

If you decide to have this shady character up before the courts, you can count on me to stand witness for you, mate.

Honestly, society these days!

Cheers,

if this guy had asked us then maybe we might have said ok but this low life should be taken to court

to ausfish
maybe the chat borads should be made password only
Anzac

[Heath]

PML at Anzac

I don't think its too much to worry about mate 8)

[Cheech]

So Heath, we have you, Brian, Greg, Flathead Fred that write for B&B. I think I recall Jeremy do a few writeups of his club as well. Are there any others hidden under an alias? Just curious. Adds a different dimention to reading a magazine when you feel like you sort of know the contributors.

Cheech