Transducer Settings

[malvin]

Hi everyone --
I am wondering what settings to use when idling around looking for schools of fish.  Since I only use artificial, I have been doing this and then trying to catch them on a spoon or fluke.  I have a fish and ski so I have been trying to mark a school, then go to the front of the boat and find them again with the trolling motor depthfinder.  

I have these options:

83 Hz
200 Hz
High Chirp
Medium Chirp


I was thinking I should use either 83 or Medium chirp when idling around--thinking it would give me a bigger path of visibility to see the school.  Is this right?

I have the same options for my trolling motor transducer -- which would you use to find the school again after I marked it on the fish finder when idling around. 

Thanks alot!  

[mwardncsu]

I'm not sure of the cone angles of Chirp, but 83 will give you a wider "view" than 200 - basically it is a 60 degree cone if I recall on the standard Lowrance xducer, so you can "see" about as wide an area as you are deep. The downside is the signal strength is spread out across this larger area so you often can't get as good of a return on scatter fish - but its a good "search" mode - and then maybe switch to 200 if you're jigging - the 200 on the standard Lowrance xducer is around a 20 degree cone and will give you more focused power to see fish hiding in the trees and such.

[malvin]

Thanks, I went out late yesterday and ran the back depthfinder on Medium chirp. It was a lot better. I also ran the front finder on medium chirp, to see if I could get them to match. I found a school and my screen was 'lit up' but couldn't get a bite. I am not sure I was in them or maybe they were off to one side or the other.

Good advice, for me now, I think it is medium chirp on the back finder and high chirp on the front. I have the downscan which helps too!

Thanks alot

[striperjohn]

You should be able to ascertain which side of the boat the school is on with the Ds.

[malvin]

I havent learned the downscan well enough to know how to tell which side of the boat. Can someone give me some pointers? Thanks.

[striperjohn]

This is difficult to explain in writing, I'll look back and see if I have any screen shots I can post to help. But, by comparing your sonar to your DS you will learn to determine as a minimum what side of the boat the school is that you're watching. Now you have chirp, which I've never used, but assuming it operates similar to standard sonar, where schools on the outer edge of the cone show up faded black, even grayish. That tells you they are either way left or way right or way behind the boat on your cone edge. The brighter the color on your screen the closer to being in the main beam of the cone the fish will be. If you have a front unit you can see if they're in the front. Now when you compare what you're seeing to the DS, since that is a 60 degree wide coverage but it a narrow .95 beam (according to Lowrance). The DS is shooting straight down off the back of my boat. If you begin to turn your boat and watch the school you can compare the sonar to the DS, when sonar loses the fish and DS still has it. Basically you zig,zig. If you lose the school off the DS, but have it on sonar one direction, but have it on the DS, but now sonar in the other then its on that opposite side where you have it on the latter. Confused now? I am. It just takes experience with the sonar and DS to learn which side if you don't have SS. I lost my SS a while back and had to play around with the stuff on a known target in the water until I figured it out. I know this is confusing but, I will try to find some pics to post.