Your Sensitivity settings on your fishfinder

[Stonewall]

One of the many many features of your fish finder that nobody seems to know anything about is where do you set that sensitivity setting. Well after lots of research here's what I came up with.

Drop a quarter oz jig into the sonar cone under your boat..lets say 10ft down. you should get a steady line across your screen--that will be your Jig---if the line is not visible then increase your sensitivity until you see that...if you have a rather dark thick line then decrease sensitivity. Thats the gest of it...so for us catfishermen we should be able to see a steady line on our display all the way to the bottom from that jig,,,,if its disappearing before you hit bottom then increase the sensitivity just a little.

So what if your in the James with that dang 20mph outgoing tide and a quarter oz jig will be a hundred yards back what do you do? Well to high sensitivity settings will give you a darker screen appearance or a lot of sonar returns and vice versa to low of a setting will provide almost no returns at all. So try to calculate the settings like 8 appears to be to high and 3 looks to be to low then a rough guesstimate of 5 or 6 should be about right.

Now for us catfishermen another interesting note here is the return echo off of a catfish skin is a weaker return than it's scaled buddies,,so leaning on the higher sensitivity side is much better than not enough


Original post by WVBowhunter

[katman#1]

thanks that is some great information

[AllenOK]

One of the local guides here in OK, goes by the handle of "Tiny", can set a color Lowrance FF to tell the different between "scaly" fish and "non-scaley" fish by color.

I put an Eagle Cuda 300 on my kayak, with the transducer mounted internally. I know that it's not the best, as far as seeing fish, nor does it give "instant-read" water temps. However, I can see the bottom, the thermocline, and structure. That's what I'm really looking for.

The last couple of times I had it out, I was just starting to get it set up right, or at least was drifting over some fish.

I'm still learning. I can't wait until next year when the water warms up enough to take my kayak out again.

[YadkinCatman]

Thats good info stonewall.I got a question thought i'd just revive this thred instead of starting another.I got a hb 718 it's a greyscale.The default setting is on sonar.My question is should i leave it on just sonar when im trying to mark fish or should i turn on the fish ID plus with it?anyone?

[1 Gearhead]

I wouldn't use the fish symbols at all , It will just confuse you or clutter the screen .I would concentrate on nice arches that are alone and near the bottom . I know catfish can use the whole water column but thats what I concentrate on , I will and do fish the big bait schools that are being harassed also but have better luck fishing the big solo arches .The fish symbols might take away from concentrating on that one arch .This is what I do but I'm still learning . OMHO

[dearl]

Im with you Gearhead, fish the arch's the returns are more apt to be fish. My eagle used to have a reverse grayscale screen, man that thing was awesome for finding crappie in structure.

[Rookie12]

Next time you get a big cat on, fight him right under your transducer and look at your screen and then you'll know what a big cat looks like. Do the same with a perch, crappie or whatever. It will clear up a lot of "you think those are cats". It works too, expecially on a color graph.

[oran]

I have an older Legend 3000 Deep made by Humminbird. Its screen is like a papergraph. I love it alot and am still dialing it in. However this year I consintrated on the Gar fish more and when I found a bunch of them stacked up I noticed the arches where long but not very thick,even in 25 ft. of water. I often wondered about the pixel size and breaking the arch down into ft. thick. For intence if your on the 0-10 ft. scale the arch of a forty pounder should be thicker than if you are on the 0-50 ft. and he is 50 ft. down. This is just my asumption. What do yall think?

[1 Gearhead]

I often wonder if thickness of arch is even relevant to fish size or just in the center of the cone more . I think lenth of the arch could be more relevant to fish size but then you have to consider speed of boat or speed of fish going through the sonar cone and is it center of cone which makes it look larger or is it at edge of cone which makes it look smaller .

[Rookie12]

That's a good point gearhead. I often wonder the same thing. I don't always look for presence of fish to start fishing, but I do have to see what makes for a good spot though. I like "activity" on the graph for sure.

[YadkinCatman]

I took you guys advice sat.and seen some nice arches.I upped the sensitivity and they were defined nicely.I felt alot more confident than with the fish symbols on.Thats where i got my best bite of the tourney anchored over some nice arches and had my pole do the slow pull down but he hung me and that was it not another bite.thanks for the help guys.