Playing with hds 5

[Nick1987k]

Hey guys I've got the 4.1 software an was fishing on auto sensitivity an 200hz ! Wat am I looking for seem to get alot if solid colour balls is this bait or larger fish

Nick

Barcrusher 610î‡

[LeoB]

I would definitely call that a bait ball. Fish generally show as arches or part of due to the cone shaped signal sent down from the transducer. But to get a full arch the fish must pass directly below the transducer. There are plenty of books and websites on the operation and use of depth sounders.

Cheers Leo

[Dangas]

Looks like a very dense baitball about 6m in height over hard reef. Possibly a few bigger fish hanging off the ball.

[Bald one]

The marks on the lower left of the screen are definatly Cobia feeding on the bait ball

;-)

Baldy

[Nick1987k]

I figured that !! Tried dropping bait jigs aswell !! Would bigger fish come up a separate colours arch s ! I never seem to get archs more like blured lines !

Nick

Barcrusher 610î‡

[LeoB]

Depending on the size and type of fish the centre of the arch can light up.

I've heard of very experienced users identifying species by colour. Nowhere near that myself. But it requires much more manual settings.

Just play with it as much as possible, and update the software whenever lowrance puts it out. Ive had mine installed for a year and I'm still learning.

Cheers Leo

[stevo-72]

If your slow drifting searching for larger targets you will find that different fish show up differently .HDS units seem to illustrate some what of a artists brush stoke at a really slow drift. So my advice after scratching my head around one for a year now is pay attention to the sounder when you hook fish and remember the different stokes the HDS unit portrays. At a slow troll speed the unit seems to display asmuch or less as most sounders on the market today. Don't be afraid to crank up the sensitivity to 90% at times and don't read into to much of the clutter , look for the stand out stokes as the blobs to me seem like , jellyfish and floating weed and rubbish in the water colum. Hope a fellow raider can post some info on the structure scan for the unit as now the Gen2 has a down scan capability of 95m ...Gen1 was 50m max.

Edited May 24, 2012 by stevo-72

[hammoud2204]

Hi Leo

Can you please share some websites on how to operate depth sounders?

Cheers

Harry

[idolz]

Cobia???.........around port hacking.........interesting

Edited May 25, 2012 by idolz

[dogbox]

I ve got a HDS 5 and have been using it for 2 years , I can get together and run through a few things if you like.

Dogbox

[stevo-72]

Have a guess to what this sounding is off...and no its not a X-MAS TREE

[Nick1987k]

Mate is that a school of bait getting schooled to the surface ! Awsome sounder

Nick

Barcrusher 610î‡

[Secho]

Have a guess to what this sounding is off...and no its not a X-MAS TREE

Looks like Leatherjackets

[stevo-72]

Looks like Leatherjackets

Hehe thousands of leather jackets

[J Hooked]

Have a guess to what this sounding is off...and no its not a X-MAS TREE

Forget about the leatherjackets. I'm thinking of, Fishfinder, new rod and reel, 6-7 meter new fishing boat!

Yeah! X-MAS TREE

[stevo-72]

Forget about the leatherjackets. I'm thinking of, Fishfinder, new rod and reel, 6-7 meter new fishing boat!

Yeah! X-MAS TREE

I couldn't wait for a leather jacket for Xmas

Edited May 26, 2012 by stevo-72

[mrsswordfisherman]

Hi Leo

Can you please share some websites on how to operate depth sounders?

Cheers

Harry

Here is a link to the Lowrance Product Emulator download area

CLICK HERE

I used these to learn about ours between trips

If you google youtube lowrance you will get lots of clips by people

[Benzeenees]

Sadly there is no emulator for the HDS series.

Here is a picture I took from my HDS5 recently. We had been catching kingfish in that spot so we assumed we were seeing kingfish in a bait ball. But now I'm not so sure as more recently we caught some very large leatherjackets in that spot! We aso caught a mado (striped baitfish) on a bait jig lowered down. The white line is the bottom. On the left there is red/blue above the bottom with some fish showing down low. All very confusing. I haven't found the utube clips to be much help and the only dvd available deals with much older units.

[Benzeenees]

We also had some live baits taken by squid and cuttlefish. We saw the squid but they let go before we could net them. The cuttlefish, at least 50cm long, got himself hooked and is in the fridge to be used as snapper bait.

[mrsswordfisherman]

Sadly there is no emulator for the HDS series.

Here is a picture I took from my HDS5 recently. We had been catching kingfish in that spot so we assumed we were seeing kingfish in a bait ball. But now I'm not so sure as more recently we caught some very large leatherjackets in that spot! We aso caught a mado (striped baitfish) on a bait jig lowered down. The white line is the bottom. On the left there is red/blue above the bottom with some fish showing down low. All very confusing. I haven't found the utube clips to be much help and the only dvd available deals with much older units.

Oh I did not look - why not send them an email and link this post into it. Ask them for what you want and then report back here

There is a lot of how to info and FAQ's on there under support and the search brings up lots.

There are Tips and Tutorials, Library and Video Library

If you want me to send an official FR email to them pm me exactly what is required that is not on that website.

[Benzeenees]

Just had a look at the "support" section of the Lowrance website. Very helpfull! Now I need to spend some time experimenting with my unit. I can't understand why Lowrance don't include this on the DVD they provide with the HDS unit.

[capt snoopy]

I have a hds5x. Do you have to purchase a separate Ethernet cable to upgrade software. My sounder came with a power/Ethernet combined cable but don't know how you use this. Can anyone tell me how to go about this.

[Benzeenees]

Go to the Lowrance Australia website - marine electronics section. Select downloads, product software updates, HDS generation 1 - 4.1 software.

Download the file (HDS 4.1.36.68 Setup Launcher, 199M) to your hard drive. Install the software to an SD card - you will need to have a 1G card, with nothing on it, connected to your PC. You should now have 2 files on the card - HDS 4.1.36.68-standard-1.upd, 257M and update.conf, 1k.

Now put the card in your unit and turn it on. The new software should install automatically. Good luck.

Edited May 30, 2012 by Benzeenees

[leatherjacket]

looks like dart fish!