Can You Read A Sounder?

[Guest Jocool]

I have never been to clued up as to how to read a sounder correctly. I assume that its safe to say that I'm in the majority rather than the minority, in that I use my sounder to find drop-offs and distinguish underwater structure. And I can do that fairly well.

Today whilst fishing in the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury, I found it difficult to say with any certainty what I was actually seeing on my sounder. Finding drop-offs was not a problem, but making sense of all the other markings was!

The picture below will show you what I see. And would absolutely love for someone to decipher it and tell me what THEY see!

Granted, there was a bit of crap floating around the river, but I don't think that it was running too deep.

Thoughts?

[Bashir]

They are definately individual fish in those shots, but the rest of it is either crap in the water or 'noise' next time see if playing with the gain setting makes any difference to the picture, also adjusting the range to say 10 metres in that shallow water can make a difference too.

[Guest Jocool]

Thats pretty much what I suspected Bashir. There is a bit of rubbish, but I was pretty sure it was showing fish too. ANd we tried everything we knew to try and entice them....

As far as setting the range, I had to have it at those settings so that I could see bottom when we drifted over the drop offs. Its bloddy Hellishly deep in some spots along where we were! I saw some spots dropping from 3 meters along the bank, to well over 22 meteres depth in a space of only about 5 meters! It was mind-blowing!

[Guest bluecod]

Joe, in all seriousness mate that's eactly how hairtail show up on a sounder

[Narralakes]

Joe,

freshwater reads differently to salt, I'd try and use different settings with the sensitivity, looks like alot of river muck just floating around, too spread out and not dense enough for bait, might be a few fish in there, but hard to tell. I'm no expert on the sounders, but my experience in the fresh and salt tells me you gotta try and adjust different settings in both.

[Guest fishrunner]

G'day Joe,

In the 1 st pic the strong horizontal lines at 5, 6 and just above the 9 mtr mark are fish in your transducer beam, the beginning of the strong line at 5 mtrs is when the fish entered your transducer beam, then slowly rose whilst still in that beam, when that line ends that fish has left your transducer beam(in the photo the fish is still currently in the transducer cone) or you have moved over the fish.

There also appears to be a fair bit of suspended debree in the water as well,- shown as smal scattered dots- this can also be caused by induction(noise) from other sources in the boat as had already been mentioned.

2nd pic is much the same.

Where the chart scrolls(right hand side) is the current situation in the transducer cone, the rest is just history so to speak.

If anything your grayline needs to be turned up to give a more accurate detail in the bottom composition your fishing(as I can't see any at all),-thicker grayline harder bottom(rock),etc. Your sensitivity appears to be too high in this situation,- as you should be able to have the sml dots stop just above the area you are wishing to look at(in your 1st pic around 3 mtrs).

I'll try and find a pic of mine in a similar situation.

hope this helps

cheers

[Guest fishrunner]

1st one goo school of fish comming through,-individually marking,- then getting denser

2nd pic individual active fish showing. Notice grayline defining the bottom .

I learn more and more evertime use my sounder, and am far from an expert, but hope this helps.

cheers

[Guest Jocool]

My grayline is set at about 93%, but the gain could go down a bit I guess.

[Guest Boppa]

The top one looks like a platypus head and the bottom one looks like a shark with the teeth about the 15 mark!

Oh dear to many

Boppa

[martinc]

Here I go opening a whole can of worms again -

In fishruners second sounder pic, the arch is showing a fish that is st least FIVE FEET HIGH !!! - now thats a big arch for a fish in only 13ft of water.

is this correct ???

The lowrance 350 maunal explains fish arches, making this fish huge (unless you have changed the scale on the sounder before the shot).

I understand that in 13ft of water, one pixtel represents approx 3cm of water on a 128 vertical under.

please comment gurus

[Guest Jocool]

the arch is showing a fish that is st least FIVE FEET HIGH !!!

68662[/snapback]

I would have read that as a small school, rather than a singular fish!

[Red]

Jocool,

Jellyfish show up like that on my Lowrance. Do you come across jellyfish that far up the system?

Red