Any great sites for Fishfinder Instructions?

[Raycaster]

I posted about a month ago concerning portable fishfinders and recently ended up purchasing a Humminbird 160. I really appreciated all the forum input but this unit was my wallet limit. It installed easy and seems to work great.

 

I read the instructions a few times and googled some sites for more insight reading the display but was hoping for more.

 

A few questions:

 

I understand the cone of sonar but if the display is showing fish where do they correspond in relation to the boat? Are they coming from left to right, back to front, or did we just pass over them directly? Or is this a cone representation with just general cone location?

 

If anyone can point me to some vid tutorials etc. I'd appreciate it.

[Terry]

if it's a single transducer and it is

then it can only tell you at what depth the fish are at not what direction

you would need to have more transducers to triangulate their 3D position

[danbouck]

http://www.defender.com/html/fishfinder_info.html

[scugpg]

A traditional sonar paints a 2D picture of a 3D bottom.

 

Take a 20degree cone angle for example...

 

As you putt along in 30ft of water, a 20degree cone angle will cover a 10ft circle in the bottom of that 30ft. The fishfinder will tell you if there is fish in that beam and at what depth, but no more. Keep an eye on the far right of the screen, that will give you the most detail of what is underneath you at that exact time.

 

Take a look at this site: http://www.fishfinder-store.com/howfifiwo.html

 

If I get bored I can throw my HDS on demo and maybe do a Youtube of what to look for.

Edited August 29, 2010 by scugog

[splashhopper]

A traditional sonar paints a 2D picture of a 3D bottom.

 

Take a 20degree cone angle for example...

 

As you putt along in 30ft of water, a 20degree cone angle will cover a 10ft circle in the bottom of that 30ft. The fishfinder will tell you if there is fish in that beam and at what depth, but no more. Keep an eye on the far right of the screen, that will give you the most detail of what is underneath you at that exact time.

 

Take a look at this site: http://www.fishfinder-store.com/howfifiwo.html

 

If I get bored I can throw my HDS on demo and maybe do a Youtube of what to look for.

 

are u bored yet ?

[scugpg]

are u bored yet ?

 

Not yet I'm going fishing in an hour! Maybe sometime this week.

[ontariofisherman]

I bought the same one, funny

[mercman]

now i get to share what i learned since july, when i got mine. A sonar is an important tool for discovering depth, bottom profile and bottom cover or structure. that combined with your knowledge of how and where the fish you are looking for live will help you catch fish. just because you have no arches or fishy symbols appearing on the screen, doesn't mean there are no fish in the water around your boat. the only time you will have symbols is if you are directly above a fsih, or if one swims directly under the transducer. the shallower the water the smaller the circle of the transducer beam. i believe the piranha max 160 has a dual beam transducer which gives better detail in shallow water.

[Raycaster]

Thanks for the replies guys, that site was great.

 

I felt bad buying the 160 after so many people suggested others but the wallet won the decision. The 160 was easy to setup and the battery was already charged. The suction cup that I worried about is exactly like many said... impossible to get off without a good set of nails or credit card.

 

The fishfinders fish alert sure brings optimism even after hours of not even a nibble. The depth information and bottom information is pretty sweet.

 

If scugog does time find for a video it would probably help us newbies a ton. Being able to combine the readout with sound fishing techniques and overall fishing knowledge definitely would raise the success level.

 

I was pretty excited when I started marking fish until I noticed them at 23 ft. I was giggling with my new toy and then sat up in the boat and said to myself "How the hell do I get a fish 23ft down?"

 

I'm a simple 10-15ft of water fisherman looking for weeds... 23ft is a whole new story but excited to learn!

 

Again thx guys for letting the newbies like myself post questions that have probably been asked a 1000 times already, its really appreciated.

[aplumma]

Here is another read for you lowrance tutorial

 

 

Art

[Woodsman]

I have a similar depth finder the Humminbird PiranhaMAX 170.

Your fish finder like mine has a dual beam transducer. 20 deg & 60 deg.

There is no way to determine if the fish is left, right, front or back of your boat but you can determine if it's in the narrow or wide beam.

The 60 deg beam is only activated when the Fish ID+ is turned on. Fish in the narrow beam are a solid black where the fish in the 60 deg beam are as hollow fish. A hollow symbol turning solid in colour indicates a fish which has passed from the wide to narrow beam. When trolling this will most likely indicate a fish passing from front to back but it could have came in from any direction.

As for calculating beam coverage here is a calculator I use:

http://www.furunousa.com/LearningCenter/Transducer-Beam-Angle-Calculator.aspx