"What are the best settings?" The bad news is that there is no uniform answer to that, the good news is that you can easily adjust settings according to conditions if you have a little bit of knowledge as to what settings you should tweak.
This is part two of our series of three articles covering all the 2D-settings possible for units from Lowrance.
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Good sonar - and a user who knows have to use it, will give more fish in the boat. |
In the first part (LINK) we covered some crucial points on mounting your unit and transducer, and the basic settings as they appear in the menu you see to the right in your unit:
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Tap on this to open the side-bar menu. |
In this second article we will continue to list all the settings as they appear on Lowrance HDS Live and Elite FS for 2D-sonar under the Advanced-tab. As in the first article, we will tell you what each setting does and give some advice on how to adjust or use it according to conditions. The exact location of these settings in the menu will vary slightly if your unit is older, but they will still be there on all generations HDS as well as on Elite Ti/ Ti2. On the low-end units like Hook2 and Hook Reveal, you will have to activate the "Advanced" options to see any such settings. (The basic settings where covered in part I, which I highly recommend reading before proceeding with this article.) Now we move on to the Advanced settings, found here in your menu:
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Menu-Advanced |
Advanced
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Advanced settings. |
Noise Rejection
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Noise rejection levels. |
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Baitfish and DENSE plankton towards bottom. |
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Plankton follows the light. |
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A thermocline will be a faint line on 2D sonar. |
Surface clarity
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Surface clarity levels. |
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Surfacefilter. |
Scroll speed
As you probably know by now, the image in your 2D-view scrolls from right to left. What you see on the right side of your screen is what you just passed over, what you see towards the left side of your screen was passed over some time ago. That "some time" is adjusted with scrollspeed. I you want information on what is under your transducer right now, you use A-scope and not the history. (A-scope is found under Menu-More options, which we will cover in the next article.)
Scrollspeed is important when the boat is moving, in order for the sonar to "paint" a picture for you that gives you as accurate information on what is below your boat as possible. Scrollspeed should match the speed of the boat in order to get as "correct" returns drawn on the sonar as possible. Correct, as in displayed in a way that helps you understand what is down there. To fast and whatever you see will be stretched out, to slow and whatever you see will be compressed.
The default setting for scrollspeed changes with fishing mode (described earlier in this article). In both General and Shallow water, it defaults to "Normal". Normal is actually quite fast, especially for us fishing in Scandinavia where we seldom troll faster than 3 knots. In the screenshots below I`m only going 1,5 knots (1,7mph), look at how different the returns of the small baitfish looks when changing the scrollspeed.
In the first shot I`m using "Normal" scrollspeed, and you can easily see that the tiny baitfish smear out, even when I`m using fairly low sensitivity (auto -5 in all screenshots below):
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Scrollspeed Normal and low speed of the vessel = smear.
In the next screenshot I have reduced scrollspeed two steps about halfway through the scrolling, and you can see that this clears up the smear and I start to see the individual fish:
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Reducing scrollspeed to match the speed of the vessel = better separation of the single fish.
Reducing scrollspeed even further and we see that what looked as one huge school of fish with normal scroll, is actually several individual schools:
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Finally - good match of scroll and speed of the wessel.
In my screenshot below, I`m still going slow, but now I have beefed up scrollspeed (doing the exact opposite of what I should have done). By now I have moved away from the most dense schools, and only have a few baitfish within the coneangle of my HST-WSBL. But the fast scrollspeed could easily have given me the impression that the fish below my transducer are big. (They are not, these fish are smaller than my palm, and not that many either.)
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Way to fast scroll - fish appear much larger then they really should.
Still not convinced of the importance of scrollspeed? Let us take a quick look at this northern pike I caught this summer.
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Correct scroll.
Then we look at the same photo again, but this time using 50% to fast scroll, stretching the image:
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Scrollspeed Normal and low speed of the vessel = smear. |
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Reducing scrollspeed to match the speed of the vessel = better separation of the single fish. |
Reducing scrollspeed even further and we see that what looked as one huge school of fish with normal scroll, is actually several individual schools:
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Finally - good match of scroll and speed of the wessel. |
In my screenshot below, I`m still going slow, but now I have beefed up scrollspeed (doing the exact opposite of what I should have done). By now I have moved away from the most dense schools, and only have a few baitfish within the coneangle of my HST-WSBL. But the fast scrollspeed could easily have given me the impression that the fish below my transducer are big. (They are not, these fish are smaller than my palm, and not that many either.)
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Way to fast scroll - fish appear much larger then they really should. |
Still not convinced of the importance of scrollspeed? Let us take a quick look at this northern pike I caught this summer.
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Correct scroll. |
Then we look at the same photo again, but this time using 50% to fast scroll, stretching the image:
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Ouch, no more sweets for me. |
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When scrollspeed is correct, you can identify larger fish in between schools of baitfish. |
In the screenshot above I`m trolling using a downrigger. The vertical lines you see across the screen are made by my downrigger-weight, the clip that holds my line and the snubber on the weight. As you see there are a few good baitballs, and the arrows point to larger predatory fish preying on that bait. If my scrollspeed had been to high, I would never have seen those larger fish. But since I did see them, I tok another run over the same spot and that paid off.
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Scroll on 2D versus chart. |
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Scroll on 2D versus SideScan. |
Scrollspeed can be adjusted in 16 steps. "Normal" is default and typically good for 4-5 knots. Here is a rough guide to scrollspeed versus the speed of your boat for some of the steps:
- x8 - For use while on plane
- Normal - For fast idling boats doing 4-5 knots
- x1/2 - For 2-3 knots
- x1/5 - For slowtrolling around 1-1,5 knots
- x1/9 - Anchored
Ping speed
The acoustic signal sent by the transducer is called a ping. You might think that "pingspeed" has something to do with how fast that ping travels through the water, and if you do you are dead on but perhaps not in the way you might assume.
Sound travels through water at 1497 meters per second (freshwater at 25 degrees Celsius) or 4911 feet per second. So if the depth where you fish is 749 meters, the ping will use one second from leaving the transducer until the return-echo from the bottom hits the transducer again. If the transducer fires another ping within the same time-interval, you will get a form of crosstalk where the soundwaves "crashes" and causes noise on your screen. The same principle happens when you use your sonar on your boat, and another boat close by use theirs, the sonar ends up having problems with sorting out which return-ping (echo) to process.
The ping speed setting adjusts how often a ping is sent. Ping, ping speed or pingrate tells you something about how often the sonar sends its electrical pulse to the transducer, which again leads to the acoustic signal (the ping) being sent from the transducer.
Your main reason to adjust ping is changes in depth. As the depth increases, running high ping leads to interference, typically seen as vertical lines on your sonar. The signal sent "crashes" with the return of the previous signal if the ping is set to high. (The ping does not just go transducer-bottom-transducer, it might bounce back and forth several times depending on depth and power used.) Typically you set the ping to max, and adjust down as pingnoise (the vertical lines) are shown.
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Pingnoise on Elite FS using Airmar TM185HW
Reducing ping also helps the processor in your sonar, since it gets less returns to work with. For this reason alone I seldom use max ping, even in shallow water. But the effect of this will vary between brands, models, generations etc.
Another reason to adjust ping, is if you are using two transducers at the same time, and experience crosstalk. By increasing ping on one, and decreasing it on the other, you can reduce crosstalk and in some cases have two transducers transmitting on the same frequency without crosstalk. A little trick I often use myself in order to use 200 kHz with both the transducer in my TM (Trolling Motor) and the transducer I have at the back transom mounted when we are two persons fishing from my boat.
Ping should typically be matched with scrollspeed. (Scrollspeed = how fast the sonarimage "scrolls" on your screen, covered earlier in this article). There is simply no point in setting max ping, if you use slow scrollspeed, unless you are fishing vertically and depending on the A-scope.
What if ping and scroll is one combined setting?They are not on HDS and Elite Ti/Ti2/FS, but on several older units, and on units in the lower end of the pricerange. On units like Elite HDI, Elite CHIRP and Hook, ping and scroll is combined in one setting - they can not be adjusted individually. This is done to simplify the settings for the user. There is simply no point in using max ping in combination with slow scroll, since the slow scroll never allows the unit to "draw" all the potential detail covered by max ping. The exception is when using A-scope, especially when fishing vertically, where you might have slow to normal scrollspeed but still use high ping as you mostly look at the A-scope anyway and the A-scope captures all the data from high ping. The theory behind the setting(s), as explained above, still stands though. Generally you reduce if you go into deeper water and/ or go at slow speed, increase if you are in shallow water and/ or go fast.
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Pingnoise on Elite FS using Airmar TM185HW |
Manual mode
But there are occasions where you want to override the auto-function. I`ll mention the three most common occasions here.
When looking for specific bottom composition, typically looking for hard bottom in areas with mostly soft bottom. The best way to tell the hardness of the bottom, is to increase the range to around 3 or 4 times actual depth, and look for the double and triple bottom. In some cases you can see four and five as well, if the bottom is rock hard. Soft bottom will not give you an image like this:
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Hard bottom
When looking for bottom composition, make sure to use fixed frequency and the frequency that provides the most narrow coneangle (typically 200 kHz with a Lowrance transducer).
When looking for pelagic targets (fish) over deep water. Typically something you do when trolling or fishing vertically. In this screenshot I`m trolling and the depth is close to 100 meters (300 feet). Note all the (bait-)fish you see.
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Hard bottom |
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Trolling over deep water. |
Even with the depth-range on automatic like in the screenshot above, there is no doubt what so ever that I`m in an area with a lot of fish. But with a little tweaking of my settings, I can get a much better view. If I set the depth-range to the range in which I`m most interested in, AND enable manual mode (Menu-Advanced-Manual mode) the unit will limit the pulse-length of each ping (the power in each ping) to the range I set as well as only showing me what is within the range I set.
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Drastic increase in resolution |
The result is a drastic increase in resolution. The shorter pulse-length gives better resolution in the sonar-signal itself and the range set gives me more screen-relestate (and pixels) for the stuff I really want to look at. If we compare the two side by side, you can see the difference.
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Auto on the left - manual mode on the right. |
When the automatic functionality fails. This will typically happen when in very deep water if you are not using a transducer (or unit) suited for such depths, in areas with dense vegetation, or in very shallow water. In such conditions the algorithms simply fail. The unit does not "understand" what the actual depth is. It might go into a cycle where it constantly changes power in the signal in order to establish bottom lock, or show a thermocline or large school of baitfish as the bottom. In such cases, manual mode and depth set to what you know the actual depth is (or slightly more) will usually fix the problem.
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Manual mode and dense vegetation.
In the screenshot above there is dense vegetation, and before I turned on manual mode my Elite FS would default to the top of the vegetation as depth. By using manual mode and setting depth slightly deeper than actual depth, I can tell where the bottom is and the unit even ends up showing correct digital depth (in the top left corner).
In the screenshot below I`m testing a Lowrance Hook2 (7) with its stock SplitShot transducer. As you can see to the left the units algorithms are way off, thinking it is in 1,8 feet of water when it is in 500 feet. But I could still get the unit to draw a (faint) bottom line by using manual mode.
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Hook2 with SplitShot-transducer in manual mode.
If you had the patience to read this far, you should now have a basic understanding of the advanced set of 2D-settings. The next thing to do, is to get out there on the water and play with these settings. As I mentioned at the very beginning in this article, one of the things that you use settings to compensate for are local conditions. Since it is impossible to cover all the possible "local condition" you might encounter as an angler in one article like this, you simply have to get out there. But that is why we fish, is it not?
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Manual mode and dense vegetation. |
In the screenshot above there is dense vegetation, and before I turned on manual mode my Elite FS would default to the top of the vegetation as depth. By using manual mode and setting depth slightly deeper than actual depth, I can tell where the bottom is and the unit even ends up showing correct digital depth (in the top left corner).
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Hook2 with SplitShot-transducer in manual mode. |
More options
In our next article in this series we will look at the options under "More options". Most of these does not change the ping itself, they only change how it looks on your screen.
What if you messed up?
Don`t worry. There are three ways to undo everything we have looked at and adjusted while going through the menu(s) in this article. Those three ways are to "Restore Defaults", do a soft reset, and if all else fails, to do a hard reset. Please keep in mind that neither of these options will hurt your unit, and they can all be used at your leisure whenever you find the need to undo what you (or perhaps a buddy fishing from your boat?) did. We start with the "softest" approach, the Restore Defaults.
Press Pages, then Settings and System. Scroll down a bit and you will see "Restore defaults...."
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Press Pages, then Settings-System-Restore defaults...
Hit it and you get a menu where you tick off what you want to reset, the default options are the typical ones when it comes to settings being out of order:
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Typical settings to reset.
Hit OK, and you can start over from the factory settings, you still have your waypoints, routes and trails available in the unit.
The next method is a soft reset. This basically does the same as the previous option, but since you do this by just using the buttons, it is a handy alternative if (for some reason) you have issues with the touchscreen. Like the hard reset, this is not found in the menu, but requires you to do the following:
- turn unit OFF
- press and hold the PAGES button
- press and release the LIGHT/POWER button
- release all buttons when the USA map appears
The last step is a hard reset. The hard reset undoes everything you have done, expect software-updates. It basically resets the unit back to where it was when you bought it brand new, but still with updated software. The steps for a hard reset are:
- turn unit OFF
- press and hold both the ZIN and ZOUT buttons
- press and release the LIGHT/POWER button
- release all buttons when the USA map appears
Please ensure that you back up your waypoints (and if you need them, trails or routes) before doing a hard reset, as this reset deletes them all. I highly recommend that you save your waypoints to a memorycard on a regular basis as back-up.
If you had the patience to read this far, you should now have a basic understanding of the first set of 2D-settings. The next thing to do, is to get out there on the water and play with the settings. As I mentioned at the very beginning in this article, one of the things that you use settings to compensate for are local conditions. Since it is impossible to cover all the possible "local condition" you might encounter as an angler in one article like this, you simply have to get out there. But that is why we fish, is it not?
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Want more on the topic while you wait for part III?
The first article in this series of three is found HERE. A guide on mounting your units and what wiring to use for them can be found HERE.
Doctor Sonar educational articles As you will see when looking at the screenshots in the link and comparing them to my screenshots, the good Doc and I disagree on how high sensetivity should be. But that is more about personal preference then knowing what you are doing.
YouTube is a good source for information on settings. But it can also be a bit confusing at times, since YouTube has no quality-control. Anyone can make a "settings-explained"-video and post it on YouTube, and in all honesty a few of these are made by people who mean well but lack knowledge. This video is a good example of a person who really knows what he is doing on a Lowrance:
The first article in this series of three is found HERE. A guide on mounting your units and what wiring to use for them can be found HERE.
Doctor Sonar educational articles As you will see when looking at the screenshots in the link and comparing them to my screenshots, the good Doc and I disagree on how high sensetivity should be. But that is more about personal preference then knowing what you are doing.
YouTube is a good source for information on settings. But it can also be a bit confusing at times, since YouTube has no quality-control. Anyone can make a "settings-explained"-video and post it on YouTube, and in all honesty a few of these are made by people who mean well but lack knowledge. This video is a good example of a person who really knows what he is doing on a Lowrance: