Author Topic: Deep water SI (Read 7834 times)

Turk · « **on:** July 20, 2012, 10:29:03 AM »

I purchased my 898 in the spring and have only used it on local shallow lakes under 15' deep and have been happy with the results. I recently was on vacation on a 10 lake chain in northern Wisconsin and I noticed that when I was in water over 20' deep the SI screen would become very dark and hard to see. Is this normal for those depths while using SI? Also at night in 20' of water or deeper the screen would become blurry and the water column would become heavily cluttered. Anything under 20' would come in clear. Other than that the unit was great! Put me on spots with fish I have driven over in the past. I have to look to see if I have any screen shots of the night time viewing and post later.

Thanks,

Turk

Roddy · « **Reply #1 on:** July 20, 2012, 12:13:48 PM »

Turk, Give this a try: 1. Adjust depth setting.
2. Adjust SI senativity.
3. Adjust backlight brightness.
4. And best of all get out on the water and use the unit to catch more fish, the more water time the better the oparator!

Good Luck and Enjoy!

Roddy

Double Digit · « **Reply #2 on:** July 20, 2012, 12:42:50 PM »

I would say NO thats not normal......I fish saltwater only and have had good results with SI in up to 100 ft...Most of the spots I fish aren't any deeper then 100ft so im not sure how deep it will go but I know for a fact ive seen good images in 100ft of salt water...

sonar2000 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 20, 2012, 04:34:59 PM »

turk, for SI depths deeper than 40 feet you might want to turn off the water column. Or up your SI range. Si and deep depths are not all that great for smaller targets..
For good results try the DI .....Or even best is the 2D screen. Of course you will need to "tune" the setting for each window..

Chuck

Turk · « **Reply #4 on:** July 20, 2012, 05:28:53 PM »

What do you guy's think about the clutter I'm having viewing at night in deep water? The water column in both SI and DI are very cluttered and I think the 2D was the same. I'm going to look later to see if I have a snap shot. I have noticed in the past that my icefishing flasher sonar seems to have more clutter at night and I'm wondering if its just a night time thing. (bugs, blooms, ect.) I have some recordings I took in 35' of water during the day and the water column is clear. Has anyone noticed this while using their units at night?

thanks again

Turk

sonar2000 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 20, 2012, 06:52:15 PM »

Turk, good for pictures. they will tell a story. I would suppose that nite and day do present different water possibilities.
It is a good thing we have setting to adjust.
Filtering is a good thing for these units..
Look forward to snapshots..
Chuck

Roddy · « **Reply #6 on:** July 20, 2012, 07:06:34 PM »

Turk, Night time increased bloom with high summer time water temp is a real factor! Brackish water more so than salt water.

Roddy

Moose1am · « **Reply #7 on:** July 21, 2012, 04:14:58 AM »

Zooplanton likes to go deep when the sun's shining bright during the daytime and they tend to swim up higher in the water colunn during the night. This could be what you are seeing in the water column at night.

I fish some pretty deep strip pits and find a lot of things like that in the water during the day time. I have not been out much at night to see if it's worse at night or not.

Quote from: Turk on July 20, 2012, 05:28:53 PM

What do you guy's think about the clutter I'm having viewing at night in deep water? The water column in both SI and DI are very cluttered and I think the 2D was the same. I'm going to look later to see if I have a snap shot. I have noticed in the past that my icefishing flasher sonar seems to have more clutter at night and I'm wondering if its just a night time thing. (bugs, blooms, ect.) I have some recordings I took in 35' of water during the day and the water column is clear. Has anyone noticed this while using their units at night?

thanks again

Turk

Humminbird_Greg · « **Reply #8 on:** July 23, 2012, 12:59:55 PM »

Turk,
I would focus on getting the Si to work in 20 feet or deeper water to begin with and then worry about the night-day differences.

See if you can find someone else in your area that has a Humminbird Side Imaging unit (any model will work) and test your unit on their boat and their unit on your boat. Hand plug in the power and transducer cables if you have to just to test this. This will show if the problem is in the unit or transducer.

A parting thought here: make sure that the clutter on the display is not there during the day as well by looking at screen snapshots or sonar recordings while using the same settings with the same ambient lighting. If it is, this could be related to the initial problem of not being able to get good Si images deeper than 20 feet.

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