FF screen clarity question,

[mweber02]

I have never had a fish finder before and took my new Garmin Echo 150 out for the 1st time yesterday. I have it mounted right around the mid-point of the yak with duct seal and have water trapped inside.

When I turn the fish indicator icons on the screen is nice and clear. It pings fish and gives a good view of the bottom density.

When I turn the fish indicator OFF I see constant spikes going down from the surface. When it pings for a fish the only difference I see is in the length and density of the spike going down.

Is this an inevitable side effect of having it mounted inside the hull or is there something I need to change?

Wishing now I had taken a pic of it...

[J.A. Veil]

I have never owned or used a Garmin unit and cannot comment on your particular model. It does sound like the settings could be improved a bit. You should not see excessive screen clutter or the spikes that you mentioned. The basic duct seal installation (dry -- not the wet well) has worked well for me. You do want to make sure you did not leave lots of air bubbles in the duct seal before you press the transducer down.

Most FF's that I have owned have a sensitivity setting that allows the user to adjust how much electronic feedback and clutter shows up on the screen. Typically the more expensive models have more controls. Since I know nothing about your specific model, I suggest you read your owner's manual. If you don't have a paper copy, go to the Garmin website to see if you can download it. Then look in the index under sensitivity.

As an aside, using the fish ID mode my be fun, but you will get more information with that feature turned off.

[john from md]

As John stated, you need to get rid of the surface clutter. There are several ways to do this. One is to drop your top depth from the surface to 2-4 feet. Unless you are fishing in super shallow water, this won't cost you any fish. Remember, you are only seeing a small amount of area under the yak in small water.

Another way is to decrease the sensitivity. There are several good videos showing how to adjust your fish finder for best operation and they will show you how to adjust sensitivity without loosing fish returns. As for fish indicators, most people who are experienced in using a FF will turn them off. There is no certainty that the ID's you see on your screen are actually fish. They may be debris, pieces of wood, etc.

My best advice to people who are new to fishfinders is to anchor or tie off somewhere in about 16 feet of water and play with your settings. Us the default as a starting point and then adjust the different selections ONE AT A TIME so that you can see what is happening. I used to tell people that you can learn most of what you need to know about flying airplanes from books but you will never learn how to read radar without using the system in flight. The same goes with sonar. You need to get real time experience in order to realize dividends from using it.

Regards,

John

[sparky1423]

It might be a pain, but you cold try removing the transducer from the kayak and physically hold the unit under water..next time you are out. Process of elimination might be your best bet troubleshooting the problem. My first in-hull goop installation failed over time. Water and air was getting between my transducer and hull. I was getting vertical straight lines with the pings, sounds similar to your characteristics with the fish ID turned off.

It could be your settings, I cannot speak for this. I try not to touch too many buttons on my FF....I rely on the factory settings most of the time.

[HJS]

I second what sparky said bigtime. This goes for everyone, especially newbies, thinking of installing a FF transducer on the inside of their kayak for the first time.

mweber02 - If you can, hold the transducer in the water off the side of your kayak in fairly deep water. Be sure you are holding the transducer horizontal. This will establish a baseline of what you should be seeing on the screen if the FF were mounted on the outside of your kayak (and working properly). Then mount it in the inside and compare the 2 techniques. You might find that your inside mount might be a bit of a compromise in quality of image.

[mweber02]

Adjusting the sensitivity down seems to have done the trick. Thanks guys.