What are the pros and cons of using fish symbols on your units when fishing brush piles?

All my graphs have the fish symbols turned off, all the time. That's just my preference. I also have the sounds turned off. If I find a brush pile, I'm gonna fish it whether it had fish symbols or not. JMHO

The last Lowrance seminar I attended the instructor suggested keeping the fish symbol turned off as it's not very accurate. However, here's an interesting read about Hummingbird fish symbols.
http://www.sonarwars.com/how-to-use-fish-id-to-catch-more-fish/

Fish symbols make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It shows anything not attatched to the bottom as a fish symbol but I'm fine with that!

I never use them keep it turned off.

Good article bush hog. Now im going to try it next trip out.

If you see fish symbols for crappie with a Humminbird unit, they will be good sized ones since the data is filtered to only assign the symbols if the air bladder is large enough. The smallest symbol is for about a 1# bass.
Symbols won't be assigned to any part of a brush pile.

Very few in this school were large enough:



Only one at this brush pile was large enough:

Got to give Credit where Credit is due, nicely written Wayne P.

Spot on.

the fish id sensitivity setting also comes into the equasion, , for instance a large gizzard shad or perch. will be eliminated at a number 5 setting. an arch will usually accompany a signal when the settings are tweaked. mostly medium sized symbols around brush, with intermittent beeping usually mean lots of keeper crappie. mostly large symbols mean bass, medium to large usually mean white bass.
just my experience. the sonar picks up the air in the bladder, the bloodline,(a mixture of oxygen and iron plateletts, ) and hard bones.
the actual algorythyms that cause identification paramaters are proprietary.
Quite accurate in my opinion.
small bladder equals small fish for general rule, but not always!!!!!!
Ive been running the fish ID symbols since I had my eagle fishmark 480S. iT IS ALL AN IMFORMATION GAME. If you can extract info by using a feature, than do it.
I can recall all of the big name "pros" on the old fishing shows telling everyone on tv not to use the fish id symbols, that they were for novices. well they were wrong, and that info kept getting passed down the line. Try it for yourself, and see if it works for you. give it a chance. I like the sound feature as well because I have sonar on the front and back, if I drift off the fish an my back unit starts beeping, I know to move forward again until my front unit starts beeping again.
for fishing bridges its great, because if tyou ease up to a piling and the beep, beep, beep is going, stop and try it.

the info in the above article says most of it!!!!!!

Is there an option for fish symbols on the Lowrance HDS 8? If so is there also a sensitivity option? Where would you recommend setting the sensitivity at?

I just throw a minnow on d's hook and fish no fancy anything. I bet I catch as many or more than most people.Right Crope 1

Oh, most people do not fish where I do. Thank goodness. Never lakes North or east of DFW.RR,fork,lavon, RC,none of them big boy lakes.

Ref. the last part of that article:

I also have a screen shot of the same tree with no fish symbols that was taken a few days earlier. As in the article, I don't stop to fish it if I don't see any symbols.

Thanks for posting pics Wayne P. Appreciate the info, now I have a little better idea what to look for on my 999. I have spotted fish on trees but I think they were bluegills as I could not get a crappie to bite but felt the quick nibbles a bluegill will do. Still trying to locate crappie with my fish finder.