What settings do you use on the bow graph when vertical jigging? I have a HB 597 ci and cannot "see" the jig as it descends to the bottom. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Where's your transducer? If it's at the stern and your fishing from the bow you might be out of the cone of coverage. The cone is about as wide as the depth you are fishing. So if you're fishing 15 feet and you're in a 20 foot boat you won't see your jig.

Best thing is to have a trolling motor mounted transducer if you're fishing from the front.

Put it on max mode with the chart speed all the way up. I run the sensitivity fairly high and can see it doing this. Assuming the transducer is on the TM

I haven't touched the settings on my HDS7 and I can see the line hop.

the transducer is on the trolling motor. Thanks Seanw1 for the tip. I will try it tomorrow. BTW, does the spoon size make any difference? I'm usually jigging a 3 or 4 inch spoon.

I think mostly what you see on the graph is the water disturbance that the spoon makes.

I have a bird an fish drop shot can see my line my bait and my weight. with factory settings but its a little bigger than the 597. you will not see your bait in down scan though

Im not familiar with the Bird graph model numbers but one more thing you might do is tilt your ducer just a tad to the right (or left), which ever side you find yourself drop shotting mostly. Then experiment to see if it needs to be tilted a hair forward or backwards. By doing this you are putting your spoon more in the ducers cone. Of course if your graph is a DI/SI ducer don't do this.

Keep in mind that usually your max cone size will be approximately 1/3 of the depth. So if it's 18' deep then your max cone coverage on the bottom at that depth will be 6'. That's like 3' to the left and 3' to the right.

I've never done it with a spoon, but you can for sure see weight and lure on those settings I told you. I would assume it would work just the same with a spoon.

thanks to all, I'll try it tomorrow right after 4 days of 45 degree rain...