I have a Lowrance Elite 5 HDI mounted on my kayak. I need help getting my settings straight. On the down imaging page I seem to get a lot of static. Do I run it in 455 or 800? Not sure about ping speed, sensitivity, etc. any help would be appreciated. I mainly fish for bass out of my kayak in 2-15 ft of water.

I have had the same issue. Looks like very muddy water with little to no detail. Have tried different settings but not sure at all what I am doing. I even got Cabelas to give me a new transducer thinking it was bad but it made no difference. Sonar and GPS work fine. I have my transducer in the water with a Ram mount arm.

I went about 2 years not knowing how to adjust properly or read my Lowrance mark 4. I mostly just used it as a
map and depth finder.
But, the advice that helped me really dial it in this year was a dumb realization that it will help you because it seems so simple.
1 turn off the auto-adjust.
2 set the fishing mode to shallow or fresh water
3 Run the simulator program that is built into the menu settings.
4 Use the Adjust menu to fine tune the sensitivity and the gray line/Color line while the simulator is running to make the screen look the way you think it should look
The unit will save those settings for you automatically.

Making these adjustments before you get on the water will reduce the frustration and allow you to focus on the simple settings of sensitivity and color line.

Of course, with the nasty muddy water we've had around here, any FF is going to be hard to adjust because of all the debris and clutter under the surface.

The short version - use the built-in simulator to dial in your settings offline, then fine tune while on the water.

Hope this helps!

Thanks JTMax. Will certainly give it a try in the next several days. I bought mine at Cabelas and brought it in with the issue. Of course, all they could do was run the simulator and it looked good. They found an extra transducer back in their storeroom and gave it to me in case the one I had was bad, but it didn't make a difference.

yes good advice already. i just got the elite 4 and there was a big difference in the shallow and freshwater setting as far as clarity. i forget which is better but try the 2 different options gl