I like the detail that it gives with most of the structure, but I am not seeing the comma shapes that are supposed to be fish. I turned off the fish symbols and I am catching fish, but no comma shape. Help.

your sens might be to low that or its broke? not sure thats weird.

The stumps are clear. When the fish were in the river in the winter, I could see shad pass under the boat, but no commas.

Are you seeking crappie or some other species? I'll assume crappie since you posted this in the crappie section.

In my experience, you'll very rarely (I don't think I've ever) seen "hooks", "arches" or "commas" when I've been over crappie.

Most of the time they show up as tiny dashes.

Keep in mind that the cone of the transducer has to almost perfectly pass over a fish in order to get arches. I think the last time I even saw arches on my fish finder was when I had it in demo mode.

The main thing is to recognize what your fish finder looks like when you are catching fish and what species of fish. Then, try to duplicate that image in other areas.

Hope this helps

Jeff showed me while we were out last week that the commas like more like periods. I have discovered nothing looks like the simulator mode.

Even on the trolling motor mount they are not that well defined.

(See Jeff, I did learn something)

The fish that they display in demos are VERY LARGE >:::`>

You will get better archs by slowing down the chart speed

I just run my chart speed at the highest level all the time, but you can slow it down and get a better detail of the bottom

I was just wondering if everyone else was seeing archs. I'm not seeing anything like the demo, but if that's normal, then I can live with that.
Thanks guys.

I'm glad you said something. I get the same thing. I have yet to see an arch on my 480 or my x47. I see dashes all the time though.

I get arches on mine when I'm ideling at about 3 or 4 miles HR.

Don't get me wrong. You can get arches. However, more often than not, they will be larger fish. That's not a bad thing either.

On Grapevine, even the sandbass don't create arches very often. But when they do, it's game on.

On Ray Hubbard and other lakes like Texoma where you are over giganto sandbass, hybrids and stripers, you should get arches more often. Just me's a 2 cents.

Some of you already know this stuff, but I'll post it anyway. Your transducer produces a signal in the shape of a cone. Small on top (at the transducer) and larger at the bottom. The deeper the water, the larger diameter the cone signal is. Rule of thumb (varies with megahertz) is, 10' of water and you're looking at about a 3' circle of the bottom. The slower you're going, the mose enlongated the fish signal is. In other words, if you're sitting still and you see a long continous line on your graph, that's off the bottom....that's fish. Cause remember, the screen of your graph is moving and you're not, and as long as the fish isn't moving, he'll show up as a long line. The faster you move, the shorter the signal produced becomes on your graph. Another thing...the 'comma' is produced by the angle that your signal hits the target (fish). If the long part of the comma is on the left side, you hit the target as you approached it, or it's on the right side of your boat. If the comma is on the right side, you're going away from the target, or it's on the left side of your boat. If the comma sides are equal, you're dead over it.

As for you not seeing the 'comma' at all; I think your signal strength might not be high enough. Run your 480 at about 82-85% signal strength. Make sure that your surface clarity is set at about 75%. And make sure your greyline is set at about 87%. That's the way I use to run my 480's, and I got a great pic.

Good luck and hope this fixes it.

It's been a while since I set all of that stuff. I'll check my settings.