Graph Interpetation

Sorry to ask noobe question, but the last graph I had told me depth of water and had pictures of little fish on the screen.

So can some one tell me what the pictures of the graph are displaying?
I think its fish from the bottom attacking bait fish near the surface.

first off transducer not set right

In an effort to learn something myself I will ask, why is the transducer not set right? If I saw this on my graph I would fish like crazy. Instead of just making one comment please offer solutions and answers.

Looks like it to me. Not sure what meaning of transducer not set right.

those should be full arches if the transducer was set right if you were moving but probably sandbass.

Looks like some type of bass chasing/feeding and probably sand bass.

Here is a pic I took this morning.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/a/jr0QJ[/img]

Your transducers not set right....no arches

Lol. I ignored that comment.

Looks like fish streaking up. Were you moving or sitting still? Here are a couple pics off my troll motor transducer sitting still over a school of 2-3 lb bass with bass swimming through beam and streaking up. They were pushing bait out of the ball in 26 ft up in 19 ft and even to the surface that day. The second pic shows two chasing bait up high, Broken bait school is the blue. If you are moving your transducer may be angled.......

Crawdads no water in west TX Lmao.

Btw I have my dash unit mounted outside in the back. Several trees have claimed transducers and I can't seem to dial it in like the one up front. I tend to get half arcs because I can't get the dang thing flat. Run your downscan in a separate window beside your sonar display. That will tell you more of what your seeing. This was a school of big whites and big bass mixed together. Managed a 9+ black out of it. Again sonar is on troll motor and sitting still or barely trolling Down scan transducer is at the back of the boat and displaying on little unit up front.

2D at the bow and Downscan at the transom are NOT looking at the same thing in the same perspective, so I never expect such an experiment to provide truly comparative views. The cones are looking down in different places many feet apart, so they aren't looking at the same thing! Read what Lowrance says about installation and operation.....

Is this a Lowrance? I think that you can display that same info if you turn on Fish ID in the Sonar Options.

Yeah but you can sit at the console or walk back there to get same perspective off the two transducers that are side by side. New units have downscan and sonar in same transducer. Looks like he has gen 3. Point is even if installed correctly, downscan will give a better idea of what's down there.

Post this on BBC in there Lowrance forum.

I would say fish streaking to the top. The wider the line and color will tell you what it is. The thicker lines that are yellow to green is most likely bass. The thinner lines that are red to purple are either sand bass or big shad. You should be fishing this with a LFT ring fry on a C-Rig lol
just my two cents

You won't have arches if they are swimming up like that, nor have I ever had arches when they are swimming. My graph usually looks like those in top post when I fine fish feeding. I know my graph is set right. IMHO This time of year I am looking for a main lake point that look exactly like that post to fish between noon and 5 in the summer.

saw this the other day, its a long video from a seminar at lake fork, but at around the 27 minute mark the guy speaking gives an outstanding discussion on graph interpretation, and he shows a lot of screen shot examples from lowrance sonar so maybe this can help.

https://youtu.be/ey9il34mXqw

Reel a spoon up fast from the bottom? Might tell you what they were.

you don't set a transducer.. all a transducer does is convert one form of energy into another. I don't know about lowrance but on birds you can adjust your chart speed, that usually helps too.

Could be transducer placement, but it looks like air bubbles coming up from the bottom to me. It's usually a tell tale sign since the are all streaking the same way. I've seen it before but shouldn't happen all the time.

Double check the with down scan as mentioned. It could be a freak deal, but if the problem persists on your next trip check the transducer placement.

https://doctorsonar.com/blogs/educational-articles/113480580-understanding-sonar-3-19-2016

His transducer is fine. Those fish are moving up, probably feeding. Arches are formed by boat speed, screen speed and angle of fish. If the fish are moving upward or downward you will not get good arches.

That's what I suspected also. Looks like air/gas bubbles rising off the bottom.

This thread is kind of eye opening as to how many people don't know what their finders are showing.

This^^^^^ The Op never stated if he was moving or sitting still, it looks like he was sitting still and fish were streaking up. I see this frequently with Stripers pushing shad to the surface. I had a good example of this before Photobucket did its thing.

This pic does has some fish streaking in it, not as much as the OP's post. The second pic you can see the slab moving up and down as well.

This question is a tricky one though. I'd really have to lean towards the air bubbles because the pattern is just too consistent. I believe if those long angle streaks were fish, that they would not be in such perfect lines. They'd be more of the up & down moving streaks like some of the pics posted show.

Fished what we thought was a huge school of active fish on Amistad for an hour before we noticed the bubbles reaching the surface.

No bubbles, no streaks. Never felt so dumb before.

Did you pull any of those out?

Yes, about 75-80 of them. Magnum sand bass and 15"-16" Stripers.

nice!

Guys checkout itainttv.com the professor, Wilson Frazier and check his YouTube videos. I have his dvds and they are great. If the transducer was not installed correctly then the depth would be way off and that should be easy to check. No matter how expensive the unit, 3D, whatever, if it is sonar all the unit can do is measure time and distance and display it on the the big fancy screen. Those streaks just mean the fish is moving fast and either getting closer or further away from the transducer. Left to right is Time and up and down is Distance. If the top of the line is tilted left the fish came towards the transducer and if the top of the line is titled to the right it traveled further from the transducer. When you see a flat horizontal streak cross the screen it means the fish is staying under the transducer at the same distance.

so are you saying that you don't know that they are also?

It is fish swimming upwards my helix 9 mega does the same thing I seen it yesterday under the 2 mile bridge on tawakoni and as the surface started to explode we started catching bar Sandies and crappies,we are used to always seeing fish while they are horizontal but vertical produces a return signal that I believe is feeding fish.

Yep. I always thought they were fishing coming up but now don't know. I thought that I was really one of the few who had trouble reading the graphs but seeing how there are so many different opinions and only one is going to be right, it just showed that maybe I'm not the only one.

This is correct. You do not get arches if the fish are moving and feeding like in the picture.

Just exactly how do you "set" a transducer? I installed my transducers on the boat and on the trolling motor then I set up my electronics. I have never heard of "setting" a transducer.

Those are interesting screen shots. I have not quite seen fish appear like that on my graph. However, I have seen fish move in directions in a very consistent pattern.

With regards to arches versus streaks, there are a lot of variables that contribute to how the fish appear on the graph. I get both appearing on my graph, just depends on boat speed and what the fish are doing.

I'll post examples of both for what I see on my equipment. Same transducer, same settings.

Arches are usuallly your bigger fish. They are a more solid target for the transducer sonar to bounce back from. You want to see tightly formed dense arches. They are the good ones. Go with someone like Mark Pack who knows deep water electronics. He will check a number of spots with echoes looking for those he knows are solid bass before fishing.

That lower pic in the post above looks good. You should be able to catch those . Tight arches up on the structure feeding.