Electronics Upgrade?

[Jeff99]

Well, thought I'd look for some advice.  I'm running a gen 3 HDS7 with a p66 transducer.  I've got a second gen 1 hds7m I took off an old boat beside it so I don't have to split screens.  90% of my fishing is salmon/sturgeon in the Columbia, ocean salmon, and occasional shallow water bottom fish.  I'm running twin Hondas with NMEA2000 and a lowrance radio with AIS.  I've been debating an upgrade but don't have much experience with newer stuff.  I generally feel pretty good about my system, meaning I see fish and if I'm running downriggers under the boat I can see fish following gear, etc.... I struggle more in the ocean, especially around a lot of bait feeling like I'm consistently seeing fish. just wondering how much of an improvement I'd see with an upgrade. I don't mind investing some money or even drilling a hole in the boat if necessary.... I need to find something to blow my Oregon kicker check on but looking for thoughts on how much of an improvement I'd see. Thx!

[headduck]

I dunno, from what youve described, your doing better than many. Perhaps its just a setting adjustment to account for all the extra stuff in the ocean.

Teamcolibri.com has been helpful for me to better tune my system. Google can translate the page in the drop down menu if it shows in Dutch/Norwegian or whatever it is...

[Barnaclebob]

I find it interesting that you say you can see fish following your gear because that shouldn't be possible without a panoptix or livescope transducer. 

[DARice]

I find it interesting that you say you can see fish following your gear because that shouldn't be possible without a panoptix or livescope transducer. 

With my setup, Garmin EchoMap, sometimes fish arches are lines, typically changing depth and resulting it a diagonal line on the display, it's best when that move is toward my gear. It's very cool to see that on the display right when the bite happens. Maybe that's what Jeff99 is seeing.

Dave

[calcoast]

I find it interesting that you say you can see fish following your gear because that shouldn't be possible without a panoptix or livescope transducer. 

With my setup, Garmin EchoMap, sometimes fish arches are lines, typically changing depth and resulting it a diagonal line on the display, it's best when that move is toward my gear. It's very cool to see that on the display right when the bite happens. Maybe that's what Jeff99 is seeing.

Dave

That what I see and how I can tell if I'm seeing salmon chasing my bait or something else eating. I also often see a salmon following the lure just below it and then coming up and getting hooked. Pretty cool technology.

[Barnaclebob]

yeah I guess thats what I would assume too, my down rigger balls dont show up on my sonar unless I'm trolling less than about 50ft deep.

[addicted2fishing]

Well, thought I'd look for some advice.  I'm running a gen 3 HDS7 with a p66 transducer.  I've got a second gen 1 hds7m I took off an old boat beside it so I don't have to split screens.  90% of my fishing is salmon/sturgeon in the Columbia, ocean salmon, and occasional shallow water bottom fish.  I'm running twin Hondas with NMEA2000 and a lowrance radio with AIS.  I've been debating an upgrade but don't have much experience with newer stuff.  I generally feel pretty good about my system, meaning I see fish and if I'm running downriggers under the boat I can see fish following gear, etc.... I struggle more in the ocean, especially around a lot of bait feeling like I'm consistently seeing fish. just wondering how much of an improvement I'd see with an upgrade. I don't mind investing some money or even drilling a hole in the boat if necessary.... I need to find something to blow my Oregon kicker check on but looking for thoughts on how much of an improvement I'd see. Thx!

In my opinion, majority of fishing is about confidence in your gear and interpreting what you are seeing above and below the water (on your electronics).  If you feel good about interpreting your equipment in freshwater, I would start with adjusting your settings in saltwater like headduck suggested before investing in newer equipment.

What downriggers are you currently running?  I assume steel cable.  Have you ever tested your voltage on your cable?  Natural voltage on the cable can change in different bodies of water, particularly saltwater.  I've read that Salmon do have electrical sensitivity.

[Jeff99]

Thanks guys, when I said I can see fish following my gear I'm talking about solid line marks at the same depth as my gear and occasionally we've seen marks streak up from 10-20' below the gear to downrigger depth and had takedowns immediately which in my mind  is pretty conclusive.  I mentioned that I see that when fishing downriggers because my lead lines seem to generally be far enough back I either can't see them on the scope or at least not marks that I can associate with takedowns in the gear.  I'm running Scotty depthmasters. I've run steel in the past but currently am back on braid.  I have checked voltage on them when I had steel on and all was good. My riggers typically outfished my lead rods.  I use them even when fishing shallow for gear separation when I have 3 or 4 rods out.  A 17 chaser gets pretty tight with 4 rods.  I've watched tutorials on setting lowrance units up and been to some seminars and played a lot on the water but I still seemed to get a lot of variation in the salt.  Like I said, I don't necessarily think my setup is hurting my fishing but am just curious if there is a big step change available that I just don't know about... I'm not really interested in going down the live scope route

[Jeff99]

here's an example of what I'm talking about.  This is actually a screenshot off my dad's boat which has a raymarine dragonfly 7 on it.  I see very similar results between that unit and my hds 7.  you can see we had 3 protrolls out here at different depths and we caught that salmon right after this picture.  For me i'm really happy with this performance but I've had trouble duplicating that in the ocean.  this picture is from the mouth of the cowlitz in the columbia.  My biggest struggle is out in the ocean with lots of bait around.  I've played with settings but have trouble seeing salmon around the baitballs.  I've heard people say they get good seperation between targets in those situations with other units but i've not had the chance to check any out on the water.  Like i mentioned, just wondering how much i'd gain with a $1000 transducer and a new unit on the dash

[calcoast]

I've watched tutorials on setting lowrance units up and been to some seminars and played a lot on the water but I still seemed to get a lot of variation in the salt. 

I am not sure if you are saying you get variation from fresh to salt or on different days salt to salt. I fish mostly salt and there is definitely a big difference from fresh to salt. There is a lot more stuff on the screen in salt where I fish. I use gain to control that if I need to. I even see differences on different days in the salt. I am not entirely sure why but suspect it is water temp (time of year), and/or turbidity related.

I run Simrad NSS EVO3 and Airmar M285HW and I see incredible detail and can even tell what many fish are on the screen. I love my setup. But it seems yours is working pretty well given the detail you see. If I were you I would google pics of your transducer's sonar images and also look at some Airmar HW images. I believe M285HW, B175HW, and TM185HW are the same transducer. Just different mount. And there are plenty of other ones out there.

[calcoast]

I posted before I saw your recent post. I get fantastic separation on my 1K HW transducer. I can see fish in and around bait balls. I can tell the difference between salmon, halibut (shallow), rockfish, anchovies, jacksmelt, and krill. If you want that detail you may need to go to a chirp transducer. Not sure how a 600W chirp will compare to my 1K transducer. But it will be less expensive.

[Barnaclebob]

here's an example of what I'm talking about.  This is actually a screenshot off my dad's boat which has a raymarine dragonfly 7 on it.  I see very similar results between that unit and my hds 7.  you can see we had 3 protrolls out here at different depths and we caught that salmon right after this picture.  For me i'm really happy with this performance but I've had trouble duplicating that in the ocean.  this picture is from the mouth of the cowlitz in the columbia.  My biggest struggle is out in the ocean with lots of bait around.  I've played with settings but have trouble seeing salmon around the baitballs.  I've heard people say they get good seperation between targets in those situations with other units but i've not had the chance to check any out on the water.  Like i mentioned, just wondering how much i'd gain with a $1000 transducer and a new unit on the dash

Yeah ive seen marks like that occasionally.  I'll have to keep an eye out for them better...

[addicted2fishing]

here's an example of what I'm talking about.  This is actually a screenshot off my dad's boat which has a raymarine dragonfly 7 on it.  I see very similar results between that unit and my hds 7.  you can see we had 3 protrolls out here at different depths and we caught that salmon right after this picture.  For me i'm really happy with this performance but I've had trouble duplicating that in the ocean.  this picture is from the mouth of the cowlitz in the columbia.  My biggest struggle is out in the ocean with lots of bait around.  I've played with settings but have trouble seeing salmon around the baitballs.  I've heard people say they get good seperation between targets in those situations with other units but i've not had the chance to check any out on the water.  Like i mentioned, just wondering how much i'd gain with a $1000 transducer and a new unit on the dash

That's a good looking return.  How deep are your bait balls that you are targeting in the ocean for Salmon?

I remembered that the P66 is a multi-frequency transducer.  At 50khz, the cone angle is 45 degrees.  At 200khz, the cone angle is only 11 degrees.  Just curious if you've played with that setting specifically?  Judging by your image, my guess is that is the P66 is running at 200.

I believe your Lowrance units can run both frequencies in split screen (one side at 50 and the other at 200).  If you see the target on both screens, the fish is basically under or near the boat.  But, if the target shows only on the 50 side, then the target is probably farther out from the boat given the larger cone angle.

Additionally, the higher the frequency, the greater the ability to detect targets, but due to the short wave length it also has less energy and will have limitations as you go deeper in the water column.  As frequency lowers, you have less target detection capability.  But, because of the longer wave length, it has greater energy to go deeper into the water column.

[Jeff99]

Thanks for the replies.  I have played with the frequency in the transducer but I've never run it on split screen with both frequencies displaying. I didn't know I could do that actually but it's a good idea.  That would be interesting info.   Thx for the suggestion.  Springers starts soon but since I'm generally fishing <30' in the river I might have to wait until ocean fishing this summer to really play with it. From the previous question about depth in the ocean where I'm targeting fish it varies quite a bit. Out of the mouth of the Columbia if we fish north we may be as shallow as 30-40' on the beach or if we go west or south up to 300'.  I generally am fishing in the top 50' of the water column but do fish the downriggers up to 200' on bright days if the fish drop down. We'll see bait at varying depths through that whole range

[headduck]

I splurged on the 1k... there is a difference, whether your wife finds it to be a $1000 difference not sure. Mine was unimpressed.

But I got to the point where I was reading the sonar well and wanted more. I'm content.

[kriznol]

The P66 is a quality transducer. To see an improvement you'd probably need to upgrade to a 600 or 1000 watt chirp. I have a B175HW with an HDS Carbon 9 and love it. The wider cone angle and good target separation really helps to figure out what depth you should be running your gear at. When I'm fishing for chinook in the ocean and the fish are scattered, I mark bait and fish that I wouldn't be able to see with a less-powerful or narrower-cone transducer. It's not great for bottom structure because of the wide cone angle, but I use the 3-in-1 that came with the chartplotter for that.

What generation HDS do you have? I hear that the newer generations have much better algorithms for processing data from the transducer. You also might want to think about upgrading to a larger screen. It helps quite a bit.