Sonar question - What am I looking at??

[greenie1975]

So I am new to reading DSI so I went out today with the purpose of playing around a little. I took a couple of pics over "fish habitats" that have been put in the lake by the state. Exactly what do you see here? Is it just junk or are there fish???

[CrappiePappy]

Hard to tell with that color palette ... but, then it's sometimes hard to "see" fish on a downscan, anyway. They could show up as dots or small blurs, depending on depth &/or settings being used.

My unit is the Elite 5DSI ... and I prefer the blue color palette. It's just easier on the eye, and seems to separate cover/fish into more easily recognizable images. Like these :

Fallen tree


Tree w/fish


And, yes ... I do use 800kHz in shallow water (<20') and you can see the results.

I did use another color palette, for awhile (until I tried the blue) and these are the images I got :

Brush Pile


Standing Cedar tree


And while I could determine what I was looking at, for the most part, you can see the striking differences between the two color settings. The images are, to me, just too "busy" when yellow, green, red combos are used ... and smooth out when the blue is used.

(Note: on the screen shot of the standing Cedar tree, you can ignore the fractured image in the right half of the screen ... I have my transducer mounted on the trolling motor, and had to zig zag to avoid running into the top of the second Cedar.)

... cp

[greenie1975]

Thanks Pappy! I just went to the garage and changed the color and will see what I get next time out.