question for hb Side imagine sonar owners

Well, Ill be putting my new 997 on the boat Saturday and have some questions for those of you who have hb side imaging units. First question is, will you see fish with the side imaging if the fish are shallow??? For instance, say Im fishing a creek that averages 10 feet in the middle and Im scanning the bank but the fish are up on the bank in say 2 foot of water. Will you see them???

Second, I see where these graphs have 2 different khz's settings. I think it was 200 or 800. I think thats what the settings were, im not looking at the box at the moment. Anyways, Where would I use the 200 and where would I use the 800. Is it better to use the lower setting in shallow water maybe. I have not a clue on which of these settings to use so any input would be nice.

If anyone could give me so basic settings to start off with that would be nice. There is so much to these graphs that im not fimiliar with some basic settings would be nice and I could tinker from there. Thanks everyone for your time....... Robin..

Your 997 uses one of two selectable frequencies for SI: 455 or 800 kHz. The 800 provides sharper details but has a more limited range. The 455 is what you want to use for long range work.

Having said that, I typically keep my SI range between 80 and 120 feet, and use 455 kHz. I get all the definition I need from that combination.

For now, go with the factory defaults for sensitivity, contrast, sharpness, etc. I think those are all 10s on a 1-20 scale.

The key issue for new users is tuning the chart speed to match your boat speed. At a nice idle speed of 2-3 mph, you probably want to go with a chart speed of around 3 on the 997. Start going in a straight line, keep the speed constant, and adjust your chart speed to provide the sharpest images. If you increase boat speed, increase your chart speed, and do the opposite if you slow down the boat. At speeds of 1 mph or below, I run a chart speed of 1.

Have fun!

As for seeing fish in shallow water....here are some in ~ 5 ft. I would interpret all of the signals in the red boxes as fish.

That screen capture is from a 997.

Jason, I really appreciate your help and input!! now i understand the khz's a little better. I was just reading about it in the humminbird book and it was still a lil confusing but after reading what you sent It makes a lot more sense! I appreciate your time and may bug ya with some more questions after this weekend because im gonna get it on the water soon. By the way, Im assuming that when you downscale your left and right viewing footage on the side imaging from say 150ft to say 80, everything would appear to be right at twice as big on your screen. Kinda like zoom in a weird way?

That's about right. You'll get better definition of the objects closer to the boat when you use a tighter SI range.

Feel free to ask away! Happy to help :)

I just got my 997 installed a couple weeks ago and have been out 1 time so I'm VERY new myself. On Idle, my boat runs at from 2.8 to about 3.5 or so, just depends on if I'm going into or with the wind. You say the chart speed is whats going to give you the sharpest picture, right? So if I run my boat at about 3 MPH, I need to adjust my chart speed to about 3 or 4? Here are a couple of pics that I got from last weekend. My wife and I went out last Saturday just to ride around and look but we did find some neat things at Ross barnett. I had it out to far though on the sides, was running 150 or so each side but did change it to right about 100 at the end. If I run it at say 50-75 feet, will that make things look bigger on the screen? I'm saying it will but that's just me guessing. Any other advice on settings or things like that?

Robin, Not only can you reduce the distance to each side to make objects appear larger, you can utilize the whole screen to view only one side at a time. Also, you can then zoom in on an object of interest. And, just for fun, you can sometimes see fish and their shadows while not even moving. There are many ways you will find to use your new Bird. Congratulations!

bob baldwin
bryan, texas
997c SI
1197c SI
AS GRHA GPS

how to zoom in on something. I can't figger out how to move the pointer into a side view to set a waypoint, sucker just beeps at me. LOL

DonDon, Use the four way to move the cursor to the point of interest, and the mark button to save a waypoint. Use the + to zoom in & - to zoom out. The general consensus is to set the screen speed to about 2 notches above the boat speed. This is not critical, and you will see various opinions on this. When you pass a known vertical object, it should appear on SI straight out instead of "leaning".

bob baldwin
bryan, texas
997c SI
1197c SI
AS GRHA GPS

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DonDon

how to zoom in on something. I can't figger out how to move the pointer into a side view to set a waypoint, sucker just beeps at me. LOL

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On your cursor button you should be able to press it to the right or left or up or down and then press the zoom buttons + to zoom in and the - to zoom out. When you are finished zooming then hit your exit button and it will go back to the normal side imaging screen.