DI, Where's the Fish?

Piddled around on the river and on the creek for a few hours Saturday and a few more this past Sunday.

Really like the picture and return on both the DI and the standard sonar on my 788ci HD DI combo. One question I have is what settings are a good starting point for both the standard sonar and DI?

On the DI I never did see anything that I could look at and say "That is a fish." I have looked over some of the pictures of both DI and SI screenshots and feel pretty comfortable that I would be able to pick one out had I seen one. But what can I do settings wise to make them show up better?

I have a 798,in order to see fish ,it needs to be set speed at about 3 and speed of boat at about 2 mph for good picture of fish. If you speed unit up much and boat to match you will not get a good picture of fish. I have good pictures of crappies and can count each fish,but had to go real slow. The DI on 798 is useless because it is only what you see on side image unless you are not using SI. IMO.

Fish are the tiny white dots that you see all around the structure

You may need to play with the sensitivity a little and/or try different color pallets. Also if you set you lower depth range just a little deeper than the water you are in it gives you a bigger picture of structure and fish and you don't have to wait on the "auto" depth range to update if you go from deep to shallow water or vice versa.

So slow the scroll speed and putt around at about 2 mph?

I saw some white dots but they appeared to look more like a ball of shad than anything else. No larger dots around the ball either. I know with the SI shots I have seen the fish actually have the shape of fish and you can see the sonar "shadow" as well that they make. I guess you don't get that shape with DI?

If you or the fish are not moving, you will not see much. I can see schools of white bass at times, they are pretty much arches like the old sonars presented. The bigger they are, the bigger the arch. The beam on a DSI is fan shaped not cone shaped so you have to be moving or the fish have to be moving through the sweep of the sonar. On the Elite 5 they show up as more than tiny dots if they have any size to them.

to me the fish on di appear alot smaller than they do on regualar 2d, it takes a bit to learn, honestly i like the split screen for 2d to see how deep the fish are and di to see if that was a brush pile of a thick school of shad. and then the si to find stuff way off to the side, the side imaging to me really is helpful to give relation to a point or ledge.

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Originally Posted by gobbler

and then the si to find stuff way off to the side, the side imaging to me really is helpful to give relation to a point or ledge.

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No SI. I cheaped out.