What is the most shallow depth that down imaging would be benificial?
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What is the most shallow depth that down imaging would be benificial?
Water depth only affects how wide of bottom coverage the oval DI slice covers...
As long as the echo target is in the oval slice beam...it should show on the display...
The shallower the water...the more difficult it will be to get the echo target in the DI beam...
Rickie
I was gonna say ..... however deep the water was, that the fish would stay still in, while the boat passed over them :Rofl
But, seriously .... it depends on which frequency you have turned on, as to what degree an angle your ping is going out. The widest fan is 75deg ... which would show a line of bottom roughly 1.25 times the depth. So, figure if you're in 6ft of water ... then your DI ping is about 4ft to each side of the transducer (or picking up a bottom image of ~8ft wide). And that's not totally accurate, because your transducer is not skimming the surface, and may be a few inches to a foot below the surface ... which will cut down on the distance being scanned.
My DI transducer is mounted on my trolling motor, and that puts the transducer about 1ft below the surface. I've read bottom as shallow as 3ft (which is actually 4ft of water depth) but I wasn't worrying about the benefit of the image, as much as I was about running the boat, trolling motor, or big motor into the bottom :bash :Rofl
I've got good screenshots taken in 10-15 feet of water, just none I bothered to take in anything shallower than that. IMHO ... if you want beneficial images in water less than 5ft deep, then you need SI !! 2d and DI just aren't going to cover enough area to be of that much benefit in water that shallow. :twocents
... cp :kewl