Unit suddenly lost it's mind?

Yesterday evening started out great found brush piles with fish finder as usual everything going great caught 30 crappie in one hour :) Little bit later decided to head to a cove and try for some catfish, didn't do anything unusual. Got tired of that and headed back to brush piles but when I got there couldn't find them (although I have found them dozens of time in this spot before) on the FF and there was a huge amount interference on the FF. Thought the water must be in bad shape so headed to another part of the lake where there was less wind hoping for better water. When I got there same problem with the FF but this time it was even worse with long vertical lines going across the screen, huge amounts of "stuff" in the water that shouldn't be there.

What in the world happened? How do I debug this?

Sequence of events:

1. Motor to spot, FF is working great I'm seeing fish and brush piles wonderfully
2. Motor to cove and fish for a while
3. Motor back to brush piles and FF lost it's mind

There's really nothing that happened before #2 and #3. I tried reseting the FF to factory defaults on the water, no help same results.

This is a Lowrance Elite-4 Chirp. I don't know where to start. Transducer and wiring looks fine. Did the transducer break or the head unit?

Just to speed up with what is wrong. I would find someone with a like unit on there boat and see how it does.:twocents

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scrat

Just to speed up with what is wrong. I would find someone with a like unit on there boat and see how it does.:twocents

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Thanks good idea. Another thought - problem started after fishing in a very shallow cove ( < 6ft ) and then going back to deeper water ( >10ft) I wonder if it was "stuck" in whatever mode it was in in the shallow water. Thought reseting to factor defaults would clear the problem, but that's the only thing I can come up with.

Is there another sonar unit running in the boat at the same time ...??

Rickie