Depth finders 101

I’ve got a very simple basic question. When I see fish on my depth finder screen especially while I’m sitting still, the screen continues to move from right to left showing fish, structure, etc.
where in relationship to the transducer on my trolling motor are these fish? Are they swimming under my boat in the same direction the screen is moving? What about while spider rigging? I see the depth the fish seem to be holding, but I never seem to get bit.
i do adjust the depth of my bait, but doesn’t seem to make a difference. I can’t figure out where the fish really are in relationship to my boat

The transducer has a cone shaped image so when a fish appears on the right of the screen IF you're sitting still then you'll see that fish as it moves across the cone from right to left. If it disappears quickly it might have went to the right out of sight of the cone.
I'm sure Rickie will come along and explain this better than I ever can

The screen scroll is because the unit is continually collecting new data (pinging) and plotting the new data on the screen at the right edge of the 2d displayed image (regardless if the boat is moving or not) ...

Only the right edge of the 2d image (newest ping data) is what is actually under the boat in the 2d Sonar cone ...

Everything to the left in the screen scroll is older data ...

Watch this video:
https://youtu.be/R4T0Tuv6RvY

Rickie

Yeah, the hardest part of figuring out where the fish are ..... is because the screen is NOT necessarily showing you how DEEP the fish are, but how FAR away from the transducer they are. And if you're sitting still or moving, it still don't matter from which direction the fish are coming into the ping of the unit ... they're still going to show up on the right side of the screen and scroll off to the left.

If you know the angle of the ping (2d cone or Down Image fan) then you will have a better idea of where the fish "might be" within the area of coverage of that ping. The higher the degree of angle of the ping, the greater the area you're covering. And like Rickie's video shows ... the 2d ping is cone shaped & the Down Image ping is fan shaped ... but in either instance the leading edge or outside edge of the ping is what is picking up the images that appear on the right edge of the screen.

Great information!

Great info....always learning.

You may be able to change the settings on the transducer to a smaller cone, like 200mhz. This would show you what's under the transducer.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

Try livescope it is real time , see your bait and fish . You can see them sitting or moving not just where they were like old sonar .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NIMROD

Try livescope it is real time , see your bait and fish . You can see them sitting or moving not just where they were like old sonar .

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X2!


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app