898C SI and Crappie / Blue Gill fishing

I purchased a 898C SI unit last year and have it installed and working but I am having some issues identifying fish on my SI screens. I will see little white spots on the bottom views of the SI image that I think are panfish but I never see them suspended in the water coloum nor do they show up on my downimage view that is showing on the same screen.
I am unsure if I have the unit misadjusted or what my issue is. I am looking for some advice on setting up the defaults on my SI to optimize it for Crappie.
I have reset the unit to factory defaults and I have my side image range set down to 75' normally. I know fish are present because I can catch them but I never see them on the SI or Down image. I have sensitivity at factory defaults
I do see larger fish like Walleye and Northern as arches ( am assuming they are fish) but if I turn on my fish ID I see no fish unless I am in shallow water with some lilly pads growing then I will see little groups of 2 or 3 fish in 2 to 4 feet of water but looking down into the water I cannot see the fish. I assume the fish ID is tagging the weeds.

Am I expecting to much out of this unit when fishing for 8" to 14" crappie or should I be seeing them?
My wife and I are seriously wondering if this SI unit is even working OK or not. I do not know of any other SI users in my area to share notes or settings with to see if it's me or the HB that is not working.
Any advice would be appreiciated.

Toddah,

You should be able to see the crappie. There are a few things you need to do in order to fine tune your 898 system. First and most important, your boat speed must equal your chart speed. You can set your chart speed from 1 to 10. So if you are going 3 mph set your chart speed to 3. This will keep things from distorting. You have to constantly change your chart speed to equal your boat speed. This will give you the best display not only on SI but on your 2D and DI. That is the most important setting.

Next, your sensitivity can be adjusted to help make the fish pop out. The higher the sensitivity the more you will see. I have found that if I have my Si sensitivity on 12 then I must turn my Di sensitivity to about 16-17. Most of the time I have to have my DI sensitivity a good bit higher than my SI sensitivity.

Also, you can scan an area then hit the cursor key (one of the arrow buttons that points up, down, etc) This will freeze your screen. Once your screen is frozen you can go through your settings like sensitivity, contrast, sharpness, color, etc... To see what makes the image clearer... I like to have my sharpness set on low or medium most the time. It really helps to see fish...
Crappie
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...s/S00128-1.png
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...ams/S00403.png
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...ams/S00414.png
Catfish
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...s/S00348-1.png
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...s/S00320-1.png
Stripers
http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/t...s/S00557-1.png

DoubleG

I don't think I have cranked the sensitivity up anywhere near the numbers you have mentioned! I will have to give those higher numbers a try and see what it does for me.
If I can get images like the ones you are showing me I will be doing a happy dance in the boat!
That is what I thought I would be seeing when I purchased the unit but I guess I have been to shy about cranking the settings up to high.

THANKS AGAIN!!!

I leave "SI Enhance" up on my screen at all times I am using SI....

This enables me to constantly adjust the sensitivity to get the best images compared to the water depth or clarity....(depth and clarity will definately change constantly thru the day)...

As the water gets deeper.......the screen will get darker....therefore raising the sensitivity will brighten the screen...
As the water gets shallower....the screen will get brighter..therefore lowering the sensitivity will darken the screen...

Although adjusting the Contrast up to medium or high will sorta pixilate the image...a higher contrast wil make the fish pop out of the image...

I use the 800kHz frequency whenever the water conditions allow... to give more detail to the image.....

Try this test....

Take a shapshot of any interesting bottom feature....

Open the snapshot in the "Snapshot and Recording View"....

Then play with all the different settings and views to see how the image is affected by the changes....

The unit only recognizes the "raw" sonar data from the returning ping....the settings in the unit are different filters and such for you to adjust the image to your individual taste....

Rickie

2 other things you can do to make smaller fish show up better.....

Lower the SI range ..
Switch unit to show left OR right side only....

Rickie

Thanks

Very helpful info. Had my 998 for over a year but havent had a lot of time to use it. These tips are very benefical.
Thanks to all again.

No problem man... I also run the 800 khz for Side Imaging... It gives the best clarity to me. I also make my range about twice the depth or three times the depth. If your range gets too wide it is hard to see the small fish. My range is usually set to 35-55 feet depending on my depth. I usually fish water from 10 - 20 feet deep.

I have SI and was having trouble locating fish this weekend. Lots of time it's just finding structure that holds fish rather than the fish themselves - for bass anyway. I have seen crappie on there, but usually when they are suspended in deeper water. Upping the sensativity will help, matching boat speed to scroll speed will help too.

Welcome to crappie.com from another Wisconsinite!

This was a very informative thread. Well done guys. I use the Lowrance units myself, but I sell a lot of the Hummingbirds, and this info will help me to educate my customers. It will probably apply to the Lowrance units as well.

threads like this just make my SI fund grow at a faster rate. THANK YOU!!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wasilvers

I have SI and was having trouble locating fish this weekend. Lots of time it's just finding structure that holds fish rather than the fish themselves - for bass anyway. I have seen crappie on there, but usually when they are suspended in deeper water. Upping the sensativity will help, matching boat speed to scroll speed will help too.

Welcome to crappie.com from another Wisconsinite!

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wasilvers makes some very good points here when using the SI units...

Understanding the natural behavior of your target species....in this instance...crappie...

We know crappie want a comfortable place to be...so learn where they should be....http://www.crappie.com/crappie/archi...e-degrees.html

Take the info learned above and find the structure with your unit according to where crappie should be....find the structure...(in the crappie comfort zone)..thus the crappie should be there....

Also. we know that crappie are schooling fish...so there are times they will school in open water...thus find schooling fish in the water column with your unit....learn what a school of crappie looks like on your unit (not 100% effective but you should be able to descern between game fish and bait fish)...

Also, we know crappie want their food handy...so find schools of baitfish hanging around areas that apply to the 3 points above....

So, in a nutshell....it may not be as important to see actual individual crappie on your unit's screen as it is important to find the other factors (above 4 points) that put you where the crappie may be....

These SI units are fantabulous for finding structure, schooling fish, and bait fish....find these 3 things with your unit and remember what you learned in http://www.crappie.com/crappie/archi...e-degrees.html and you'll have a good headstart on any body of water...

Rickie

Another thing to note is changing the color on your unit based on the conditions at hand. Sometimes I will troll into a cove using say blue and when I troll out I change to brown just to get the same clarity. Your position relative to the sun dictates these changes. Also, increasing the sharpness under side image enhance to pull the fish out more seems to help some. My eyes don’t play well with those settings personally. Also, if you find some good structure on a pass but can’t tell if anything is in it, turn up your chart speed a little faster than your gps speed and go back over it. That will stretch the image and open up dense objects. I use this technique a lot to look inside of brush piles/tree limbs.