Most name brand sonars have a lot of clutter in shallow water. It takes a college degree to learn how to use them effectively and get out of them all that is possible.

The secret for yours is to turn off the fish ID. Never use it. And manually adjust the sensitivity depending on water depth you may be wishing to see. Generally in crappie or fish depth manually setting the sensitivity to less than 50 percent clears up the clutter. You want to adjust the sensitivity as you watch the screen, run it up until you see the surface clutter start, then back it down just a bit until the screen clears. The clutter is the echo bouncing off the bottom of the boat and bouncing back off the bottom. Auto sensitivity and fish I.D. are gadgets used to sell and market things to the public, we are all lazy......lol! But when it comes to actually using one in a functional manner, you have to manually set the sensitivity or the thing is useless. That auto sensitivity programmed into the units is a catch all setting for shallow to deep, and generally works fine in deep water, but most of fresh water fishing takes place in under 25 feet of water. That particular unit once you get it set will remember the settings and you do not have to do it each time. Cheers......Kit