Farm pond guy here. 12 foot boat. Deepest pond is 18 feet but most are 8 max. I know at that level the signal cones are small because of the depths. The deeper didn't work well in my opinion. Will be permanent mount on boat. Thanks in advance. 

I have been using my elite 4 and 5 chirps in <10 water and have had no issues at all. BUT I have noticed lately the high chirp seems to clutter the screen in shallow water so I use 83khz on flat bottoms and 200khz in weeds/drop offs. 

If you want to see more than what is under the transducer, that takes a unit that has the side looking imaging technology. With that feature, you can see up to hundreds of feet on either side of the transducer.

The water you fish and the boat you have makes no difference if you want the sonar data.