I recently put an Eagle FishEasy 245DS on my kayak, and it seem to be working fine--temperature and depth readings look fine, it seems to be reading underwater structure and bottom really well. The transducer is not tilted at any angle and seems to be functioning fine. But I don't think I've seen a single fish arch on it yet, and I find it hard to believe that in the many hours I've been using there aren't any fish to be seen. In fact, when I turn on the fish track option, the unit seems to find fish okay, which makes me think I'm either not reading the screen right or the arches are really small or their hidden in the structure readings. Any thoughts or advice?

try zooming in half the screen.  Dont look for full arches, look for halves, or even quarters.

try playing with the sensitivity or gain.

If you are moving very slowly or not at all you will not see arches, you will see small straight lines, look for those.  The other thing you may see is a diagonal line up or down, this may be a fish swimming away to toward.

Thanks. Husker, in the kayak I'm probably either drifting or moving not much faster than trolling speed. I'll look for more subtle marks on the screen.

To see a classic fish arch the fish must be in the center of the sound cone long enough to scan it from one end to the other. That happens mostly at troll speed, around 1-3 mph. Any fish away from the cone center, especially those on the edges of the cone, appear as fingernail clipping images standing on end when the boat is moving, so most images will be slits. When sitting still and fish are rising the diagonal lines frow from deeper to shallower. Multiple growing lines indicates a school of fish on the move maybe chasing shad, maybe coming up to investigate your lure, or maybe fleeing because you've spooked them. At higher speeds a series of sonar pulses don't have enough time to scan and return an echo before the fish is well outside the cone, so all you see is partial slits.

Jim

I use the fish symbol option rather than an arch does anyone else use it? Each fish symbol then has the depth printed above it.

Chow

The Pa Angler

Yes, I'm not into studying the screen and trying to decypher whether or not that little squiggle is a fish.

I only use the Fish symbol setting when I am really more focused on the bottom contours and not the fish or baitfish.  the reason is that the fish symbol will show anything in the water column as a fish even though it may be debris, grass, a log, etc, so it is pretty hard to define what a fish is or not, and for the most part I use my Eagle 320 for the bottom structure and contour, not really to find fish. I figure that if I can find good structure, then more than likely there will be fish in the area.  I do however look for balls of baitfish, because like structure, where the baitfish are there will be bass near by.  I have been using this feature less and less, trying to become a better graph reader.

The fish symbol option on a depthfinder is NOT a reliable indicator of the presence of fish.  Most instruction manuals will state this.  

The fish symbol option on a depthfinder is NOT a reliable indicator of the presence of fish. Most instruction manuals will state this.

Yes, I agree. But as Huskertko stated, many of us are looking more for structure, cover and schools of baitfish. I'm not going to target a fish just because the fishfinder said there was one under the back of the boat 30 seconds ago. But it's much easier to let the machine point out fish with the big indicator so I can tell at a glance what's going on and get a general idea if there are fish in the area. No, I'm not going to scrutinize every little squiggle and try to determine if it's baitfish or grass. Let the machine do that while I fish.

I have a Humminbird 535 that uses the fish symbols and don't feel that I'm getting false signals. Usually when I'm seeing fish I'm getting into them. I do have the setting tweaked so that it supposedly eliminates the smaller fish (there are three sizes available). In this mode it still shows baitfish which are represented as a cloudlike reading. I know the fish symbol finders are kind of looked down upon by the graph purists but for $150 this thing has great resolution and I really like the way it reads the bottom structure and composition. Like most of you guys I am more looking for the structure I like more than relying on actual fish symbols. That said, I do like it when I'm seeing a few big boys two feet off the bottom in about 20 feet of water.

I've seen a lot of sonars in opertion and have yet to see one that accurately reports fish using fish symbols. I'm not saying it isn't reporting fish. Not at all. What I'm saying it greatly over-reports fish, including debris like strands of floating weed, tree branches, etc. We use sonar and underwater cameras together at work often. The fish alarm and display beep and show a lake full of big fish even with the large fish icon limiter, while the camera shows nothing down there but a few bream or minnows. I suspect the idea of fish icons was to give you something to look at in learning to use the sonar. All the sonar makers say that's for learning purposes. There is far more to learn about a lake bottom and water column in manual mode. There is no way the fish icon mode can accurately match manual mode. When manual mode shows a fish arch, it's a fish, more easily interpreted with color. Most displays show a better more detailed bottom structure, and submerged trees show up as just that and not 500 bass stacked over bottom. The sooner you turn off fish ID the better. Bite the bullet and learn how to unlock the power of sonar- go manual.

Jim

Does my Humminbird 535 have an "arches" mode? I think all that is available is the fish icon type display. I'd definately like to learn the whole arch deal. I'll have to dig out the manual and see if this one does both.

It has both.

Jim

I know for a FACT that when using the fish symbol feature it will report both fish and debris as a fish.  I KNOW this because I fish from a personal pontoon boat and use my feet for propulsion.  My depth finder in symbol mode has indicated fish in very shallow water that I could feel was grass and it has indicated fish in very shallow water that I know were fish because I felt them swim by my feet.  The point is the fish symbol feature will show fish but it will also show anything else in the water as a fish too.  That is why I only use that feature to clean up the graph and look for bottom structure not for the fish themselves.