Was on the water today and has done this before after on water for a bit. It stop reading and gets scrabbled looking so I pulled up the the transducer / sonar box.. was cover in crap so cleaned and all good than did it again but this time transducer was clean.. bad transducer?

 

 

Anyone, Bueller, Anyone? Lol.

Were you over really heavy weed growth when this occurred (looks like it from pic)? Running in auto mode? Does/did it stay that way all day or after turning back off/on?

Yes auto . Was probably over heavy growth.. I didn’t catch when it happened second time yesterday as I was standing alot and not  paying to much attention when In shallows..  sometimes it will go back to normal if I switch off and back on but after second time yesterday  it was stuck like that rest of day , didn’t matter if I turned off for awhile and turned back on . when I first go out it’s ok.. than it starts playing games. The transducer was clear of gunk and debris.

Kind of confirmed what I'm thinking. My first guess is it's not a bad transducer. Today's units are pretty powerful, and having the unit in auto, it will sometimes overcompensate or have a hard time trying to adjust to certain conditions. In this case, it looks like heavy weed growth in shallow water, and probably over a softer bottom. It looks like it overcompensated, corrected itself, then overcompensated again.

 

Next time out, try a test. Take the unit out of auto mode. Manually set depth and power just to see if it stays with the correct reading. Not sure what the area/lake is like where you were at, but pick a decent depth range (15-30') and a power setting that doesn't blow things out; perhaps 55-65% just to see what it does.

 

My guess is it will work fine once you do this. If it keeps happening in manual, then I would say you have a case for a bad transducer or cable/connection.

40 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Kind of confirmed what I'm thinking. My first guess is it's not a bad transducer. Today's units are pretty powerful, and having the unit in auto, it will sometimes overcompensate or have a hard time trying to adjust to certain conditions. In this case, it looks like heavy weed growth in shallow water, and probably over a softer bottom. It looks like it overcompensated, corrected itself, then overcompensated again.

 

Next time out, try a test. Take the unit out of auto mode. Manually set depth and power just to see if it stays with the correct reading. Not sure what the area/lake is like where you were at, but pick a decent depth range (15-30') and a power setting that doesn't blow things out; perhaps 55-65% just to see what it does.

 

My guess is it will work fine once you do this. If it keeps happening in manual, then I would say you have a case for a bad transducer or cable/connection.

Thanks for the advice.. the main lake I fish goes from fishing in inches to crossing and paddling over 50’ to 70’ deep water to get to another spot.

if this works should I be turning my unit off when I’m in very shallow water to help avoid this?

2 minutes ago, TcRoc said:

Thanks for the advice.. the main lake I fish goes from fishing in inches to crossing and paddling over 50’ to 70’ deep water to get to another spot. 

 

Yeah, ‘auto’ doesn’t like huge swings in variation. This probably would only happen in the shallows (<10 ft). Might be hard to adjust for, but if you really only fish shallow most of the time, locking in a shallower manual depth setting might be the trade-off for your situation. Play around and report back - will be curious to hear. Good luck

31 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

 

Yeah, ‘auto’ doesn’t like huge swings in variation. This probably would only happen in the shallows (<10 ft). Might be hard to adjust for, but if you really only fish shallow most of the time, locking in a shallower manual depth setting might be the trade-off for your situation. Play around and report back - will be curious to hear. Good luck

My range was actually custom 10’ but auto sensitivity was on so turned that down to 60.. will see what happens .

On 6/18/2021 at 7:14 PM, Team9nine said:

 

Yeah, ‘auto’ doesn’t like huge swings in variation. This probably would only happen in the shallows (<10 ft). Might be hard to adjust for, but if you really only fish shallow most of the time, locking in a shallower manual depth setting might be the trade-off for your situation. Play around and report back - will be curious to hear. Good luck

7 hours on water today no issues so hopefully that did the trick .. time will tell. Thanks bud !!

 

The Hook 2's are pretty notorious for doing this. Everyone's suggestion of taking it out of auto, even for a few minutes and going back to it, usually fixes it. I've also read a lot of people saying a soft reset will fix it for a while.