I have a Garmin Striker Vivid 7SV on my kayak and I'm working at wrapping my mind about the relationship between chart speed and vessel speed. If I'm moving at 1.5 mph as a top speed and most of the time I'm drifting slowly or sitting still. Should I adjust the chart speed to the slowest setting?

 

I previously had a Garmin Striker 4cv and it was helpful but a little limiting. Now with the 7sv, a lot more options have opened up. If it matters, I fish a very shallow pond, mostly 3'-6' and a maximum depth of 9'-10'.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

couple things:

 

 - yes you should adjust your chart speed with the vessel's speed.  How much is up to you and what looks good to your eyes.  On my Helix, I will run chart speed 6 when I am motoring spot to spot which is about 3.5-4 mph (I'm also in a kayak).  That's a pretty quick scroll speed, and it might elongate some things a little, but its pretty close most of the time.  I normally also just leave it on this scroll speed.

- I leave it on the fastest speed so I don't have to adjust it as often.  When you're sitting still or moving < 0.5 mph, you're not getting a good reading anyway so I'm not using it for anything other than current depth (or GPS map position if offshore).

- when I'm motoring down a bank powerfishing, I'm usually around 1 mph.  That's the case where I'll slow it down to a speed 3 or so.  That's enough to keep the side imaging clean without stretching things out too far.

- at those depths, your view of the bottom in any down scan is pretty limited, so side scan is what I would optimize for.

Thanks! I'll change the setting and see how that works out. I'm still having difficulty wrapping my mind on how the sonar works and it's idiosyncrasies.  I have a lot of studying to do.

Oh boy...

2 hours ago, Deleted account said:

Oh boy...

?????

You are going slow in a kayak so your ping rate and chart speed should be slowed down to match. It’s more important to be able to increase gain without cluttering your screen with noise.

Faster chart speeds and ping rates are met for boats going faster on a plane at moderate speeds. 

Tom

Thanks Tom!

 

Anything you see is history.  If you have the amplitude scope active that is current.