12-29-2015, 04:05 AM
That's what I thought, too. The short answer is a lot of adjustments are possible. It's hard to visualize. It took me a lot of time trying different adjustments while looking with the camera to get a feel for it. The manual might help some but doesn't do much to help visualize what's possible:
http://marcumtech.com/media/pdfs/2015/LX-9.pdf
When fishing near a hard sloped surface or cliff wall, the first echo return is strong and appears as the bottom and you can't see past that on sonar. But, you can switch to a narrow 8 degree cone angle to look at less bottom area which might help particularly if that means the cliff wall is outside of the cone. Weeds and twigs don't produce as strong of an echo return as the bottom. The top of that can appear as the bottom as you say, but sensitivity can be adjusted less to make them almost disappear to see past them to the strong echo return of the real bottom. That's a compromise, but fish moving in the branches and weeds will appear as different strengths of echo return and with a six color palette selected, the fish appear as movements and changes of color below the canopy of thin branches or weeds. I thought like you when I first saw this, but how can under the bottom be moving? Lowering the camera down gave me a visual on it with fish swimming among the branches. The zoom feature expands the view of that with the ability to look at the details and changes in colors from fish movement that is not as noticeable without the zoom. As I gain more experience, I'll eventually see enough different bottom structure returns to have better guesses at what's actually there and producing those sonar returns. It's still like abstract art to me, but the camera view changes guessing to actually seeing and knowing for sure. In time that will help me guess better as I take quick sonar views at many holes looking for structure or fish. Then, when I find a hole that looks promising, I can get a better look with the camera to identify the structure and fish and decide to fish that hole or keep looking for better.
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http://marcumtech.com/media/pdfs/2015/LX-9.pdf
When fishing near a hard sloped surface or cliff wall, the first echo return is strong and appears as the bottom and you can't see past that on sonar. But, you can switch to a narrow 8 degree cone angle to look at less bottom area which might help particularly if that means the cliff wall is outside of the cone. Weeds and twigs don't produce as strong of an echo return as the bottom. The top of that can appear as the bottom as you say, but sensitivity can be adjusted less to make them almost disappear to see past them to the strong echo return of the real bottom. That's a compromise, but fish moving in the branches and weeds will appear as different strengths of echo return and with a six color palette selected, the fish appear as movements and changes of color below the canopy of thin branches or weeds. I thought like you when I first saw this, but how can under the bottom be moving? Lowering the camera down gave me a visual on it with fish swimming among the branches. The zoom feature expands the view of that with the ability to look at the details and changes in colors from fish movement that is not as noticeable without the zoom. As I gain more experience, I'll eventually see enough different bottom structure returns to have better guesses at what's actually there and producing those sonar returns. It's still like abstract art to me, but the camera view changes guessing to actually seeing and knowing for sure. In time that will help me guess better as I take quick sonar views at many holes looking for structure or fish. Then, when I find a hole that looks promising, I can get a better look with the camera to identify the structure and fish and decide to fish that hole or keep looking for better.
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