Educational Articles » humminbird side imaging

Learn Sonar Session 16 Posted on July 27, 2016

Interpreting sonar, down imaging and side imaging is very difficult. I have 3 great images to use as examples for teaching interpretation of sonar.

The left side imaging is showing the drop-off as dark (yellow arrows point to the drop-off on the map and side image). Bright is the strongest return and black is none. Since sound goes in a straight line the drop-off is dark.

The red circle is showing fish on the shallow side and I think they are about where the red arrow is pointing on the map. I would mark a waypoint on the side image and cast to the fish since they are shallow. Notice the boat is in 2.9 feet.

The next image shows the drop-off as dark (red circle) and fish are suspended near the drop (yellow arrow). Fish show up well on side imaging since they show up as bright on the dark background. Hard bottom is also bright which makes fish difficult to see on bright background.

This is an amazingly clear image of boulders (green arrow) next to trees (yellow arrow) that slid from the bank into the river.

The red arrow shows a fish in the trees and the white arrow shows a small drop-off.

 

Humminbird ONIX amazing Side imaging Posted on May 23, 2016

I was out casting for shallow walleyes today and my ONIX side imaging was amazing.

I was in 2.8 feet of water and took this screenshot. Notice the range of 119 on each side and  the screen is loaded with fish.

The fish are in the green circles and some rock in the black circle.

I was able to identify some of the fish since we caught sheephead and catfish plus I saw a school of carp swim by and a 5 foot sturgeon also swam by. No walleyes but we had an amazing experience.

 

Understanding DownScan/Down Imaging 2/25/2105 Posted on February 25, 2015

DownScan Interpretation


This explanation is to help explain what you see with down imaging, it is pertinent to all brand’s down imaging.
Down imaging has a wider cone and will show targets off the side better than the 2D sonar (traditional sonar 200 kHz).
Notice the man-made structure plus the rocks.
Sonar tells us the distance to the target. The man-made structure pointed out with the white arrow is 8 feet from the transducer. How about the red arrow? It is pointing at rocks and long strips of something man-made. You can’t tell which side it is on since the left and right edge of the cone is combined, something 12 feet from the transducer on the left with be superimposed on something 12 feet from the transducer on the right side.


If you have side scan you can see which side of the boat a target is.
Notice the rocks are opposite the man-made structure but on the DownScan they are overlapped.

The next example shows fish by a tree on DownScan and the side scan shows the same fish to the left side. The problem is we don’t have enough screens to show all we want. I like to see the map, 2D sonar, down imaging and side scan and that is a lot of dash space to be used. The fish and the tree look like white spots and are hard to interpret.  I like one model with splitscreen sonar and DownScan and one splitscreen map and side scan with the side scan using 2/3 of the screen since wide screens are best for side scan like I used 2/3 for sides can in the image.

 

Side Scan Fish Speeds 9/3/14 Posted on September 03, 2014

I often get questions on what fish look like on side scan at different speeds from both Humminbird and Lowrance users.


Read More >>

Posts Coming Soon! Posted on January 01, 2014

Content on Humminbird, Vexilar, Lowrance mapping, Spotlight Scan and more coming soon.