Weak arches

[ezbite]

Last few trips out I've noticed that my fish arches are getting weaker. Especially my last trip off Cleveland, we caught many fish but very few showed up on my finder. It is a lowrance 334c and I went in and reset everything to factory settings thinking I goofed something up and still had the same thing. I've read that the transduces can go bad and I always run my ping at 100%. the depth is accurate, I just have real weak arches(yes there are fish under the boat too.lol) think I burned it up or got any ideas??

[-C-IMP]

ez,
I've read that running 100% ping leads to early transducer failure. Nice electronics discussions at bassboat site.

[rattletraprex]

I wonder if that happened to mine also. Didn't hardy mark a fish Sat. and we covered plenty of water. We only caught one so don't really know if there were any down there or not. Also set my settings back to factory thinking maybe I screwed something up. I don't have a ping setting so no way of knowing what it's set at. If we don't mark fish next trip out I'll start worrying. If the ducer is bad will get a new fishfinder as this one needs upgraded. It sucks to fish an area when you're not marking any thing. Hope you get it figured out and let us know.

[K gonefishin]

Linda Colt at Lowrance said setting your ping at 100% will not make your ducer go bad. Tom, if your getting weaker arches it may be because your fishing much deeper water therefore your hooks are going to show up as smaller thinner smaller arches, mine is doing the same thing, it's just because of the depth, if you go to shallow water and mark fish they will show up as thicker larger arches with more color. this weekend I was in 67 FOW marking tons of fish but they just show up as small thin purple lines with little to no color like normal no red or yellow to them, if you want to see strong arches try zoooming in on them, I did this and low and behold the marks looked like they do in 30-40 FOW.

Not saying this is the answer but it could be possible (just a though and throwing it out there for ya :)) . You should see what a huge salmon mark looks like in 450 FOW on lk Ontario LOL, also changing your depth range will have an effect on what arches show up like, since moving out to deep water I put it on auto and that changed what everything looks like as well, including bait.

[ezbite]

it was deeper water, i did try to zoom in and didnt really notice any difference, but your right it looks like a small pen line. maybe i'll just bite the bullit and get the HD:D and use the 334 for gps. sell the 4800.

[K gonefishin]

it was deeper water, i did try to zoom in and didnt really notice any difference, but your right it looks like a small pen line. maybe i'll just bite the bullit and get the HD:D and use the 334 for gps. sell the 4800.

I have the old trusty 4800 as well, the only reason I kept it when I ordered my new boat was because I was to lazy to figure out how to transfer waypoints and I have 2 map chips for it, one covers ALL the great lakes and st clair and the other has the sandbar, my 38HD doesn't have nearly the stuff those two chips have. If it's aint broke don't try to fix it. I do live by that.

You unit may not have the power to present thicker lines even while zoomed in, my 38 has alot more RMS power than yours so it will be different and show arches different.

see what it does in shallow water before spending the money, or if it's burning a hole in your pocket, GO SPEND IT. I do that too :D

[Workdog]

I have the old trusty 4800 as well, the only reason I kept it when I ordered my new boat was because I was to lazy to figure out how to transfer waypoints and I have 2 map chips for it, one covers ALL the great lakes and st clair and the other has the sandbar, my 38HD doesn't have nearly the stuff those two chips have. If it's aint broke don't try to fix it. I do live by that.


I also have a 4800, and a new 37C. My 4800 had original software ver 1.0. I NMEA 2000'd the two units together, updated the software in the 4800 to make it network capable, and downloaded my data points onto an SD chip (it's gotta be 1 GB or less). I put the SD chip in the new unit and uploaded the data points. Now whenever I take a fix in one unit, it automatically puts the point in the other unit. Very nice to have redundancy in gps's.

[K gonefishin]

I also have a 4800, and a new 37C. My 4800 had original software ver 1.0. I NMEA 2000'd the two units together, updated the software in the 4800 to make it network capable, and downloaded my data points onto an SD chip (it's gotta be 1 GB or less). I put the SD chip in the new unit and uploaded the data points. Now whenever I take a fix in one unit, it automatically puts the point in the other unit. Very nice to have redundancy in gps's.


Yeah I need to do that one of these days, expecially before the 4800 quits on me...then it'll be to late. That unit came on my 03 ranger which was new when the original owner ordered the boat so that Lowrance is going on 7 years old!!! Still trucking and working great.