Marcum LX5 question

[snoozebutton]

When I've got my bait down there I get varying sizes of targets, sometimes it appears as a thick line and a few seconds later a thin line and then it will disappear altogether only to come back seconds later as either a thick or thin line. This is just the bait I'm picking up, no fish down there. Does that sound like a transducer problem?

I should add that my wife ran over it with her car and broke the base of it but I've replaced that but since then it started doing this. I'm kind of thinking maybe the cord to the transducer might have gotten damaged when she hit it.

[Borch]

Bummer snoozebutton. Are you see the smae thing with your bottom signal? Does it doe this in both wide and narrow beams?

Almost sounded like you bait is working to the edge of your cone. Are tyou working swimming baits or is there any current where you are fishing?

[Duffman]

Your bait might also be spinning, changing the profile and the signal as it spins. When I'm going baitless with plastics, I can tell by the signal when my lure has stopped spinning.

Or it could be damaged?

[Fredd]

I was going to ask if your lure was consistent in size when you jig it. If you are using a minnow and the ducer is at the bottom of the hole, you should be able to stay on the bait even if it is swimming around (unless you are in shallow water....remember that the sonar cone is roughly 1/3 the diameter of the depth your fishing so 20 feet of water would be a 6 foot diameter circle). What part did she run over???

[snoozebutton]

It seems no one thing causes it to change, was using a plain minnow on a hook, jig and a minnow, and a small jig with a waxie and it happens with all of them. I was out for about 7 hours yesterday and towards the end of the day there was so much clutter on the screen that I couldn't make out my bait. My battery was reading 40% when I got home so I don't think that was the issue.

Maybe someone could tell me this, how does a bad transducer act? If the cable got stretched and is maybe not picking up the right signal? Maybe a little nick in the cable that I can't see and water's getting in it?

Fredd, she didn't really "run over it." Her front tire caught it and pushed it across the driveway. The shuttle was broken and the metal mounting bracked was bent over.

[DTro]

If it progressively gets worse, it sure sounds like a battery issue.

[snoozebutton]

It would be nice if it was just a battery issue, whole lot cheaper to replace that than the transducer but with the battery fully charged, I still get the changing lure sizes from disappearing to a wide yellow. That's why I'd like to hear from someone who's transducer went bad and what kind of problems they experienced.

[Burbslayer]

If the trandsducer cord got smashed in any way I would say it might be shot, this summer the graph in my boat was acting goofy so I inspected every inch of the ducer cord and i found a very small part where it had gotten pinched, it didnt even cut the cord and it was ruined, I got a new transducer and it worked fine