Understanding my FL8

[FishyScent]

I have been fishing with my FL8 for 2 seasons now and have never picked up on how to read the bottom. Could someone please explain to be how to tell the the differance between a hard bottom, muddy botttom, heavy weeds etc...

I am sure I am not the only clown out there who dose't have a clue what they are looking at.Or maybe I am!

Thanks

Fishy

[Deitz Dittrich]

Fishy- I'm sure your not the only one. However, its hard to explain on-line.. much easier in person. If you can.. try and make it to one of the I.C.E. Events this year. With that in mind I will give it a shot.

Its really depends on how high you have your gain set. The bottom will show up as a thicker line of red/orange. Start with your gain pretty low and just start tuning it up till you see a line of red/orange. Weeds can show up as a hard bottom if you have your gain set too high. A hard bottom like rock will often give you a second reeding below the actual bottom. Maybe 5 or 6 feet below the bottom. So for instance its 15 feet deep. you will see a bottom at 15 feet and maybe another at 20... Muddy bottoms will never give you that second reading.

its really a matter of using your unit and getting to know how high to have the gain. Try hooking up with someone who knows thier unit and watch. If your ever in the Chisago Lakes area look me up!

[rangr]

Exudedude is right trying to explain how to read any flasher on the computer is hard. But here goes, Exudedude is right lets say the depth is 15 ft on a good hard bottom if you have the scale set at 30 ft you should get whats called a 2nd echo at 30 ft. That means your going to have a thicker orange and red line at 15 ft and a thinner orange/red line at 30 ft. If weeds come into play a lot of the time it depends on how tall the weeds are. If they are dead laying on the bottom your not going to be able to tell but if the weeds are 3 ft off the bottom there will be some orange thin spaced bars 3 ft off the bottom. The only sure way is to experiment on your own where you know the bottom, weeds,sand,rocks and make some mental notes.

[Deitz Dittrich]

I got to thinking.. the best way to learn how to use on of these units is to use it with an underwater camera.. if you know someone who does, borrow it. Look at what is on your FL18, then drop the camera down and know exactly whats down there.

[Catfish John]

Vexilar has a helpful artcile on this subject at their HSOforum, "Finding Hard Bottom".

http://www.vexilar.com/help/tips/tip016.html

[augernaut]

I think the best way to understand it is as a relative difference in signal strength. If you keep your gain the same, and move from soft bottom to hard bottom, the red band that is the bottom on your scale with get wider, and hard enough bottom will return a double echo sometimes.

[Cooter]

One easy way is simply to go to an area you know has weeds, or rock bottom, or mud, etc. and observe the display.

[Iceseeker]

FishyScent

Send me an e-mail and I will give you some info on a article that I found to be very helpful.

[email protected]

Thumper

[FishyScent]

Thanks guys. The info is great. The article on the vexilar web site was also very good.

Thanks Again

FishyScent

[gophish]

thanks for asking that question, last year i got my vexilar and was too busy thinking about how much i loved it and would never fish without one ever again, to really play with it and read bottom.

i personally like the idea about the aqua view. thanks for to you who posted and replied.

and as for weeds... one thing i have played around with is this...set your gain so you can just see your jig or lure. as you raise it up and down, notice where it meets the top of the bottom structure/weed line reading on your vexilar. and then determine from there how much farther you have to drop your rod down until your jig rests on the bottom. this will give you the depth of weeds if present..

gophish