Lowrance 332 Fish Archs

[wallter]

I'm not seeing archs like I see in all of the pictures in the manual. I'm seeing what I would describe as lines or partial archs that sometimes break off or are incomplete. I ask this after spending 4 days on Mille Lacs. Do I need to play with some of the settings?? Thanks.

[redhooks]

Hey Wallter-

It may be your transducer mount- is it level? I hope you get your unit working properly- I had some GPS issues w/ my 332 earlier.

redhooks

[Mille Lacs Guy]

I've got the same unit. A couple of thoughts. In order to see actual archs you need to be moving fairly fast. Probably 2.5 mph if not faster. The arch is made from the fish entering the transducer cone and leaving the cone again. If you are going slow, such as drifting or trolling the fish is stayin in the cone for a relatively long time and you are more than likely just getting straight lines on your graph. Another thing you have to look at is your sensitivity setting. If you are on Mille Lacs you should be able to crank it up to 85-90. What I do is crank it up as much as possible and then look to see how much clutter you have. If there is too much clutter you can turn it down until you have clutter but not too much. It is better to have the sensitivty too high rather than too low. I rarely have mine under 65-70. If you are fishing shallow or in a lot of weeds you have to adjust it to a lower amount.

If you really want to see arches drive along at about 5 miles an hour over the edge of a flat and you should see plenty of actual arches.

[wallter]

I think you are right on. While I did mark lots of "stick fish", I didn't do much cruising over 2 or 3 miles per hour. I think that is good news because the GPS put me exactly where I wanted to start each time. SWEEEEET!!!

[White-tips]

It's your transducer. It is not mounted correctly. If you grab your manual and look through it cover to cover, you'll find a couple of pages dedicated to this problem. It's either above level or below level. It tells you what exactly to do, I can't remember which way you go with the level to correct archs that are either cut off on the front side or cut off on the back side. Easy fix anyway.

[Mille Lacs Guy]

I disagree that it's the transducer but I guess I could be wrong. At slow speeds your transducer can be off and it won't make a huge amount of difference unless it's bent way down or way up.

[Red Cabin]

Do you think it needs to be adjusted side-to-side or front-to-back?

[Juan Grande]

I haven't seen a whole lot of "archs" on my 332 either.

One thing I do notice with my unit is that I could be in 30 ft. of water and the unit will read three feet. Seems to be when I'm decelerating or turning. Eventually it will read correctly, but it has these little phases where it doesn't.

Maybe I need to adjust the transducer. Could the bubbles and waves from the motor cause this problem?

[markkstanley]

Bingo Juan. All the turbulence from the prop can get you a false depth reading. You'd need to move the transducer to a new location to avoid this.

[Red Cabin]

What makes A location good? Mine is 15" from the lower unit and about 1" lower than the bottom of the hull.

[Spork]

I have a Lowrance X125 and I mounted the transducer on the back of the port side pontoon of my godfather's boat. It was the only place I could find which kept it completely under water. It sits roughly 8"-10" under water and there are times when I believe the motor turbulence in the water affects it. When that happens, I just slow down the boat and slowly cruise to the spots I like to check out the structure below.

But as of lately, I noticed that it's not determining the depth like it did earlier in the year. Spots where I know it's 15'+ deep are showing up at around 10'. I think the weeds might have really taken off this summer and grown so thick that the transducer might be thinking it's the actual bottom.