Jump to content

  • GUESTS

    If you want access to members only forums on HSO, you will gain access only when you Sign-in or Sign-Up .

    This box will disappear once you are signed in as a member. ?

MarCum lx5 Pro's, Need sum expert advice on good operating tips...

mr fishfry

By mr fishfry
in Ice Fishing

 Share

Recommended Posts

mr fishfry Apprentice

mr fishfry

Posted
Posted

Hello ,,,I used other open water units before. But for ice fishing using the MarCum lx5, How do you zoom in on bottom hugging Walleyes. And need some good operating advice for the unit.And How do you set up to find those bottom hugging fish???Thank-You for your expert advice...Does this unit work over muddy bottoms?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Surface Tension Grand Master

Surface Tension

Posted
Posted

mr fishfry very good question! What I'm about to say will greatly increase what you are able to see below the ice and you won't find it in a manual. Do this and you'll unharness the MarCums capabilites. If folks are using a FL18 then do so in LP mode. FL8 users will need the suppression cable.

Go ahead and zoom if you like. Read your manual and get familiar with the LX5.

Get the LX5s ducer in the hole and turn it on. Increase the gain till you just start to see a yellow reading. What you first see is bottom. Note that depth reading though this whole process because it will change. Now increase the gain a hair till the bottom turns green. Right now your determining what type bottom content you have. If theres any weeds you might have noticed them show up as yellow, Now increase the gain till it just turns red, you don't want a thick red band at this time. Did the depth reading change yet, is so you have a soft bottom. If you depth didn't change you have a hard bottom. Now increase the gain again till you get a thicker red band. If the depth came up your on stucrture or you have a rock next to you. Leave the gain there and drop your lure down. Comfirm that structure or rock by letting your jig down till you see it just touch the top of the red band. Now let you line out till till you hit bottom. The difference if any is the dead zone. To get around that decrease the gain so your not reading near by objects. What your trying to do is use the least amount of gain as possible and still read bottom and your jig.

Now you know your bottom content but what about bottom hugging fish.

If you have the gain so the bottom reading is green then bottom hugging fish will turn the bottom red as they come in. You might or might not see a slight depth change. If you have your gain set so the bottom is reading a thin red band, fish coming through will thicken that red band.

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Deitz Dittrich Grand Master

Deitz Dittrich

Posted
Posted

As stated you can download the manual online...

IF I were you fishing over a muddy bottom this is what I would do. Hit the zoom button once.. This will put you in the 5' zoom mode. Hit the down button till you can just barely see the bottom on the left side of your screen. I would then hit the NBT button. This is Narrow beam Tranceducer, this will shrink your cone angle taking out the chance for a dead zone because of a drop off..

That should do it... let us know how it worked!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RK Grand Master

RK

Posted
Posted

Hiya -

Lots of good advice from Surface Tension and Deitz...

One trick to add to it is something old flasher guys learned long ago.... When you're looking for bottom-hugging fish, watch the *bottom* side of your bottom signal. When you're marking bottom, the bottom will be a band on your screen. For example, if you're in 12 feet of water, your flasher will show a band from, say, 12 feet to 13.5 feet. Watch the deeper side of that band - around 13.5. When that part of the band starts to flicker and widen, you may have a bottom-hugger coming in. It's also an 'early warning system' of sorts. Lots of fish on the edge of the cone will show up there first before they get picked up enough to show as a mark off the bottom.

Back when flashers didn't have nearly the degree of target separation today's units do, much less a zoom, watching the back edge of your bottom return was about the only way to spot tight-to-the-bottom fish. Worked on open water too. Picked off an awful lot of walleyes watching my the bottom edge of the bottom return on my old Lowrance 2330s smile.gif

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Paul Waldowski Veteran

Paul Waldowski

Posted
Posted

Because it is an adjustable zoom that allows you to zoom in on any part of the water column. It starts at the top. Every time you hit the down button it is moving the zoomed in zone down. The deeper the water, the more times you will need to hit the down button until it finds the bottom.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nitroant Community Regular

nitroant

Posted
Posted

O.K., so when you hit the zoom, it starts from the top down in either 5' or 10' segment (depending on the water range your in) instead of the bottom up? These tips are good to hear, so shorten my learning curve on it when I hopefully get to use it this weekend for the 1st time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Deitz Dittrich Grand Master

Deitz Dittrich

Posted
Posted

Yeppers.. hit it once and its a 5' zoom, hit the zoom twice and its a 10' zoom.. if while holding on to the up or down button you will see 2 yellow lines on the right and side ofyour sceeen.. it is showing you what the zoom area is!.. center your lure and wallah!!! you got it.!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Hotspotter Veteran

Hotspotter

Posted
Posted

Rob:

Very good tip. Glad to know I wasn't the only one out there with a funny looking "T-shaped" chunk of wood with a transducer duct-taped to it. Those 2330's were tough! As RK mentioned, noticing the "flicker" of that bottom edge, and connecting that with the resultant strike was about the only heads-up a guy would get without zoom mode, SFL, and three-colors.

It still works today, but with your LX-5 in zoom mode with SFL turned on, there have been few bottom-huggers that I've missed. It's really cool to have a camera on a clear lake with bottom walleyes to see exactly what you thought you weren't missing however!

Joel

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RK Grand Master

RK

Posted
Posted

Hiya -

Hehe - I had this goofy set-up with a round aluminum rod and a bunch of clamps for my transducer. Had to get a disc level and glue it to the top of a puck transducer with 5-minute epoxy so you could tell if your transducer was straight up and down... Built a shuttle for it out of plywood, with a motorcycle battery surrounded by styrofoam and wrapped in a towel (for when it spilled battery acid. Not if - when...). Then they started selling the blue Genz boxes... Yeah the 2330s were tough as nails. I still have two working ones. A year or so ago I had left my Marcum at the cabin and decided to go out one evening in St. Paul. Dusted off a blue box with a 2330 on it, hooked up a battery and went fishing. Still worked...

Really is amazing how much more you see when you watch both sides of the flasher signal though, even on a new unit. Can see fish coming in long before they 'show up' on the screen as a mark...

cheers,

Rob Kimm

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing


  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • Wanderer
      Just Food and Drink

      By Wanderer · Posted

      It’s done automatically.  You might need an actual person to clear that log in stuff up.   Trash your laptop history if you haven’t tried that already.
    • smurfy
      Just Food and Drink

      By smurfy · Posted

      😂 yea pretty amazing how b o o b i e s gets flagged, but they can't respond or tell me why I  can't get logged in here on my laptop but I can on my cellular  😪
    • Mike89
      Just Food and Drink

      By Mike89 · Posted

      I grilled some brats yesterday, maybe next weekend will the next round...  
    • Wanderer
      Just Food and Drink

      By Wanderer · Posted

      You got word censored cuz you said        B o o b ies….. haha.   Yeah, no… grilling is on hiatus for a bit.
    • smurfy
      Just Food and Drink

      By smurfy · Posted

      Chicken mine,  melded in Mccormick poultry seasoning for 24 hours.  Grill will get a break till the frigid temps go away!
    • Mike89
      Problems with Yetti

      By Mike89 · Posted

      good luck!!!   
    • rundrave
      Problems with Yetti

      By rundrave · Posted

      we had some nice weather yesterday and this conundrum was driving me crazy  so I drove up to the house to take another look. I got a bunch of goodies via ups yesterday (cables,  winch ratchet parts, handles, leaf springs etc).   I wanted to make sure the new leaf springs I got fit. I got everything laid out and ready to go. Will be busy this weekend with kids stuff and too cold to fish anyway, but I will try to get back up there again next weekend and get it done. I don't think it will be bad once I get it lifted up.    For anyone in the google verse, the leaf springs are 4 leafs and measure 25 1/4" eye  to eye per Yetti. I didnt want to pay their markup so just got something else comparable rated for the same weight.   I am a first time wheel house owner, this is all new to me. My house didn't come with any handles for the rear cables? I was told this week by someone in the industry that cordless drills do not have enough brake to lower it slow enough and it can damage the cables and the ratchets in the winches.  I put on a handle last night and it is 100% better than using a drill, unfortatenly I found out the hard way lol and will only use the ICNutz to raise the house now.
    • Wanderer
      Problems with Yetti

      By Wanderer · Posted

      I haven’t done any leaf springs for a long time and I can’t completely see the connections in your pics BUT I I’d be rounding up: PB Blaster, torch, 3 lb hammer, chisel, cut off tool, breaker bar, Jack stands or blocks.   This kind of stuff usually isn’t the easiest.   I would think you would be able to get at what you need by keeping the house up with Jack stands and getting the pressure off that suspension, then attack the hardware.  But again, I don’t feel like I can see everything going on there.
    • rundrave
      Problems with Yetti

      By rundrave · Posted

      reviving an old thread due to running into the same issue with the same year of house. not expecting anything from yetti and I already have replacement parts ordered and on the way.   I am looking for some input or feedback on how to replace the leaf springs themselves.    If I jack the house up and remove the tire, is it possible to pivot the axel assembly low enough to get to the other end of the leaf spring and remove that one bolt?   Or do I have to remove the entire pivot arm to get to it? Then I also have to factor in brake wire as well then. What a mess   My house is currently an hour away from my home at a relatives, going to go back up and look it over again and try to figure out a game plan.           Above pic is with house lowered on ice, the other end of that leaf is what I need to get to.   above pic is side that middle bolt broke and bottom 2 leafs fell out here is other side that didnt break but you can see bottom half of leaf already did but atleast bolt is still in there here is hub assembly in my garage with house lowered and tires off when I put new tires on it a couple months ago. hopefully I can raise house high enough that it can drop down far enough and not snap brake cable there so I can get to that other end of the leaf spring.
    • smurfy
      Just Food and Drink

      By smurfy · Posted

      Chef boyardee pizza from the box!

  • Topics

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.

  I accept