Lowrance Qustion Soft vs Hard bottom

[CrappiesNeyes]

Can someone explain the easiest way to determine the bottom content on a lowrance. (Mud vs Sand vs Gravel etc) I read the manual and it said that the thickness of the colorline will show soft vs hard bottom but I am not sure how to interpet this. Thanks in advance.

[waskawood]

On your Lowrance sonar, yellow is the strongest return followed by red and then blue. The wider the band of color the stronger the return signal is. Given a constant depth, the widest yellow band will be the hardest bottom. If I am really interested in bottom composition I like to set the depth range of my sonar at twice the depth of the water I am fishing in. A hard bottom will give you a second echo at the depth that is twice waht you are fishing in if your sensitivity is set correctly. Good luck.

[iffwalleyes]

That is if you have a color unit. If you have a grayscale unit then it would be with the width of the gray band the narrower the band the harder the bottom the wider the softer.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

I turn up the sensitivity on my X-102c to around 96%. With this setting hard bottom is yellow,sand or sand with a thin coating of mud is yellow with a mix of red in it, and a mud bottom is blue with maybe a little red in it.

Pretty simple to see the bottom type changes as you move from hard to soft bottoms.

Cliff

[CrappiesNeyes]

When you turn your sensitivity up that high does the screen fill with clutter? Do you have your surface clutter and noise reduction set at high to eliminate the clutter? Otherwise what I am hearing is that the wider the "yellow" the harder the bottom. Is this somewhat correct? Once again thanks for the help.

[Hookmaster]

Turn the surface clutter, noise reduction and fish symbols off. Increase sensitivity until clutter starts to appear, then back off so it disappears. This is where most people running in manual mode start. You can adjust from there. Usually surface clutter doesn't bother what's going on down at the bottom or half-way down the water column. The thicker the line the harder the bottom. Take a look at Lowrances sonar tutorial on their HSOforum under the "Support" pulldown menu.