Stupid question for hawgTime, and others if they would like to jump in!

[Deitz Dittrich]

Yesturday on calhoun, we were checking them deep water holes and had the one area where we were getting a false bottom. To be honest I have been using a vex for about 15-20 years now and have never had that happen? What heppend there?

For those who wernt there, I was checking a hole and had my vex on 2 and read the bottom at 24 feet. I even had eyeballs check with his unit because we thought it was much deeper there. and his unit read the same thing... We later checked it again, with hawgTimes unit and he got it at what we figured it to be at 52 feet...

What was up with that?

[Valv]

That's interesting.
Are you sure you did have it set to same depth selector as first time ? 24' doubled it's close to 50' feet if you choose different depth selections.

On the other side, I didn't know Vex were 15 to 20 years old.

[This message has been edited by Valv (edited 01-13-2003).]

[Deitz Dittrich]

Valv- I know for a fact that I had the unit on 2... and so was eyeballs when he checked... we both got a reading of 24 feet...

and The unit I had was a Sitex.. sitex sold to micronar, micronar sold to hondex, hondex sold to Vexlar.. so in a very off way I had a Vexlar that long ago.. just said Sitex on it!...Still a 3 color flasher.

[Guest]

I had the same issue a couple weeks ago on one particular lake in 42 feet of water. I was getting a false echo like that. I thought I found a massive school of suspended crappies!

I then learned what was going on when I put the camera down the hole. The lake bottom was really strange (heavy hard mud-like) and it caused a double echo that I have never seen before, except on Lake Superior.

I have the Hondex.

[red bricks]

I have heard that you can get a wierd reading if you are at a steep drop off. There is something about this on the Vex web site

[vern]

Red Bricks, I think you are referring to the "dead zone". The highest point on a steep break is what the Vex will read as the depth. Anything deeper than that in the "cone" is unreadable. That's the "dead zone". Calhoun has a lot of real steep breaks & it looks like you guys were fishing one, but even with different beam angles that probably wasn't the problem. Just curious, was Hawgtime using a different unit or a narrower beam transducer? I know my Micronar had a much wider beam angle than my FL-18, which made those steep breaks harder to read sometimes. I'd get a lot of fish off the bottom that I wouldn't even see. Vern

[hawgTime]

hey Exudedude

The only thing I can figure is that is was a double echo, because when I first put my my 18 down hole I had it on 2x and I thought it read 24-26ft. The line wasn't that solid so I switched it to 3x and then got a solid line at 52ft---thus 26/52--double echo. I don't know what else it could be.

hawgTime

[Deitz Dittrich]

Thanks hawTime.

Vern, thats just it.. we wernt fishing a steep drop at all.. was more of a deep flat!

I'm going with double echo, whatever that is! 8-)

[Guest]

After thinking about it I noticed something strange also.I was taking readings in just under 30ft so I switched to seting 3.I walked out a little way and took a reading at 48ft but there was a wide red bar at around 26.Since I already had a good reading of the bottom I assumed it was a fish.WIth all the muskies showing themselves that day I thought it was a suspended musky.I dropped a bait to it and started jigging aggressively.The bar moved down and I chased it down untill it faded on the sonar.It was a very wide bar on the sonar so I can see if you were not on the right setting it might be mistaken for bottom.
Maybee????