- 1). Turn on the fish finder, which on most models will switch to the automatic setting when activated and provide a depth-finder reading.
- 2). Check the monitor to determine the water depth in feet. The measurement is calculated by the sonar when it directs a sound wave through a device called a transducer mounted on the hull of the boat.
- 3). View the information on the screen as though it was a physical representation of the objects underwater. Since sound waves cannot be seen, it may be helpful to imagine a basketball bouncing up and down on a court as it is dribbled. The basketball represents a sound wave bouncing from the surface of the court to the hand of the player. Sonar fish finders calculate the time it takes the sound wave (a basketball in this illustrative example) to reach the ground and bounce back to the player's hand. The time is then divided against the speed of the sound wave to determine the distance, or depth.
- 4). Adjust the sensitivity knob on the fish finder to 75 percent for a clean reading on the monitor that won't produce an image of every little piece of underwater junk. The strength of the sound wave helps determine what the monitor can display on screen. At a strength of 75 percent, the sonar wave can pick up images such as the topography of a lake bottom and schooling fish, but will ignore irrelevant objects such as an old shoe or a beer can that might be picked up if the sensitivity gain was turned to full power.
- 5). Set the cone reading on the sonar to medium. The cone is the angle of the sound wave directed downward from the boat. It determines how wide an image can be displayed on the fish finder monitor. A wide cone setting will display a larger underwater field, although the action immediately below the boat may be all that is relevant to the angler. A narrower cone helps focus the image so the angler can better understand what is immediately beneath the vessel. Think of a sound cone as the beam of a flashlight, which is narrow near the flashlight and wider as it moves farther away.
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