How to Read Fish Finders
- 1). Read the instruction manual for your fish finder. Although the general guidelines for reading a fish finder are the same, there are details that vary among manufacturers.
- 2). Determine the depth of the lake or ocean floor. This is usually given as a numeric value on the fish finder's display. This will help you determine how much line to feed out from your fishing pole.
- 3). Learn to identify brush piles if you're fishing on a lake. A brush pile will appear as a blob resting on the lake bottom on your fish finder display. Many fish such as bass like to hide out in brush piles, so consider stopping your boat and fishing near these echoes.
- 4). Decide whether to use the automatic mode of identifying fish. In automatic mode, the fish finder will display a small symbol that looks like a fish on the display, along with a depth. But these can be misleading, and it will not tell you where the brush piles are.
- 5). Learn how to identify fish on your fish finder with the fish symbols turned off. In this mode, fish appear as short curved lines in between the display's representation of the ocean or lake floor, which is a jagged, solid line near the bottom of your fish finder display, and representation on the display of the water surface, which is a jumbled static-filled horizontal line at the top of your fish finder's display.
- 6). Adjust the fish finder's controls to enhance the echoes. Fish finders vary among manufacturers, but in general there is a sensitivity control, which should be increased if the echoes are faint, and a noise filter, which can be adjusted if there are too many lines in your display that look like random static.
- 7). Remember what the fish finder display was indicating when you catch a fish. This will help you to learn the subtleties of your specific fish finder display and help you know what to look for next time.
