reading a vexilar

[cmspence]

this is my second year with the vexilar i watched the diff video's that are out their on how to tell if its a fish or weeds or such. the problem what im have is that when the vexilar hits the bottom  of the lake the leading edge shows how deep the water is right but then below the leading edge is the cone area that the vexialr is covering so say their is a fish below or sitting on top of the leading edge how do you know if its a fish or weeds when doing quick hole checks im guessing you fish a little to see if the fish move or react to the bait?

i just found that its hard for me to drill a hole and say yes their is fish -my veilar is the fl8-se no zoom

is it worth up grading to the zoom vex  thanks all

[Hollywood703]

the bottom is most of the problem......if you have a weedy bottom, sometimes it is very difficult to discern what is tru bottom and what is vegitation.....If you have zoom, it would show you SOME better seperation, however it may not be so clear that it jumps out at you as a fish. What I look for (with zoom) is a seperation from the bottom, or movement when jigging. depending on your depth...you may not gain much from the  zoom. My recommendation is to find someone around the area that has a FL-18 or FL-20 and do a side by side comparison to see if the zoom would benefit you...dont forget most places allow you to return products you arent happy with if you buy it and it doesnt meet your expectations....jsut make sure their return policy before you buy if you are thinking you might need to return it.

[IceholeFisherman]

If the leading edge your talking about is like the picture from the Vexilar website that I posted above, you can actually detect fish in the dead zone by looking for movement within the "bottom band" on your sonar display. Usually it will be just a flash or two at a time and you have to keep focused and look pretty hard for them sometimes. Same thing when in thick weeds. Keep the gain as low as possible, so the weeds remain green on the display, and look for the "orange and reds" moving around within the green marks.