IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Ice Fishing Tips -Check your local regulations! => Equipment => Ice Fishing With Electronics => Topic started by: Kevin23 on Jan 11, 2016, 08:10 PM
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Can someone please give me a ballpark area regarding settings for around 10' of water in graph mode? I have the ice ducer. I selected ice ducer in the transducer settings, i have it in ice mode, manual/advanced mode is on as well. What background do you like (blue, white, ice, etc)? Ballpark sensitivity? Colorline? Any help is much appreciated. I had literally a minute to try it today and it was all over the place. Pretty sure i was in 6' of water but it said 13' And had two bottoms, and didnt mark my jigging rap. Heading out for some actual fishing weds so i will have time to play with it on the ice. With sensitivity at 65-70% it marks bottom hanging off a table so theres nothing wrong with it, just user error.
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I can't help with specifics right this minute because I am at work. I picked up the elite 5 chirp and ice pack. I watched a video on you tube named, lowrance elite 5 chirp ice machine settings. Lawern wenzle is who I think made the video. Probably get you in the right ballpark as far as settings. I set mine to what he suggests but have yet to try it. Hope to get out this weekend as we finally have a little ice down here. Was trying to get the link to post but crapty service in work hwre
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I know it's not the same unit but the transducers are the same and assume the settings menus can't be too different
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I like the white background during the day, blue or the night view in the dark, but that's all just personal preference. Colorline somewhere around 50 or 55 with sensitivity to taste. Also recommend turning on the A-scope. The ice mode is pretty much a joke, it just puts a big battery symbol on the screen. You can turn on the voltage in the overlay settings and achieve the same thing with less wasted space. I've had problems with the auto depth being unreasonably slow so I usually just ran it in manual mode.
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Thanks!! What is a ballpark sensitivity range? 15? 20? 40? 60? Just want to make sure im close.
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Memory is a bit fuzzy because I haven't used mine at all this year but I think it was normally in the 40 to 50 area.
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Thats what i needed, thank you guys! I will set color line to 50-55 and sensitivity to 50 and adjust from there.
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I was in 15' of water today. With the black/fish reveal background and in ice mode, 55 was perfect for my w2 jigging rap. I had to go up to 59 for a 1/64 tungsten jig with plastic, and that put some clutter on the screen.. But it was manageable. This was in graph mode.
I do have an issue though, my sonar screen froze 4 times today. Looked like it does when you press "stop sonar". Menu and everything was accessible, but had to turn unit off and back on again to fix it. Did a hard reset when i got home, hope that helps! Will call lowrance if it happens again.
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Mine would do the freeze up thing too, I called their support and ended up sending it in. They upgraded me from the 4x to the 4 for free, and I could have upgraded to a 5x for like 40 bucks. That was around this time last year as they were rolling out the new models and I think they were just trying to get rid of stock, might be something to keep in mind. Check your firmware against whatever the latest version is on their site, you can download it and upgrade if you have a Micro SD card.
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Thanks, its actually a 4x so no sd slot. I will contact them tomorrow and see what they think might be wrong. Its never done it on the boat before.. But sometimes when turning it on it will not show the sonar readout past the amplitude scope. Definitely something wrong but its never bothered me until today.. Having fish working and the screen freezing is not fun. Good thing there was no children on the ice today.
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Yea, that sounds like you got my old one. There were times I would turn it on or change setting and the amplitude scope would work fine but nothing else.
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Well crap. Just got ice and looks like i will have to be without a sonar. How long of a wait time was it for you?
Considering just buying an elite 5 head if they say i have to send this one in to them...
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Don't recall exactly, about a week and a half or two weeks at the most I would think. It's just however long it takes to ship yours to them and then have them ship one back. They gave me a return authorization number and I think I had to copy my receipt and send that too. You just send the head unit and keep your cables to reuse with the new one. There was another guy on here that had all the same problems too and had to send his in. If they'll let you do a swap for a different model maybe you can get one of the new CHIRP machines and see if they suck any less.
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Just checked and it has a 1 year warranty, ive had it 1 year 6 mo. We shall see how good their customer service department is. The blank screen happened since day 1 so hopefully they help me out. If they try and charge me i will have an ice pack and "for parts" head unit for sale.
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Sent lowrance an email explaining the issues and didnt hear back today.
Today i set the unit to shallow water mode instead of ice mode. Got better returns and the screen never froze once.
Interference sucks when within 20 feet of marcums, but its manageable. Overall i like the unit on ice! Im using graph mode, flasher mode sucks.. Need my binoculars to see it!
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I always ran mine in shallow mode and still had problems intermittently. By chance have you fished any spoons like pimples or buckshots and if so how did it work out for you?
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No, i havent. Just w2 raps and small horizontal plastics. I will try a couple spoons tomorrow.. Just got some new slender spoons in that i want to try.
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Slender spoons 1/16oz (the thinnest spoon i know of) worked just fine. Even without bait. Id imagine a pimple or BS would be even easier to mark.
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Mine wouldn't pick up pimples or buckshots worth a crap, had to crank the sensitivity way too high to get them to read. Did it with both head units. Never tried a slender spoon though.
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I was using a 3mm tungsten jig with an ultra thin plastic with no issues. I was in 17' of water and also fished on a fish crib for a while. Around 60% sensitivity. A buckshot spoon is probably 10 times thicker of a target.
I am not using the float and keeping the ducer near the top of the hole since the ice is thin, maybe that helps?
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It's the weirdest thing, I used small ice jigs with a waxy and they showed up just fine. Some of my buckshots it would occasionally read ok, but most of them would only show up when jigged aggressively to get them moving side to side. Even with big chunks of minnow they didn't want to show. I was thinking the streamlined shape of them might be scattering the sound waves off to the side rather than bouncing them back up. I tried every combination of settings imaginable and couldn't get it worked out. That was pretty much a deal breaker and I gave up on the thing, other than that and the interference issues I really liked it.
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Picked up smallest pimple with no issue today. Also picked up a soft target very nice (lead 1/80oz with plastic). Both in 17' of water.
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I've never head any issues picking up a pimple in 20-40fow. I can even see the minnows that I've tipped it with and my tiny barrel swivel attaching my mainline to the leader. I'm very happy with my Elite 5HDI, only thing that sucks is that I can't use my Lowrance X96 next the Elite 5HDI because the X96 gets way too much interference. I think I've tried every setting and can't get it to play nice with the 5HDI.
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That's aggravating, I think I'll upgrade the firmware and give it one more shot before it ends up on Clist.
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I tried all the backgrounds and believe it or not, they do make a difference! Black fish reveal had the best "sensitivity" ie it showed jigs the best as a 3 color target, i was also able to fine tune each bait's signal. With the standard white background and the ice background it just showed a line, and to get the line to stay on the screen the sensitivity had to be CRANKED which was almost unreadable.
Blue fish reveal was the same as the black, but black was easier to see and read the fine details IMO.
So maybe give that a try.
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Sent lowrance an email explaining the issues and didnt hear back today.
Today i set the unit to shallow water mode instead of ice mode. Got better returns and the screen never froze once.
Interference sucks when within 20 feet of marcums, but its manageable. Overall i like the unit on ice! Im using graph mode, flasher mode sucks.. Need my binoculars to see it!
Its been freezing again lately. Heard back from lowrance, its past its 1 year warranty per the serial number(goes by when its manufactured and not when you bought it) so there is nothing they can do.
I will be selling the unit and never buying anything lowrance again.
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Yea that sucks. In a last ditch effort I would call and be "assertive" with an actual human being, preferably in a supervisory role. Find the thread from last year where me and the other guy were discussing it as proof that this is a know issue and a fault with their hardware. Let them know that either they can make you whole or you can spend the rest of your life telling everyone how bad Lowrance products and customer service are.
One more question, does the ice ducer maintain dual beam functionality or is just the 20 deg.? I've seen it listed both ways online.
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Its dual beam from what i can tell. I just use 200khz
Im going to switch to a humminbird helix 5 as soon as i can get one ordered.
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Those look real nice, but the screen is tilted the wrong way around for ice fishing. Gonna dump the Elite and grab the new Striker 4 from Garmin just for schnitz en giggles I think. I keep going back to my crappy old Pirhanamax which is a joke as far as features are concerned but the damn thing just works.
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Decided to hold off on the helix until I can get one cheaper than the standard MSRP, hopefully closer to spring. I still need it for the boat but will have to make up my mind if I want to use it for ice fishing next year or not.
Instead I picked up an ice 35 off L&M for $259 and free shipping. I will use this until i can get this lowrance stuff sorted out, then keep the 35 for a backup/loaner unit which will come in very handy when fishing with family who do not have flashers. I do like the standard graph mode better than a flasher display though, so hopefully I can get the elite 4 back from lowrance before the ice season is over.
Management contacted me from my facebook rant and said they would be happy to "fix" the situation and repair/replace the unit under warranty. They sent me a RMA last thurs and i just sent off the unit to them today. i will keep the thread updated as the situation progresses. Hoping for a good outcome.
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I would make the ice 35 my first choice of the two and use the Lowrance as the backup if those were my choices. I used my Elite 7HDI yesterday but I finished the day using my Showdown 5.6 dual beam. The battery life is about triple with the Showdown, it has interference rejection settings that will work with other sonar and in some situations it works much better for displaying my bait and the fish. My backup and loaner unit is a Vexilar FL8se. The Vexilar and Showdown have been used close together with an ice 35 and all units performed well together.
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Do you have amplitude scope on? The right side of the lowrance IS a showdown. ???
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Using the amplitude scope is irrelevant, use it if you like it. It definitely does not make a Lowrance into a Showdown.
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It is exactly like a showdown, in color. You must not have your elite set up correctly.
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The setup on my Lowrance is good and it works well away from other sonar. I used both this past weekend. The Showdown has the ability to use it near other sonar, much longer battery life and was better at showing my jig and the crappie yesterday without the brush cluttering up my display as much on the 20 degree setting and the 9 degree worked even better. My Lowrance can work well in certain ice fishing situations but in others no amount of going through all the menus really does any good. I want to go out and catch fish not mess around with a sonar too much especially when I have two other sonars that perform better much of the time. I will use the Lowrance on the ice again this season but I should have left it behind last weekend, it wasn't needed for the GPS. It is great in situations where it works well but in other situations it just doesn't work well.
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I have also consulted with Lowrance customer service, they confirmed that I have the correct transducer and setup. I have followed their recommendations. They say that I will get interference from other nearby sonar at the same frequency. The interference can be bad enough to make it completely worthless. The next sonar that I buy for ice fishing would probably be another Vexilar or Marcum and I would buy another transducer to use it all year long on a boat too.
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Decided to hold off on the helix until I can get one cheaper than the standard MSRP, hopefully closer to spring. I still need it for the boat but will have to make up my mind if I want to use it for ice fishing next year or not.
http://www.threeriversmarine.net/
call them up....great people to deal with
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Its been freezing again lately. Heard back from lowrance, its past its 1 year warranty per the serial number(goes by when its manufactured and not when you bought it) so there is nothing they can do.
I will be selling the unit and never buying anything lowrance again.
Did you buy it with a credit card? I know most of mine give you 1 year extension on the warranty. Worth checking, might be able to get your money back. Personally, I've had great luck with my Elite 5 HDI and couldn't imagine fishing without it
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my first year with elite 4x hdi on the ice. i love it. I do have to adjust setting from depth to depth but graph mode is really cool feature, amplitude scope works good as well. I recommend it!
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I have had the elite 5 for 3 years now and it is so great works flawless even with other sonars weird you guys have so many issues! My guess is u guys are not using the scope and graph mode pretty much the cats meow compared to a flasher!
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Decided to hold off on the helix until I can get one cheaper than the standard MSRP, hopefully closer to spring. I still need it for the boat but will have to make up my mind if I want to use it for ice fishing next year or not.
Instead I picked up an ice 35 off L&M for $259 and free shipping. I will use this until i can get this lowrance stuff sorted out, then keep the 35 for a backup/loaner unit which will come in very handy when fishing with family who do not have flashers. I do like the standard graph mode better than a flasher display though, so hopefully I can get the elite 4 back from lowrance before the ice season is over.
Management contacted me from my facebook rant and said they would be happy to "fix" the situation and repair/replace the unit under warranty. They sent me a RMA last thurs and i just sent off the unit to them today. i will keep the thread updated as the situation progresses. Hoping for a good outcome.
Got an email today saying they do not have any 4x hdi units left so they will send a 4x chirp instead. That should fix the issues since the problem was in the software of the unit.
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Nothing wrong with that. Their customer service has been great to me. The zipper pull tab on my ice machine broke first time out on the walk out. Called them up, sent me brand new bag and told me to keep the old one. All I needed was the pull tab but now I have an extra bag, can't complain
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I got my new unit today. All seems well. Have to test it on the ice this weekend. They sent me a whole new "kit". Elite 4x chirp with downscan, with all the hardware, power cord, and hdi transducer with dsi. So i got a free ducer and power cord out of the deal. I guess that makes up for not being able to use my sonar for almost all of the ice season.
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Does anyone know if the HDI units can run a Navionics + micro SD card?