Hello all,

I'm new to the world of fish finders. I used a simple one on a couple
of trips, but the more I stared at it the more I realized I had no
idea what it was trying to tell me.

First of all, I coudn't for the life of me understand why everything
was *always moving*. Even when I brought it ice fishing, and put it
on the surface, it showed the bottom as if I was wizzing by in a speed
boat. After many months I realized the mistake I was making.

The temptation with these things (and I hope I'm not the only one) is
to look at the pretty picture, and imagine that - "this is what the
bottom looks like". However, it is not like that at all. It is not a
"snapshot", but is really a graph, a log, a history of signals passing
across the screen.

The new unit I just got (Humminbird 565) has helped me to understand
that. It has, along with the graph, a "flasher" type reading to the
far right. It is easy to tell from this - where the historical
reading is comming from, that which is always panning accross the
screen.

One of the reasons I got this unit is - I do a lot of shallow water
fishing (rarely over 20 feet). I thought this unit would be ideal,
for the wide coverage that it gives. The narrow beam covers 20 deg,
and the wide beam covers 60 deg.

What I am now wondering though is - and the real subject of my post is
- can I really make use of it?

Lets say I'm sitting in 20 ft of water - perfectly still - and
suddenly a fish enters the wide beam of the transducer. Regardless of
where that fish enters the sonar circle, I'm going to see it show up
on the right the screen - and pan left. What do you do - start
casting around like a mad man? Are there any tricks to determining
*where* a fish is?

This unit says that - it will show a fish in the wide beam as a
"hollow" symbol, and those in the narrow beam as a solid symbol. So
at least you have a guess....I guess.

Why is it so hard to show a real-time "snapshot" of what is going on
down there - like a camera. If a fish swims in from the left, you see
it on the left of the screen - not on the right and zoom across. I
understand that if a fish sits directly below the transducer, it will
show up as a black line all accross the screen.

Thanks,
Sam Matthews