Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

I just got a brand new Lowrance Elite 4 sonar/GPS combo. It is installed on a 15ft Meyers aluminum boat, transudcer is transom mounted and all mounting directions followed. I am very frustrated to say the least and I am not sure if it's operator error or a faulty unit. I have taken it out 3 times with this new unit, and each time I increasingly get more frustrated with it. First off the depth seems accurate, we fish in shallow water a lot for panfish and i can see bottom very easily and so I am sure the depth is correct. The problem I am having is reading the screen. It looks NOTHING like the manual, or online screenshots or the simulator. Now I understand all lakes are different and it's gonna show different things, i get that. But i have yet to see a "fish arch" on my screen. I take my book out on the water, play with settings, adjust things per the manual, no luck. So to try and figure out what the finder is displaying as fish, i turned on the fish alarm so when it beeps i would look at the screen and see how it depicted a fish when it alarmed. It ends up and goes crazy to the point of driving me nuts with noise, and so i stand up and look overboard in about 4-5 ft of water and theres not a damn fish in sight! So i rigged up a jighead with a 4inch minnow on it so it was a substantial mass and floated it below the transducer to see if it would pick that up, cant get it to pick that up. I tried the setting on shallow water, the book says anything less than 60 ft use fresh water setting, we tried that. Also on one occasion we were sitting still anchored in about 10 ft of water and it stopped registering to the screen and the depth started flashing, i have gotten interruption on the screen momentarily when the motor starts and the exhaust bubbles towards the transducer, etc but the motor was off and we were anchored. I shut the unit off and back on and it still didnt register for probably a minute, it just kept blinking 60 on the depth, it finally came back i think after the boat rocked for some reason. This just seems erratic and odd. I've checked all connections and everything seems good. I cant get this thing figured out and now i dont trust it. Please help! I did a lot of research and read lots of reviews as this being a great unit for small boats and shallower water. I been doing a lot of reading online and cant seem to get much figured out, so i am still not sure if the unit is faulty, or just operator error.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

First off, the manuals from Lowrance leave a lot to be desired, you just don't get a lot of useful information from them, plus the menus can be tough to sort through.

I have one on one of my boat and it works fine, although I was rather frustrated the first couple of time on the water and wished I hadn't bought it.

I have no problem spotting fish, but first turn off the alarms and fish symbols, they are of little value. You need to crank up the gain to see everything (less in shallow water though) and do some fiddling with it to dial it in for shallow water. I just kept messing with it until I sort of understood it. I run mine on manual mode for everything and it can be very sensitive to the depth setting, if it’s not right it will lose the bottom and flash random numbers.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

well i'm glad to hear that i'm not alone in the newbie confusion....but how do i explain the fact that it's supposedly marking fish, or at least sounding the alarms when i can physically see no fish, and wont mark a good sized minnow/jig head when run underneath it? and what is "gain"? i keep reading the manual but it just tells you the options, not what each one is best used for

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

On this model it's called sensitivity and is on the “adjust” option on the menu. The color line is on the same page and needs to be turned up also. Adjust both of them up and down to see what you like best. Don’t expect the fish to always look like what‘s on the simulator. Without knowing how it was adjusted there is no way to say exactly why it marked fish when you couldn’t see them.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

two other things i have noticed, every once in a while when pulling back to the dock after fishing i can hear a faint ticking noise. when i shut the unit off it goes away. i dont notice it when starting out or when fishing, usually when we get back to the dock. Is it just that certain area that i for some reason am hearing the sonar bounce off of something? or is this not a good sign? my old humminbird did this but it was constant and much louder and it would randomely shutoff on me so thats why it got replaced and now my new one does this clicking just not as often or loud. the other thing is i am running this off of a lawn and garden battery. i charge it up after every second fishing trip. the battery is only used for the fishfinder and starting the 18hp evinrude fastwin.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

The clicking is normal, you may or may not hear it.

The unit has a voltage meter built in, so if its reading from 10-17 the unit will work correctly.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

so is there a place i can go to in the menus and see what it is actually reading for voltage? or is it all internal?
also in your best guess does it sound like my unit is probably ok and just operator error/newbie?

thanks again for all your help

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

You can put many different bits of informatiom on the screen, but you need to go to the correct menu, then click on "add" you will then have the choice of it displaying in many different sizes and locations on the screen.

The manual will show you how to get there, sort of at least, its' not all that clear, just keep pushing buttons and you'll get there.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

hey i have the same problem! i went from a humminbird that showed fishes... to arcs? that just show logs or maybe fish. i have had my elite 4 for a year and a half, i still havent got it dialed in for fish, but the gps works great. and the alarm for shallow water goes off when i know i am deeper than 6 feet of water. i will watch this to see if i can get pointers!

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

i guess it's probably because i am a newbie at reading sonar but this is really confusing, i love the gps, and the mapping, but other than water temp and depth i find this thing useless! heres a few shots i took saturday when out on the lake, i played with settings and sensitivity up and down...i can scroll it one way or another and make stuff show up or disappear, that kinda defeats the purpose in my book, if i can magically make stuff show up or disappear how is it showing me whats down there? another thing that baffles me is when anchored, the screen is still scrolling which is a constant update of whats below the transducer, if i am not moving then how can the bottom all of a sudden change? just seems like the bottom show stay consistant the whole time your anchored. heres a few shots of what i am seeing. i did however get one problem figured out, i read online that on aluminum boats the rivets on the boat can cause bubbling so move the transducer as far down on the hull as possible, i did that and i get much better readings when under-way

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

this last pic where the bottom is wavy is when a speedboat went by and we were chopping in the waves

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

Try this.

Welcome to Hightech Fishing with Doctor Sonar - "Doc" Bruce Samson

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

Better link

Sonar Educational Information by Doctor Sonar

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

i been looking through those and some of them i can make sense of, then some of them i look at and he says "well this fish looks different than this fish but there both fish" confusing. im wondering if i bought the right unit for myself. the other thing i see is he is actually tracking his jig. I tried that and didn;t get anything, thats why i'm wondering if theres something wrong with my unit. the other thing is, am i expecting to much from the unit for shallow water? i notice everytime they have good images and examples it's over 10ft of water. should i just not worry about marking shallow water or is this not a good unit for it?

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

This is the lowest price color FF GPS unit there is, why would you expect it to perform as well as a model that costs 3 to 5 times more.

Now after saying that, it appears you need to do a little more reading and then fiddling with it to figure it all out, for the price mine actually works quit well. I can spot fish, bait fish, thermo clines, down rigger balls, the clip that holds the line, the lure, and fish that follow the lure, etc.

You just need to learn how to adjust it, then interpret what is on the screen.

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

870 Expressmag said:

i been looking through those and some of them i can make sense of, then some of them i look at and he says "well this fish looks different than this fish but there both fish" confusing. im wondering if i bought the right unit for myself. the other thing i see is he is actually tracking his jig. I tried that and didn;t get anything, thats why i'm wondering if theres something wrong with my unit. the other thing is, am i expecting to much from the unit for shallow water? i notice everytime they have good images and examples it's over 10ft of water. should i just not worry about marking shallow water or is this not a good unit for it?

Click to expand...

You might want to get a larger unit such as the 5. I returned the 4 for the 5 because the screen of the 4 was too busy for me. I have found that a larger screen has a lot better visibility. If I had it to do over again I would get the 7 inch

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

i wasnt expecting this unit to perform like a unit that cost 3 to 5 times as much. I am simply curious as to weather the unit is faulty, or whether it's operator error. I believe now from your help it's probably operator error. So then i started to question whether i bought to complicated of a unit for me. i'm not stupid just a newbie to fishfinders.

ronaldj, the reason i purchased this unit is because it's only being used in a 15ft aluminum tiller steer boat on small inland lakes, i didn;t think i needed much else at time of research/purchase

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

870 Expressmag said:

i wasnt expecting this unit to perform like a unit that cost 3 to 5 times as much. I am simply curious as to weather the unit is faulty, or whether it's operator error. I believe now from your help it's probably operator error. So then i started to question whether i bought to complicated of a unit for me. i'm not stupid just a newbie to fishfinders.

ronaldj, the reason i purchased this unit is because it's only being used in a 15ft aluminum tiller steer boat on small inland lakes, i didn;t think i needed much else at time of research/purchase

Click to expand...

I fully understand. My boat is only 12ft. I found the dual screen mode unreadable with my AARP eyes.
I went back and forth between the 4 and a hummingbird unit. I got the 4 originally because it had maps of the areas where i fish. Althou the 5 is larger it has proven easier for me to use. I also had help in getting the gain set right

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

i'm just wondering if the 5 is going to gain me anything other than a bigger screen...

i went fishing again last night in a different lake, this lake is full of muskies and i believe i was seeing fish..but i'm still getting used to making everything work right...but my question still is whether the unit is working correctly. i dropped one of the musky lures down and seen it register on the screen and saw it when i brought it back up to the boat, but could never get it to do it again

Re: Lowrance Elite 4 sonar help

Keep in mind that when you are in 6 feet of water. The sonar view is very small.

When set to 83khz, the field of view At the Bottom is about the same as the depth.
6 feet down sees a circle 6 feet across on the Bottom. That means straight down and 36" in each direction.
If you drop your Jig more than 3 feet from the transducer, you will NOT see it.
At 18" away you won't see it until it is at least 3 feet down.

At 200khz the Resolution is better, but the field of view is less. The diameter of the sonar cone is about 1/2 the depth.
6 feet down shows straight down and 18" to the side (3 feet Total). That is 18 inches not 18 feet.

If the Transducer is on the Transom it will mean nothing if you are fishing off the Bow, or even off the side.

Also keep in mind that everything if the sonar field at the same distance returns an echo at the same time.
Three small fish, all at the same depth, will appear as ONE echo at that depth. They will echo as ONE big fish.
If they are at different depths, you will see them as three separate Echos.

If you are stopped and the sonar view is changing, Either the boat is swinging on the anchor, or something just swam under the transducer.

Your Sonar appears to be working just fine. You need more experience in interpreting it.
I suspect you were expecting a little more magic. Most people do.

A bigger screen will give a larger more detailed view of what you have now.
But is is not suddenly going to look like you have an HD TV camera down there.
Sonar is still going to look like Sonar, with all its limitations.