Searching for kokanee/fish finder trouble

A friend and I went to Greenpeter today for our first attempt to catch Kokanee in years.

We were successful in learning to operate my new downriggers, however the new depth finder/ fish finder on my new boat did not work correctly.

We were not able to locate any fish and as a result came home with only a good time and great fellowship.

The electronics is a Lorance Elite 4X DSI. It would measure depth and we could see a few fish and then it would change from reading 212 to 1.2, 1.9, 1.3. 1.5 etc! Occasionally it would read actual depth for a few minutes and then revert to it's nonsense.

I reset the settings to "original". No difference.

Should I go back to the selling dealer or contact the manufacture? Is it possible one of you have experienced this before and know of a simple fix?

I have heard of this problem from others. I think it is a transducer issue. I would exchange it.

on the lowrance ive got the same problem so what I do is go into the settings menu and have the depth set to 60' of water since most of those kokes your trolling for with downriggers aint no deeper than 45' or shallower

it does sound like you might have a transducer issue (perhaps a fault or shielding/interference). one thing to try if this happens on the water is change the display from auto vertical range to a fixed range. you may find that the sonar response and display of fish and the bottom is just fine, the only fault is the unit deciding what the depth is and displaying that number.

next thing to try is power down the unit, disconnect the wires, reconnect then, and power up...

FYI- on GP, I am normally going to set my display to show 20' to 80', then zoom in from there as I confirm where the schools of kokes are...cheers, roger

It also might be locking on to your downrigger ball. Someone had that problem awhile back.

Thanks for all of the replies! Today I was out for about 4 hours. Wife wanted to go for a ride. Have the depth finder on and it seemed to work perfectly! Read up to the maximum depth of this lake of 159 feet.

Wish I would have bought a unit with a GPS in it however

I believe I have found a solution to my troubles. I took my depth finder out and replaced it with a Lowrance Elite-5 Sonar/GPS Combo.
Tried it out this evening and it is awesome. I located lots of fish!