I'm starting to realize now that our fishfinder is either too weak, or just not properly setup. The problem I'm having is the screen is sometimes just full of clutter and its hard to make out fish, bait, etc.
I'm only realizing this after spending alot of time on a freinds boat and reading his fishfinder. Structure, bait, fish are all easily identified on his screen. Granted his Furuno unit has a 1KW shoot-thru transducer, my screen doesn't even come close to looking anything like his... ever.
The unit in question is a Garmin 160C. Its transducer is a 150W transom mount. We have it set on auto gain and wide beam. I tried tuning back the gain and it cleans up somewhat, but then has trouble finding the bottom. I tried zooming in and its just a closer view of the clutter.
I remember once last year I switched it to narrow beam, and the only thing I remember is when we came back in the inlet, it lose the bottom until I switched back to wide.
I'm almost considering upgrading the unit, but wanted to check and see if theres something I can do.
Also I wanted to get a concencus of what fishfinders you guys are running on your boats along with what wattage transducer. I'm not looking to spend a million bucks here and I know you get what you pay for, just trying to get some more info like I should have done before I bought this one.
The one I'm looking it is the Garmin 400C with a 500W transducer.
Thanks for the help guys!