furuno 295 deepwater settings

[longrun]

Hi could anyone give me some advise on setting my 295 up for deep water fishing from 250m to 500m range.I have 2kw 38bl-9hr transducer. I just need help on settings such as TVG , colours ,and thigs like that.. Cheers

 

[C-Bass]

Good morning Longrun,

You are off to a good start with your combination of FCV295 and 38BL-9HR transducer. Unfortunately we can give you couple ideas on settings but ultimately you will need to fine tune your machine during the days that you fish. Water conditions and surface conditions will play a role with how you set up these parameters.

What kind of fish are you trying to target? Does the target species live close to the bottom at those depths, if so how far off the bottom.

You can experiment with the FCV295 TVG settings, remember there are two metrics to adjust, the TVG level and the distance. With the FCV295 and TVG levels, less is going to be more. Meaning the lower the value of the TVG level setting the more stuff you will see on the screen. If you want to maximize the gain closer to the bottom you can start of setting the TVG distance settings to the depth of the bottom at your location. Adjusting the level settings will then show you how much stuff you want to see on the screen.

If you are fishing for targets that have a very small vertical separation you can also play with the pulse length. The longer the pulse the deeper penetration but the less clarity you will have for targets that are tightly stacked. You can experiment with a short 1 or short 2 pulse length to help define these stacked targets. There will be point when the pulse length may need to be longer for your deeper depths.

If you have the gain adjusted properly and you start to see an undesirable amount of clutter you can you the clutter control feature to help suppress weaker targets.

Please experiment with some of these settings and if you would like to reply with some photos of the sounder image on your next trip we would be happy to review them to see how things are going.

Kind Regards

 

[longrun]

Thanks for the reply C-Bass much appreciated. As im new to the deep water fishing I will experiment with these settings and see how I go I will definitely take some pictures next time i am out and post them on here .
As for the TVG distance you suggest setting the depth at the same depth as I am fishing in? And set the TVG level at a low setting say about 3or4 or is it a case of experimenting while out there? this is a picture from my last trip out .Any comments appreciated
Regards Longrun

 

[C-Bass]

Good afternoon Longrun,

Thank you for sharing your photos.

Yes you could start to set the TVG distance to the same level you are fishing. If you desire to see more information in the water column you could always make the TVG distance less than your depth.

The photo looks pretty good, you are showing good bottom and good echos off the bottom. Although, there is not much information in the water column? Do you typically run a shift for the range?

 

[longrun]

Hello C-Bass
Thanks for getting back to me yes i generally run a shift for the range but in saying that im usually fishing no deeper than 100m and on HF. Yes i think im picking the bottom up ok but finding it hard to see fish. As for the picture we did get some good fish there but i couldnt see them on my screen. I would appreciate any advice you could give me for the deep water as i am finding it difficult to set up for it...
Thanks and look forward to your reply

 

[C-Bass]

Good morning Longrun,

Based on the Bottom Return in your last photo, it does appear that you may be experience some turbulence over the transducer. When you took that photo, what were the sea conditions and what were the vessel dynamics such as speed, where you going into chop ect. Also may i ask what size of vessel you are running and where the transducer mounting location is? As i mentioned in the previous post, we would really like to see more photos of the sounder. Please do not hesitate to crank the gain up, the water column information in the last photo was almost non-existent. Please turn the gain up until we can see some clutter. With that said, what pulse length are you running in the photo, what clutter curve and level are you running? What were the TVG levels in the photo.

You may also experiment with using the White Line, it may help you discriminate the bottom from targets directly off the bottom.

If you have an opportunity we would love to see some more photos with some information about your settings while the photo was taken.

C-Bass

 

[longrun]

Hello again C-bass.
As mentioned in my original post i have 38bl-9hr transducer but i failed to mention that i presently have this set up as a through hull transducer.. I am getting mixed reviews that this tranny is not designed for this.Could this be a major factor in not getting the full performance out of it or is it a matter of adjusting gains to suit?

 

[C-Bass]

Good afternoon Longrun,

Does that mean the transducer is currently not in contact with the water, so you are shooting thru the hull, we refer to that installation as an in-hull transducer?

 

[longrun]

Hello again C-Bass
Yes it is a in hull set up just curious to know if increasing gain will help shoot through the hull or is this not recommended?

 

[Snips]

Longrun,
You can try increasing the gain but you still can't overcome the round trip power/signal loss of trying to shoot through the vessels hull. I have posted the below screen shot before of a wet faced vs in-hull performance. While these transducers are not the same as you are using you still can still see the affect. In the picture of the FCV-1100 you can see where I increased the gain to try to see the scatter fish but still it wasn't close as the using a wet faced transducer.

Snips

 

[longrun]

Cheers Snips.
This is exactally the info i am chasing as for the transducer it seems to pick up the ground nicely but you dont get the definition for fish finding. It looks like i will have to wet face it. I will try to take some after shots and post them to see the difference.
Thanks for the reply

 

[Snips]

Longrun,
Here is a test I did at the dock with an 88Khz transducer. You can see how big the main bang is, this is a result of the TX pulse bouncing around inside the transducer housing. Also you don't see even a trace of the second echo which is an indication of how much signal is being attenuated.

Snips