Gp 1971 ss175hw settings

[Paul Thomas]

Hi furuno geniuses, ive recently paired a gp 1971 unit with a ss175hw transducer for my bluewater gamefishing and am I need of a little help with settings to get optimum performance from this combo. I’m usually only looking at the top 80metres of water. I’ve tried running the unit in auto and adjusting different settings but by bit, but I don’t seem to be picking up targets that I know are in the area from talking to other boats and from what I’ve actually been catching. Any help would be very much appreciated
Thank you
Paul

 

[Paul Thomas]

Was out today and ran over a bait ball that had tuna feeding on it and took a screenshot to show what I’m dealing with. As you can see it looks like a traditional sonar picture for starters not what you’d expect from a chirp unit and transducer, and as I saw tuna on the surface feeding on the bait, I’m assuming should be seeing them around and under the bait ball. I’m sorry the photo is upside down, for some reason every time I tried to load the photo it got switched, I even tried to load it upside down to get it the right way but who knows?
Paul

 

[Magnetron]

Looking at the photo, you might not have the right transducer setup. By default the plotter chooses the least powered transducer, check in Fish Finder > Initial Setup > Current Transducer that B175HW is selected. Otherwise you might switch into Manual Gain and adjust the gain to a value of >=75.

Hope this helps, :sail

- Maggy

 

[Paul Thomas]

Thanks for the reply magnetron,
I’ve definitely got the b175hw selected in initial setup, I’ll have a go tomorrow with manual gain and I’ll record the other settings for reference and see if you can print me further in the right direction
Here’s hoping
Paul

 

[Paul Thomas]

Hi guys, it’s been quite a while since my last question regarding settings for trolling, when trolling i n40-100 metres I am marking targets as would expect from this transducer/ sounder combo, but when out deeper chasing blue marlin In the 200-1200metre depths I am not marking anything but what I’m interpreting as clutter., but still raising plenty of fish. I’m only looking at the top 100m of water and am wondering if there’s some setting I should be using to only be looking at this upper water column, any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you
Paul

 

[Johnny Electron]

The Transducer you have connected (SS175HW) is a wide beam and spreads it power over a larger (wider) area so less power can go deep on top of the fact that high freqs do not travel as deep as low freqs. Airmar lists the MAX depth on this transducer as 500ft. https://www.airmar.com/bottom-calculato ... id=SS175HW
500ft is 152m as a reference. Looking for 200-1200m with that transducer is a waste of time.

 

[Paul Thomas]

Hi Johnny,
Thanks for the reply, We may have a misunderstanding, I’m fishing in 200-1200metres but only trying to look at the top 100 metres for bait /gamefish targets above the thermocline, not at the whole water column. I’m just wondering if you could help me with basic settings (tvg, offsets etc) or whether there’s anything else I could be doing to help me see the bait/ gamefish I’m looking for in the top 100m of water.
Thanks again
Paul

 

[Paul Thomas]

Any input would be appreciated on this

 

[Johnny Electron]

Maybe one of the acoustic guys will chime in. If sounders is the focus, the thread would get more attention under the Fishfinders and sonar topic area. Overall your settings shouldn't normally change from whatever you had set while you were still tracking bottom, other than you want auto range off, so it doesn't try to keep seeking bottom. Taste on how one person like their sounder (running high gain and hot or low gain and cool) is much like asking what favor of ice cream is your favorite. It is something you normally have to sample and find for yourself following the manual and your likes.