TZT2 with Airmar B260

[playin catch]

Ok so i have done a lot of searching and cant seem to find the answer to my question... i have found a possible fix to my problem but i figured id double check with everyone. so i have the Airmar B260 ducer ( no black boxes) and i fish in the mid Atlantic canyons, and i focus my fish finder on the top 30 to 35 Fathoms ( 180' to 210') in the water column. well i seem to have a ton of clutter in the top 10 to 15 Fathoms. my settings that i can remember are as follows

Manual settings on 200Khz
Clutter - 0 to 2
Gain - 75 to 90
TVG - 9
transmission power - maxed
transmission pulses - maxed

that is all i can think of at this point.... the settings for the 50KHZ are about the same.

is the TVG set to high? also i tried putting the unit on Auto fish setting and it cleaned the screen up and looked good... does anyone know what the automatic settings are? just a little nervous i could be missing fish or not seeing the thermocline.

thanks Bob

 

[Snips]

Playin Catch,
This clutter is pretty common on the east coast. Below is a screen shot from years ago of a FCV-1100 using a B-260. This gentlemen was trying to determine what that layer was i.e. plankton, small bait, thermocline as he was having a hard time detecting fish below it. I had him rig up some targets just for a quick test.

So using your settings you are probably seeing a very similar display. Using a TVG setting of 9, max's out the TZT2's shallow water gain, default setting is 5. The Auto Fishing mode adjusts the Gain, Clutter and TVG controls. If you go into the Sounder menu when you are in a Auto mode you will find that the Clutter and TVG controls are grayed out (no access).

Normally when you turn on the Auto Fishing Mode you will find it will clean up the display, but sometimes it can take away to much. If you find it takes too many targets off the display you can readjust the Auto Gain setting. This setting presets the gain for the AF mode. You will find this setting in the Sounder Menu near the bottom of the page. There will be two settings, one for the high frequency (200Khz) and another for low (50Khz).

Snips

 

[playin catch]

Ok thank you Snips i will lower my TVG down a good bit and will see what happens.... i prefer to fish in a Manual mode over AF or AC. but i also want to be able to see what is below me especially in the area that most of my target fish are hanging.

is there anything else you recommend me trying other the TVG settings..

 

[Snips]

Playin Catch,
It's hard to say "use these settings" and life will be good for you. I will run a sounder with more gain than most as I don't mind a little of clutter on the screen. How I like to set the sounder is Range, Gain, Clutter and then Color Erase (if needed). Range is pretty straight forward, I will then increase the gain until I have a fair amount of back ground speckle. I will wait until I see some fish targets and only then will I use the clutter control to help define the targets from the clutter. After this if I still have some unwanted blues/greens I will use the Color Erase setting.

One other tip is to start out by using both frequencies. The sounder in the TZT2 toggles between 50 and 200Khz. If you find that the fish targets are appearing better on one frequency than the other switch to using that frequency full screen. By doing this you find your targets will be better defined as the sounders TX rate is twice as fast.

Snips