Elite T!5 - problems jigging

[920wilson]

I bought a used Hobie PA kayak that came with the Elite TI5...about 18 months old. I am jigging in freshwater...anywhere from 25 - 200 ft deep. I am having problems seeing my jig consistently. If I am in shallow water it usually works, but not if I go deeper. I have tried to adjust every setting and spent a long time on phone with Lowrance customer service. They have offered to sell me a new unit at a discount. I still think this may be "user error". Any thoughts/suggestions welcome!
Thanks!
Craig

[Ken Sauret]

To see any bait dropped to the bottom on any Lowrance unit, the problem I see more than any other is the bait is seen at first and then disappears from the screen. The user error here is the fact that there is some drift to the boat and the limited view of the traditional sonar is not hitting the bait any longer as the boat drifts and you loose the bait on the screen. In a kayak, this would be very easy to do as light as they are they would drift very easily. You must be absolutely still in the boat and then drop the bait within a foot of the transducer. With no drift, you should see the jig, drop shot or what ever all the way to the bottom. This would be on traditional sonar, not on structure scan. Structure Scan only has a 5 degree cone angle and you will loose the bait very easily with that small of a sound wave.

To help with the visualization of where your bait needs to stay, this formula will give you the coverage area of the traditional sonar on 200 khz. If you take the depth, divide it by 5 and double that sum equals your coverage area. For example, if you are in 20 feet of water, divide 20 by 5 equals 4 times 2 equals 8. So in 20 feet of water you are only seeing 8 feet of the bottom. This is why your boat needs to be absolutely still on the water. The other thing to remember is that every kilohertz has its own unique shape to the sound wave. For example, the 200 khz sound wave is round like a flashlight beam. The deeper the water, the more coverage you have of the bottom. For example, take a flashlight and shine it on the wall, then walk backwards and watch the coverage of the light get larger. This is what happens to your sound beam or Ping when it gets to the bottom in increasingly deeper water. Hope this helps many of you out there.