Where to Find Big Rockfish and Lingcod on Kayak

[ProfessorLongArms]

Originally Posted by Salty

Good info! Question: I have a Garmin Echomap on my kayak. Can I ask what settings you have yours on in deeper water? When I am over around 175', the bottom starts to disappear and I lose any distinction between open water and bottom. Tried messing with the hz settings, chirp, zoom, etc. and couldn't seem to get it right looking how I know it should. In shallow water it works perfectly. I know this transducer is good in deep water because it came off my friend's old boat that we used to use at San Clemente Island to mark deeper fish.
Thanks!

I hope this isn't a dumb assumption to make, but are you keeping an eye on the zoom/range? One thing that's a bit annoying about mine is if I touch the zoom at all, it takes it out of auto range and locks it to your choice, and it feels haphazard. Actually the only real hitch in transitioning from my Lowrance.

I finally realized what I need to do is hit Menu>Zoom>Right(it'll highlight a |>>>| arrow icon) >Ok, then tune the autozoom.... You'll get a splitscreen view that shows you the view you're getting next to a view box relative to the total depth. Be sure to hit OK and not back, otherwise it'll not keep your settings.

When I'm bottom fishing, I typically only want to see the bottom third so I can really get a good view of bottom structure. When I'm in shallower, I'm going to zoom all the way out in case anything's cruising through in the mid column.

There's also a setting called Bottom Lock, though I haven't played with that too much.

Aside from that I usually set to 77khz chirp when I'm deep and set to 200 chirp when I'm under 100'

I run my gain at med or med high. I've also heard slightly less than the fastest ping speed can be good, though I haven't tweaked it too much on my garmin.