Lowrance X67c on ice.

[BobT]

I have been using my X67c on the ice this year and encountered a small problem. Occasionally, it will have a hard time differentiating between bottom and the surface ice echos. I have tried everything I can think of and can't seem to filter it. If I switch to manual depth range I can see where bottom is but the sonar displays that it is only about 3' deep. Not a serious problem but annoying. Tried varying sensitivity, adjusting interference filter, adjusting surface clutter filter with no success.

Any ideas?

Edited March 24, 2018 by BobT

[leech~~]

3 hours ago, BobT said:

I have been using my X67c on the ice this year and encountered a small problem. Occasionally, it will have a hard time differentiating between bottom and the surface ice echos. I have tried everything I can think of and can't seem to filter it. If I switch to manual depth range I can see where bottom is but the sonar displays that it is only about 3' deep. Not a serious problem but annoying. Tried varying sensitivity, adjusting interference filter, adjusting surface clutter filter with no success.

Any ideas?

She's old and tired!  Or the battery could be the issue. 

[trouthawg]

Have the same graph as you.    Noticed this same quirk several years ago while using this unit for late winter panfishing = thickest ice of the season.   What I think is happening, is the transducer's signal is bouncing around in the hole fooling the processor to think it's in shallow water.     My fix for this has been to remove transducer from the hole, wipe bottom of transducer with my finger(or towel) to make sure it's clean, then slowly lower transducer into ice hole keeping it in the center as you lower it.     Depth number should initially be flashing as it's searching for the depth, when it locks onto bottom it should stop flashing & be good to go.   Leaving enough distance from the float to the transducer so the transducer ends up just below the ice can be helpful too.   You may need to repeat this process if you remove transducer from hole when you catch a fish or hole hopping.

Likely your transducer, graph & battery are just fine.    I adjust sensitivity so I can see the bait easily, then fish will show up well & the bottom is whatever it is, usually mud is blue & more solid bottom will be yellow or red.

Hope this helps, still near 30" of ice here north of Bulldog Country....Go UMD DAWGS in the NCAA Frozen Four !!

 

[BobT]

Could be coincidence but sometimes if I just shut the unit off and turn it back on again it will start to work okay. Saturday, when I posted this, it had been working fine for over an hour then all of a sudden I noticed that the digital readout showed only 3.5' and because I had it in auto depth range it readjusted my screen (was using flasher mode) to only show 0-10 feet when I was in 43' of water.

Switching to manual depth range I was able to adjust it to show the bottom but the digital display was still confused. Later in the day, it started working again for a while but then lost it later. I had the transducer setting a few inches below the bottom of the ice. 

It does seem that the problem is more noticeable now with the thicker ice so I have been thinking that it could just be some sonar echos that are too strong for the unit to ignore. 

Ice here on Osakis is thick enough that if it was 3" thcker, my Jiffy Model 30 would not make it through without getting an extension.