Northwest Fishing Reports

Here's a little back story...

Last spring my father-in-law and I took off to Lake Powell in his boat to chase stripers for a week. He had just spent a fair amount of money in a new unit...the Lowrance Elite 7 HDI. We hit the lake and hit our local spots. Most of these areas the depths ranged from 10-70ft. After hitting these spots for a few days, we decide to switch it up and try our luck with spooning and/or bait fishing for larger schools of stripers. (we had gotten word there was a massive school nearby) The location we had this school pegged was in 300+ft of water. We get out and the unit starts to act up on us. It showed us in 300+ft, then it would freeze, bounce up to 50-60ft, freeze again, drop down to 180ft, freeze and bounce all around varying depth. A buddy's boat right next to us & my father-in-law's built in depth finder both had us at about 320 or so in depth.

My concern here is I just purchased a new Ranger Reata 1850 LS with the exact unit mounted in the dash. I've got another mounted up to the bow. I'll be making the drive this spring down to Powell to take part in the annual family vacation and don't want to run into the same issue. Obviously I still need to get myself familiar with this unit but does anyone have any insight to what could potentially be the issue here? Or has anyone ever experienced this before?

*On a side note, my father-in-law spoke with a couple Lowrance guys through their customer support and trouble shot the issue. He changed his sensitivity, depth, and ping rate (not sure if that last one is completely accurate, trying to recall exactly what it was he changed) and they said that should resolve the issue. He went back this past fall to have the same issues kick back up.

I guess more than anything, for those of you who fish big water like that, what type of settings do y'all have configured?

It's a pretty safe bet that it was a setting issue. In that depth of water, you'll want to be sure to increase the sensitivity so that thermoclines and currents don't show up as false bottoms. There should be some presets for deep water fishing/trolling that will get you close, then you can fine tune your head unit to your liking. Also, the higher frequencies that provide the down and side scan images max out at around 300' so if you were using one of those features, it may have contributed to the problem.

I have had issues with interference from other units close by. I don't have the same model, but a much lesser lowrance model, and have had similar problems when some boats are nearby, usually guide boats running probably much more powerful signal than my unit and overwhelming it. It doesn't happen often, just sometimes, so I think it may have to do with the particular unit the other guy is running- possibly side scan or other function

I just got an Elite 7 HDI. I have been out one time and had a problem with the depth reading and fixed it with the settings. I still have a lot to learn.
I have had a major pain with the Insight Genesis mapping, because I have a Mac, and they are not download compatable with Mac.
The point of that is I called customer service and the recording says if you have a Elite 7 HDI press 1 all others stay on the line. What does that say about problems with the unit? Have they sold that many or just that many with problems? The Jury is still out but I want to get out and use it before the 90 days is up. Then I can return it to Cabelas.
From the reviews I have read I think it will be a good unit. A few people said it would lock up after some time on the water and need to be reset.

If any one is wanting to get one Cabelas has a price of $399 right now in the "2015 fishing essentials catalog" only and the price is only until 1/28/15. That is the black Friday door buster price. Not what I paid, and they will not refund the difference. They said I can return the one and repurchase a new one. Like I am going to remove it form my boat for $50.

Something to look at is the software version you are running. The MARK and ELITE unit's latest release is version 4.0 and one of the improvements was to be system stability and Navionics mapping functions. The manual that came with the unit will tell you how to check which version of software you currently have installed. If it is something below 4.0, it is best to update. My HDS-7 would lose its mind and go into never never land when I ran across heavy weeds until I updated the software, haven't had any issues since.

Seems like I have the same problem or close to it, with an Elite 5 HDI, new last year, although my problem is in shallower water, fishing down by Astoria for salmon this fall, we fished for 4 days with no problem than we would loose bottom ,in about 50 ft of water, and it would go black and freeze . after playing with it for a bit it would come back on and read 5 to 8 ft deep...nothing would fix it, just shut it off and let set for a couple of minutes than when it came back on it was O K, for about 20 or 30 mins than back to black, this went on for the next 5 days....called customer service and after a long time on the phone the only thing they could come up with was a bad transducer. I am not home now but when we get back will onder a new one and see that is up........