Do you mean on newer units you do not have options for full sonar screen ???? I would be surprised if they did away with that feature, check screen options out. If mine was a dumb question, please ignore. But my 1 year old unit still has many screen options, including "full sonar".

As far as GPS, I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, a map or compass are useless in fog, etc. Especially with Navionics chip and high definition contours.

I do know several guys that have seperate sonar and GPS units running all the time.

Big John

JR, I find that the type of arches depend more on the angle of the ducer, at least that is what the manual says. If there are fish in the cone angle they will show as an arch, the arch may be not an arch but a line leaning forward or backwards, to get a real arch depends on ducer angle. I keep the ping and most settings at factory, sometimes I may crank up the ping, but I never leave it there for the same reason someone else mentioned, may shorten ducer life.

I never use the fish symbol feature, I think it gives totaly false indicators of fish, the arches you can be quite certain are real fish, the symbols not so. Sometime when you use the fish symbol and it's shows tons of fish, switch to arches, all signs of fish might dissapear, I suspect because they were not fish to begin with.

Most fish do not show on the sonar this time of year because they are in the top water columes, they are outside the "cone angle".

I never realized speed had that much effect on the size of the arches, I thought it was the bigger arch, the bigger the fish ???????

We have many veru knowledgable sonar guys here, I'm not one of them, but I read allot, lol. Perhaps a few will speak up here. Russ Johnson is one of the smartest guys I know when it comes to fishfinders, sonar, etc. especially Lowrance, but he has been sick the past week or so.

Another thing most might not want to hear, but most serious "Bass fisherman" really know fishfinder sonar
and inner workings. So if you know a top Bass fisherman, they will have the answers better than most of us, I'll now put my helmet on,lol.

Big John
Who now thinks he should have went fishing today.

i'm always fooling around with various settings and like you said most fish often don't show up anyways because it's only a 22 degree cone angle.
i do like using split screen feature with half of it zoomed in 2x or 4x for magnified view thou and seeing bait.
thank god for sonar thou, in the old days without it it was brutal on losing gear, spent half of the day hung on bottom and lost tackle.

I leave sonar as it is, no zoom as it only makes what's there seem bigger, the GPS I run at 1/4 or 1/8 mile. GPS is priceless, sonar is great tool as well.

Big John

J.R.,
Even with sonar a fisherman that we won't name still looses a ton of hardware every year.
Maybe with his new electronic downriggers he won't loose as much this year. LOL

Louis

I hardly ever loose spoons, but I have enough lead down there to be on the enviormental cops "10 most wanted list".

Want to fish Winni tomorrow Lou, unless something changes, it will be you, me and Russ Johnson who's feeling allot better past few days. How are you doing, you were a little under the weather last time we spoke ?? Might need some rain gear, not a real early start 7 or 8 at Center Harbor, haven't made the final plan yet.

Big john

sorry to hijack this thread but: where are you parking in Center Harbor John? Behind the Fire Station? Is the area well marked?

I'd love to launch out of Center Harbor but the parking situation has me scared off.

Sorry John,
Can't make it tomorrow, still under the weather,but getting better.

Louis