How Sonar Works

[Moose1am]

Here is a series of photos that shows a side view of how the sonar beams work. Some of the photos that I uploaded to Photobucket are pretty small and I apologize for that. I will have to edit them and make them larger.

The neat thing about using Photobucket to store your photos is that you don't have to have space on fishin.com's server and or your own computer.

I actually have not been to my Photobucket album in a while so I almost forget that I had all these pictures there. It was a lot of work to scan these pictures and put them into my photo bucket album so I am glad that they are still there.

One note: If you remove the photos in your album on Photobucket server any links that point to these pictures will be lost. So the links above will not work is my album is deleted or any of these pictures above are deleted from Photobucket's server. And anytime that the server at Photobucket is down for repairs the links in this post may not work and you will not see these pictures.

Notice that I use the [img] tags not the [html] tags. This way I got the links to show up right without having the [img] tag show up in my post. That was a pleasant surprise.

Now all you have to do is click on the link to see it. Before you had to copy and past the link and be careful not to copy the [html] tags.

This works a lot better now.

BTW: I don't think that I checked the check box in front of the Parse Text in links thing below. Well on double checking in the advanced section the check box was CHECKED. So use the Automatically parse links in text to get this to work right. I have that chosen as my default setting evidently.




http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...Fig12Fig13.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...e1am/Fig11.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../Fig9Fig10.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...se1am/Fig8.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g5Fig6Fig7.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g1Fig2Fig3.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...se1am/Fig4.jpg

[Moose1am]

forgot 5 6 & 7.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g5Fig6Fig7.jpg


Note: this may be old news to veterans but this may help some people that are new to using a depth sounder. I don't really call them a fish finder because they do more than that.

Learning to interrupt the readings on your sounder's display is key to understanding the bottom structure of your lake.

This is an important picture to understanding the concept of how sonar works or how it won't work. Note: Fish outside the cone of sound waves are not going to be visible. And fish on the edge of the cone of sound waves are going to appear to be deeper than they actually are. They will appear to be much deeper when the cone angle is greater than 20 deg.

The fish arch principle is a result of the fish entering the cone of influence and appearing to be further or deeper and as the boat goes over the fish and the fish nears the center of the cone of influence of the sounds the fish will appear to get shallower. That corresponds to the peak of the fish arch seen on the screen. As the boat passes through the fish and the fish is about to exit out of the cone of influence of the sound waves the fish will appear to be further away or deeper. This will be the tail end of the fish arch. Note the fish has to go through the center of the cone of influence of the sound waves to make a perfect fish arch on the screen.

Fish slicking through the edge of the cone of influence of the sound waves will not make a perfect arch on the screen.

Boat speed, screen scrolling speed settings and movement of the fish will effect the way the arch is displayed on your screen.

Most may already know this but for those that are new to fishing this may be of interest to you.