How To Level a Fish Finder Transducer (For Better Images)

[Music] and what's up whisper people Chad Ferguson here catfish edge I'm going to talk a little bit today about sonar now covered a little bit of information a few weeks ago about the hummingbird helix g2 in that I have been in the process of installing on my boat swapping out the Onyx and I've got that helix t2n installed now and I want to talk a little bit about a couple of tweaks that you need to be mindful of when you're installing some our unit make sure you get the best images now I've talked about some of this in the past in a previous video first and foremost when you're installing sonar make sure you've got good clean power to it be really careful to make sure you don't have any interference you can go back and check out video that I did about sonar installation tips to get even more details about that they specifically I want to cover today is transducers so what happens is people see screenshots and a post on the internet I've got people that get in the boat with me and they say man you know my sonar doesn't look anything at all like yours the images don't look anything like that they're not anywhere near as clear and a lot of times it's the exact same sonar unit or a very similar unit and people just can't get the same performance out of it so one of the things that you want to make absolutely sure that you do is that you've got a good clean transducer installation so I installed the sonar unit installed the transducer I had to move the transducer a couple of times because I was getting interference I fished from a 24 foot cro cat 240 it's got flotation pods on the back of it so getting the transducer placement on the back of the boat can be a little bit tricky sometimes with those quotation pods but I had to move the transducer several times once I finally got it moved and then the right location where I was happy with it I wasn't getting any interference from the flotation pods or anything else then I went to the next step of leveling the transducer which is what I'm going to talk to you about today and show you how to do without that transducer being leveled you're not going to get the best images possible out of your sonar unit so you want to make sure that you level the transducer correctly what a lot of people do is they just kind of eyeball it on the trailer and get out on the water they kind of drive around look a little bit then they'll pull it back up on the trailer adjust it a little bit more they may repeat that process a dozen times and even through doing that it's very very difficult to get the transducer perfectly leveled using that process so I'm going to show you today how to get the transducer perfectly level one time out on the water and what you want to keep in mind when you're leveling the transducer to make sure you get it perfect the first time out so you can get on the path to getting those crystal-clear sonar images from your unit now there's some additional steps that I'll cover in some future videos little tweaks and things that you can make to get better performance out of it but without having a good clean install and out without having that transducer perfectly leveled you're not going to be able to go through the next step and get to that kind of top level performance with those crystal-clear images one of the easiest ways to tell if your transducer is not level is to look at your 2d sonar and get in an area where there should be high concentrations of fish and you won't see any arches what you'll see is is almost like inverted arches depending on which way your transducer is tilted they'll be elongated and they'll be facing either forward or backwards and then once you get the transducer leveled then you'll begin to see traditional fish arches like you see in this screen here now another way to tell if you use your sight imaging sonar and you can drive by something that's straight in the water like a boat ramp or a bridge column if the transducer is not level it'll usually look distorted so now I'm going to head out on the boat and get the transducer level now it's going to help if when you go out to do this if it's not really really rough water the day that I did this the water was rocking pretty good but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't still get this done now I typically have anywhere from one to four people in the boat with me when I'm out fishing but when I went out to level my transducer I was by myself so what I did is filled up the live well on my cro cat 240 it's an 80 gallon live well so I'm going to go ahead and get it full because putting all that water in the back end of the boat will kind of help compensate for me being alone and average out the way so it's more comparable to what it's like when I'm normally fishing then once I've done that what I'm going to do is get my 2d sonar turned on and get my boat speed up to my normal scanning speed now on the low end I'll go 2 miles an hour if I'm really looking slow trying to get some super detailed image on the high end I'll go for so what I'm going to do is go 3 miles an hour so now that I've got the boat up to 3 miles an hour I'm going to take a small level now the best option is to use a torpedo level and I'm going to line it up to something on the gunnel of the boat you want to make sure that you have a good reference mark to come back to you so what I've done here is I've lined the end of the level up with the end of the side of my console because it's closest to the gonna love my boat and in these windy conditions there's no way I'd be able to rest it on the gunnel you may have to take a sharpie marker or a pencil and draw a little line to work with but you want to make sure that you can get the level back in the same place and now what I'm doing is taking some coins and I'm putting some coins up underneath the end of the level while the boat is moving it's scanning speed that I've used is 3 miles an hour and I'm trying to get the bubble on the level perfectly leveled on the side of the boat so I'm just going to keep adding coins until I get that level perfect or as close as I can get it it may take you a few attempts to get it right once you get it leveled then the rest is pretty easy so there we go now I've got it level or at least as close as I'm going to get it in these water conditions so now what I'm going to do is just keep track of the coins that I had in there so I'm just going to show you here kind of what I had underneath there as an example so I'm going to grab these coins throw them in a separate pocket so they don't get mixed up with anything else and head back to the boat ramp once I get back to the boat lamp then I'm going to get the mote out of the water put it on the trailer and go back to where I can put the boat and the trailer on level ground so let's the boats back on level ground I'm going to go back put the level back in the same place that I had it on the side of the boat again you may want to do this on your gunnel and I'm also going to put the same number of coins up underneath the end of the level and then once that set up you're going to go back up to the jack on the trailer and raise the level of the jack until you get the level on the gunnel levels again like it was out on the water with the same number of coins underneath it now depending on your trailer and how your boat rides in the water you may need some blocks or something else to put up underneath the jack on your trailer so the end goal is to make sure that you get the level back to level again and then once I've done that I'm going to go back to the transducers loosen them up and put the level on the transducer and get those perfectly leveled the way the boat is sitting with the jack up and the level perfect on the gunnel and then once the transducer is perfectly leveled I'm going to tighten it up now really of everything that you're going to have to do this is the hardest part because a lot of times as you try to tighten up the transducer it will move on you and raise up so you're going to want to make sure that you're extra careful while you're doing this make sure you keep it leveled while you tighten the bolts on the transducer up and then once you get everything tightened up double-check it again just make absolutely certain that it's still sitting level and once you get that completed then you're done that's really all there is to it and again getting the transducer leveled and getting it to stay level while you tighten it up is really the hardest part of everything that you have to do now if you're running two transducers like I am then just repeat the process on the second transducer and you're done so thanks again for watching that's how you level transducer on your boat again I'm running a hundred boat helix cheat you in but it doesn't matter which sonar unit you're running which brand the process works for every one of them out there if you'll follow these steps it'll really do wonders to making sure that you're getting the best images possible out of your sonar unit if you like this information make sure you hit that thumbs up button let me know make sure you subscribe to the catfish edge channel and if you got questions about this or anything else related to fishing for catfish or suggestions that you'd like to see in future videos make sure you go down below and leave a comment and if you haven't done so already make sure you head over to catfish acecomm because the information you find on youtube is a very small portion of the cutting edge catfish and tips tricks left mason - you'll find available from captive shakes till next time i'm chad ferguson catfish acecomm

Channel: Catfish Edge

Views: 285,025

Rating: 4.8867235 out of 5

Keywords: transducer leveling, humminbird, lowrance, transducer installation, fish finder, sonar, humminbird helix, humminbird helix g2n, chad ferguson, catfish edge, humminbird mega, helix 12 g2n, catfish sonar, catfish, catfishing, fishing, how to catch catfish, transducer, fish, finder, fishfinder, catfish rigs

Id: fw_AGEjzR-4

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2017