I have a Helix 7 unit for a power boat with side imaging. I think it's a cool feature, but so far it has provided ZERO value to me in terms of understanding the lake and finding fish.

I know people love this, so I must be missing something or doing it wrong. If you have side imaging, how are you using it, and where are you finding the value?

Thanks!

I have limited use with side imaging. Mostly while cruising banks for crappies in the spring, you can see a pocket off fish at times. Same for walleyes when fishing early season bays.

Last summer the bite on Kabby was terrible. We cruised reefs, you can mark pockets of schools of fish, then go back to the waypoint, vertical jig them. You would catch 1-2 then need to move. Just helped get you through unproductive water sooner.

The problem with depths finders too though is you sometimes works fish that will never bite :). You see them so you keep fishing when you would be better off moving on. Sometimes a depth finder makes your fishing worse if you are stubborn :) If you didn’t have one you would just move on because you assume there are not fish since you didn’t get a bite.

T

I have a Lowrance with Down scan imaging and really liked it. It shows the what exactly under your boat. I had it for many years and was used to it.

This summer I bought a Garmin 7” screen with down scan, side scan imaging. It’s taken me a while to get the settings dialed in. I suggest you watch a few of the You Tube videos on your unit or Side Scan in general to learn how to adjust the settings. You need to get not only the settings right but also the colors right to be able to read it in different lighting. Speed of the return signal is key also, and how far out you read. Once you get it right I think you will like it. The Walleye show up like little grains of rice on the screen.

Yeah, settings make all the difference. I put a Helix 7 MSI/MDI on this spring and out of the box it wasn't great. I watched a few youtube videos and messed with settings while out in 10-15' of water where I knew structure would be (rocks, logs, etc) I soon had it looking WAY better and what you see on the ads and whatnot.

I can turn it on and see what my settings are if you want. But frequency, how far to each side it's looking, color palette, gain/power, and scroll speed all matter. I can see rocks and how big they are, logs/trees/sticks, and fish. Watch more videos to see what they're seeing when they look at fish. But yes, fish are little bright little grains of rice w/ a shadow next to them. (as mentioned) I'll see if I can post a picture or two from my phone.

Oh, and I'm sure they'll tell you but make SURE your ducer is perfectly horizontal while in the water. If your canoe or boat is on land or trailer it probably isn't sitting how it'll be floating so putting it level while on land is good but not great.

Here are a few I found on my phone. See if they show up well

Sunken canoe? Kayak? It's an old sand pit that doesn't allow motors now that it's public


Lots of fish suspended (they were gar in the Miss River)


Tree underwater

I drew on them with my expert paint skills.

Fish under and to both sides of the boat. Circled fish, arrows to some of their shadows on the bottom. The higher up in the water column, the farther away the shadow from the fish. So a fish on the bottom will have a shadow immediately next to it.


Log/tree and rocks. Bottom is coming up under me as I go (see DI on left) and matching red arrows on the SI view. That area immediately to either side of the center line w/ the boat icon is the water column under you. Then the bottom begins and goes out to the sides from there.


And if that's hard to visualize....here's that same picture but rotated 90 degrees and cropped so you only see the one half. That's how you can think of it, the tip of the tree is under the boat and up in the water column some and then goes off to the right side of the boat and onto the bottom. The bottom contour under the boat is the water/bottom line going back in history just as it would be on DI

Wow. I have definitely been doing it wrong. Those images are 100% better than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ll have it out next week, and I’ll spend some time playing with the settings.

Thanks for taking the time on this. It’s been extremely helpful. I appreciate all the responses.

You can see on my pictures the frequency I'm running for DI and SI (bottom of the screen)

I'll go turn it on and see what else it's set to. There's also in the main settings like an "angler" mode which I think is default. If you change that to custom or advanced or something you get more settings to tweak.

Here are my settings as it sits right now (and what it was in the pics)

That user mode - custom will open up the SI Enhance menu I believe. If it's on Angler or if there's another setting it won't show you those.

Here are a couple more I found on my phone.

Sand flats on the Mississippi River. Kind of sand dunes or waves on the bottom between many of the wing dams on this stretch.




Here you can see on the map portion I'm going over a wing dam (strip of rock) whic is the gray line. You can see the rock goes as far left and right as the Helix is looking (50 ft) on SI and you can see the pattern of sand/silt ahead and behind the raised strip of rubble. Pretty much what most wing dams look like...unless there are obvious fish in front of or behind one

cyclones30: "Here are my settings as it sits right now (and what it was in the pics)











"

This is fantastic. Thanks, Cyclones30!!

No worries....just post a picture back here when you see something cool down there now

This winter I will be pulling the trigger on a helix 7 side imaging. I have a helix 5 di. My thoughts are do I mount it up front on the troller or back my by my tiller. Which would be easier to mount transducer ?
I currently put my helix 5 in my ice bag with a battery.i can carry it up front or in back with only 1 wire.the Lowrance up front is junk.
Thoughts?

yogi59weedr: "This winter I will be pulling the trigger on a helix 7 side imaging. I have a helix 5 di. My thoughts are do I mount it up front on the troller or back my by my tiller. Which would be easier to mount transducer ?
I currently put my helix 5 in my ice bag with a battery.i can carry it up front or in back with only 1 wire.the Lowrance up front is junk.
Thoughts?"

Mount it where you fish the most. If up front, it easily fits on your electric trolling motor. If you fish in the back mostly or want to see the bottom from your drivers seat when at speed, mount it on the transom.

I have mine back at my tiller....but I have a remote control for my trolling motor so that's where I fish from too even w/ that in the water.

You can't see much at cruising speed for SI, but it's very nice to watch as you're motoring around at say 10mph or less. Checking wing dams.....noticing brush piles and whatever is down there while you're scanning around.

I have no pictures, but I did play around with the settings, and it made a huge difference. Just changing the distance from 100 to 50ft made a huge difference.

No fish to show for it, but it’s become a usable tool.

Thanks again!

Great news! Yeah one or two of the videos I watched back when explained the different frequencies and how they relate to the beam width. Can either run higher frequency (mega) and see more detail but in a narrower swath or run a simpler frequency and other settings for more distance but less detail.

Like a magnifying glass gets great detail of the palm of your hand but you can't see your whole truck with it. Need less detail to step back and see that far to the sides

And you can see in my pictures both sides look similar. Right and left side. I have the ducer on the right side of the transom but even w/ my outboard all the way down I don't have any issues. I've been on boats w/ bigger outboards where you had to trim the motor up some for the "far" side to completely clear up on the screen. It's seeing the lower unit instead of say the last 20 ft to that other side.

So every time you pulled up to an area to "scan" you trimmed the motor up some while idling around. Same if you were using trolling motor for a while moving around