tions directly under the boat. This makes it useful for ice fishing, or when you're fishing at anchor. When the boat is not moving, fish sig- nals are long, drawn out lines on a normal chart display. FasTrack con- verts the graph to a vertical bar graph that, with practice, makes a use- ful addition to fishing at a stationary location.

Surface clutter

Fish arches

Structure

In FasTrack, fish arches show as horizontal bars.

Bottom signal

 

ColorLine

 

 

FasTrack

 

Sonar Page showing FasTrack.

bar graph

Fish I.D. (Fish Symbols & Depths)

The Fish I.D. feature identifies targets that meet certain conditions as fish. The microcomputer analyzes all echoes and eliminates surface clutter, thermoclines, and other signals that are undesirable. In most instances, remaining targets are fish. The Fish I.D. feature displays fish symbols on the screen in place of the actual fish echoes.

There are several fish symbol sizes. These are used to designate the relative size between targets. In other words, Fish I.D. displays a small fish symbol when it thinks a target is a small fish, a medium fish sym- bol on a larger target and so on.

The sonar's microcomputer is sophisticated, but it can be fooled. It can't distinguish between fish and other suspended objects such as trotlines, turtles, submerged floats, air bubbles, etc. Individual tree limbs ex- tending outwards from a group of limbs is the hardest object for the Fish I.D. feature to distinguish from fish.

You may see fish symbols on the screen when actually, there are no fish. The reverse is also true. The illustrations on the next page show how Fish I.D. can actually miss fish that are present.

Does that mean Fish I.D. is broken? No — the feature is simply inter- preting sonar returns in a specific way to help take some of the work out of reading the screen. Remember: Fish I.D. is one of the many tools we provide so you can analyze your sonar returns for maximum fish

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Eagle Electronics 500C, 500CDF manual Fish I.D. Fish Symbols & Depths, Bar graph