HELP......what am I seeing down there

[CK]

Couple of pics taken from todays fishing. Same spot same depth of water just taken at different times.

Can the electronics buffs on this site help me with what it is I'm looking at here?

They look like fish to me, but I need help with kinda stuff......yes I need help with that too......, but would appreciate some guidance and if anyone cares to guess what they were.

Thanks

[Abee]

could be just a noise or error?
What would the pic be if you move to different spot? if the pics are the same, means it only a noise no matter what the video recording.
I dunno, just my guess

[Zac 87]

your looking at one very dirty screen.

[LongReach]

try taking those pics with a polaroid sunglass lense over the camera lense to take out the reflection of you and the camera......can't see much in second pic.

[dylman]

...hard to say mate, but from that I might conclude that you have picked up weed, the odd return not-joined with the bottom could be fish though. I doubt it though going by the shape of the return. Try turning your sensitivity to "manual" and then backing it down a touch, thus minimising the clutter on the screen. HTH

[shaynes_god]

mate the big clump on the right looks like a bait. i say this because it is less dence than the stuff on the left which is a snag. you can tell the because it is darker like the bottom. which i'd say is rock or reef. if you look closley it looks like there is a bigger fish under the bait down on the right hand side of it. but that is just my interpretation someone might say something different.

[madaff]

Shaynes pretty much on the money, very small bait ball with a fish to the right of it. You could guess the size of fish if one knew if you are running in feet or meters. If meters then I would say a reasonable size fish that did not enter and exit the transducer cone all the way resulting in a slash. Yep for sure a snag over some very rough bottom.

Looks like a good fishing spot to me.

After 22 years of reading sonar on the Swan, one thing I will suggest is that you keep visiting the same spot even if your not fishing. Over time you will see patterns forming. It will allow you to fish at certain times and hopefully produce fish.

One other tip for anyone thinking of buying a sonar is, Buy the best display you can afford, even if it means waiting a few extra months. The more pixels the better, the better the screen paints those pixels better still. It will fast track you learning skill that much faster.

[Brad Y]

When i see jagged edges like that, it usually means there is rock of some form down there. Its hard to tell on a B+W sounder tho, I like my colour one for this reason. Rock comes as a jagged red bottom, where sand is yellow. I dont know what sensitivity your sounder is set on too, there is a whole art to tuning your sounder to its peak performance. Im still thinking its structure, possibly with a bait school on it, but more than likely a pretty nasty snag. Usually fish schools show up as an arc or a fish symbol....

[CK]

Thanks chaps VERY useful information indeed.

Madaff, readings are in feet.

The boat was tied hard up against a solid wooden wharf, that is it wasnt the pylon type (hope that makes sense). The transducer being on the opposite side of the wharf a boat width away. (approx 1.5m)

I thought that the pic showed fish, but after putting the softies down there for some exploritive action, we drew a blank and the screen did the same. Moving less than a meter away from the wharf wall, the bottom was flat and lifeless.

Brad am drawing on memory now, but think sensitivity is around 45 - 50% haven t adjusted for sometime and my 2yo has a habit of playing with the unit when we are out fishing together. Have tried the normal method of going full sensitivity and slowly decresasing until cluter is gone.

Thanks once again