Lowrance depth sounder shallow water trouble

[skeat]

Hi,

I have a lowrance 3500 digital depthsounder that I have just installed after many years. It was a direct replacement so I reused the thru hull transducer. It works fine in all situations except shallow water (<7' ). Does anyone have any experience with this? I checked their website and tried calling but gave up after waiting on hold.

Thanks,
Shawn

[skeat]

After talking to a few people it seems that everything is OK except for the water I'm navigating in. If there is too much silt or if the water is churned up from boat traffic, apparantly the signal gets messed up. Of course that is when I need it the most! I guess it's back to the lead line... the more things change the more they stay the same.

Shawn

[Poida]

I was going to suggest that but you said you had changed sounders, meaning the other one if that was the problem would have given the same result.

Poida

[skeat]

Thanks for the reply. I guess I wasn't too clear on that. I last used the boat years ago on a lake and it had never worked properly, which is why I bought a new one. By the time I got it in, I had moved and now use it on salt water. It's non-adjustable so not much I can do there either.

Thanks again,
Shawn

[Frosty]

Thats about the size of it unless you can play with the sensativety a bit. Probably still wont do anything in silty.

Im not sure if paying a lot of money for one makes any difference.

[skeat]

yeah, this unit is about as reasonable as they come...no frills. At one time I had a Datamarine depth instrument on a sailboat, cost 3 times as much but I can't say if it was any better. I generally didn't go into shallow water the way I do with my current boat.