I have found that sometimes with lots of blow back and other factors and fishing deeper, that sometimes it is easier to get yourself in the fish zone and more accurately know your actual depth by working up from the bottom, than from working down from the surface. Assuming the bottom is relatively flat and safe, we sometimes take it down to touch the bottom and then bring it up x feet. When summer Chinook are not actively feeding it is not uncommon to find them in the bottom 5 to 20 feet and of course with winter Chinook in our area you are often dragging gravel with something that looks like a needle fish to hook them up. T
With fishing high speed riggers with 20 and now on occasion, a 25 lb ball, and the way our boat is set up with the transducer way aft on the pod and the riggers mounted somewhat forward on the fishing deck, we also can track the ball on the sounder deeper than many would think, which is really useful. Keeping the ball in the sounder cone is harder of course, the deeper and faster you go and with going into faster current. You can switch to 50 hertz mode which may let you track the ball deeper with the larger cone, but then you lose fish arch detail.
With fishing high speed riggers with 20 and now on occasion, a 25 lb ball, and the way our boat is set up with the transducer way aft on the pod and the riggers mounted somewhat forward on the fishing deck, we also can track the ball on the sounder deeper than many would think, which is really useful. Keeping the ball in the sounder cone is harder of course, the deeper and faster you go and with going into faster current. You can switch to 50 hertz mode which may let you track the ball deeper with the larger cone, but then you lose fish arch detail.
